Trip to Florida

Well, our trip to Orlando for the Florida Parent Educators Association convention turned into quite the memorable event.

Things went pretty well until we hit Macon, Georgia. Then, Josh yells "Oh no!" and reports that "parts are falling off the trailer!" When we pulled over, I found that he was correct. The metal rock plate that was screwed onto the front of the trailer had come loose, and was flapping around. This of course, lead to stress on the other screws, which proceeded to pop off one by one, like the buttons on my shirt after a Thanksgiving dinner. By the time we got to a gas station, they were almost all gone. I bought a roll of duct tape, and that held it together for the rest of the trip. (You really can fix almost anything with duct tape.)

We were okay for another half hour when the van started lurching and sputtering. I was hoping that we had just gotten some bad gas, but another 30 minutes saw us losing power and sputtering even worse. By this time, it was 5:30. God was with us, though, and we stopped at Cordele, GA. There was a Comfort Inn, a Wendy's, a WalMart and a car rental place just around the corner. I spent the evening making phone calls, but AAA didn't have any suggestions or approved repair shops nearby. The more I thought about it, I didn't like my options - Wednesday before Memorial Day, with no way to drive the last 300 miles to Orlando. Even if we found a repair shop, it didn't look like a quick fix was in the cards. I considered getting a rental, but usually they don't like you hauling trailers with their rentals. Besides that, I figured rental for four days, plus mileage would probably run over $1,000 - and I'd have to leave HUMom there to watch over the repairs. Not a good plan.

Plan B was for everyone to stay, which would mean we miss the convention altogether, and we have to pay for the hotel until the van is fixed. And, if the van isn't powerful enough to haul the trailer, I still have the source of the problem to deal with. Did I mention that the van has 110,000 miles? Hmmmmm. Plan B isn't looking too good either.

This made for a rather restless & sleepless night for me. The only repair shops we knew of were two dealerships, a Ford and a Chevy. Plan C started forming in my fevered brain.

At 8:00 we limped into the Ford dealership, and HUMom said "We are about to make someone's day" Three hours later, we drove off the lot in a new Expedition. HUMom is very happy. Three kids in the back are very happy, watching the DVD player. HeadsUpDad is trying very hard not to think about 7 years of payments, stretching out before him. Sigh.