My Travels

So I have not told y'all about trip from Texas to Georgia with the Tampa extension. I will start from the beginning.

Mom and I pulled out around 9 am on Thursday morning expecting to be in Georgia at 10 pm the same night. We moved on our way fairly quickly and were excited to be on our way. Two hours later, mom was driving as we feel a shudder and a slight bang coming fron the trailer that we were pulling. We were in the far left lane when the trailer tire blew so mom went careening across three lanes of traffic to end up on the right shoulder. Great way to start off the trip!

We got out all of the equipment to change a tire and settled down to our task hoping that it would go smoothly and quickly. No such luck! Neither mom nor I could even budge a single lug nut. What to do? We called Jimmy. As dad and Jimmy were trying to figure out what to do mom and I took another shot at the lug nuts. We found that if I pulled and she pushed that we could do it together. We were on our way to success. Then my jack would only lift the trailer a little because my car sits lower than the trailer does. We pulled off the old tire and tried to put the new one on. It went on just fine but the lug nut holes (don't know what they are called) did not line up with the tire because the trailer wasn't lifted high enough. First I tried standing on the opposite side of the trailer to lift it...it did not work! Then mom went to stand on the opposite side and the outcome was the same. Next we tried lifting the same side of the trailer but because we both couldnt lift at the same time and neither of us could do it by ourselves we were facing the horrible face of defeat.

Mom decided that we should unhook the trailer to get a little more lift by setting down the front of the trailer. We couldnt find a knife to cut the zip tie off of the latch. As we were about to go insane, a nice man in a big truck walked around the corner of my car and scared me so bad I almost...well I will spare you the details!!! He asked if we needed any help and I very quickly in a crisp voice said yes. It was almost a reflex action instead of a grateful oh yes thank you so much! I was just so unnerved by his quick appearance that I didnt have time to think. Within 10 minutes the tire was on and we were on our way.

We decided to go ahead and stop to have the other tire put on because they were the same age and condition and we did not want to go through that again. By this time we were already over an hour behind. Then one of the straps holding the hovercraft down snapped so we had to stop and buy a new one.

We were fianlly on the road again, hoping that nothing else would go wrong. Thirty minutes down the road we hit a HUGE storm. The rain was coming down so hard I could not even see the car in front of me unless he hit the brakes. We pulled over underneath a bridge because mom thought that the hover had slipped to one side. Mom was wearing jeans and I was wearing boxers so it was logical that I go and check because I would dry quicker. By the time I got back into the car, even with the overhang, I was soaked through and through. The hover was stable enough to move on. We went to pull onto the road again when a man in a truck, without his lights on so we couldnt see him, almost killed us as we tried to get on the highway.

On we went on our travel through Oz when we had to stop a little later to lift the hover back into its designated spot on the trailer. We decided not to stop for dinner and to keep driving because it was so late. Mom hit another terrible storm in Atlanta and then we were home, safe and sound...at 3:45AM on Friday!!!!!!!!!!
At around 10 on Thursday night, Morgan called me and asked me if I wanted to ride the final leg of the hovercrafts trip with Doug down to Tampa, Florida. Sure, why not!!!

So when we got here at 3:45 I took a shower, read a newspaper and was off again with the hover and Doug on an 8 hour drive to Tampa. Mind you, I did not sleep at all that night or all the day while Doug and I drove. The trip down was, thankfully, uneventful! As we got closer, the inevitable meeting with the Russian who bought the hover was approaching. We discussed the man thoroughly and I had even decided what he looked like. We met him a few blocks from his shop to follow him in. It looked just like a chop shop from the movies I swear!!!
The man started to try to unload the hover when Doug very calmy said "hey buddy...I am going to need to see the money first!" Good idea!!! We unloaded and it was actually very uneventful as well. On the way there we had decided that we were going to find a beach and go swimming even if it meant that we had to stay in disgusting, salty water for the rest of the day. First, we stooped to eat though. I went into Ruby Tuesdays in yet another pair of boxers and a t-shirt (basically my pajamas) and ate dinner! The closest beach was 30 minutes in the wrong direction...we skipped the swimming.

Doug drove a thousand miles per hour the whole way so naturally we had to have a police scare. The cop pulled out to follow us but, we had to get gas anyway, we pulled off fully expecting him to follow and went to the nearest gas station. The cop continued on and pulled somebody else over...sigh of relief!!!!
We got back at 12:00am and I promptly went to sleep. By the time we got back, both of us had a sore throat because we had talked from 6am to 12am. Did I mention the he is hysterical so we did a lot of laughing as well!!!

Well that concludes the traveling horrors and later I will let you know about the SCUBA adventures!!!