There are always conflicting feelings amongst the yooothes of the family about taking part of their precious break time away from their screens and getting them out of the house and out into the fresh air a bit. A planned Spring Break trip to the ranch met with not a few complaints along those lines… however, when told that they could choose to stay home, but the wi-fi password would be changed, they grudgingly admitted the ranch would be more fun than that.
Thus we found ourselves rising at 0500 to dress, load up and get on the road by 0600. Laurent and Sir Rupert arrived at 0530 to help things along and assist in distributing the bags between her little car and Tom Truck. I elected to ride with Laurent, because a) she’s fun, b) I can now fit in her car, thanks to losing weight, and c) I knew Paul would have the heat blasting, whereas I also knew that she and I are muy simpatica when it comes to the thermostat.
A quick stop to top off gas and get a breakfast for the road at QT and we were off, driving into the morning sunrise. Traffic wasn’t too terrible since we were going against the flow and out of the city, and we were making good time and almost reached our exit on SR87 – aka “The Beeline” highway, when there was an ominously loud popping sound from the right rear of the car. We called Paul, who was already a little ways up the highway, and he turned around to meet us at the Sinclair at McDowell. Sure enough, we’d popped the tire. Paul and Laurent were fixin’ to change the tire when they discovered she had left her tools at home, so the best thing we could manage was to fill the tire as full as possible, and then drive expeditiously to the nearest place that could replace the tire at that hour of the morning.
That turned out to be Southern Tire Mart, to which we had to drive circuitously, stopping first at the wrong outbuilding, then going around through a gap in the fence, traversing diagonally across a wide, muddy, pot-holed gravel expanse to eventually find the correct building, which was well off the beaten path and back from any visible road, facing what appeared to be a rock quarry that was already hopping with huge trucks lined up and filing in to be filled.
Then we had to sit around and wait while they sent a guy to another shop to purchase a tire that would fit her car (curiously, they don’t usually cater to tiny Toyotas at that location). There was much running about and hullabalooing by the smaller children during the wait, and may even have included Ruben finding a dead critter and chasing his sisters around with it (don’t worry, he did NOT touch it with his hands!).
All in all we lost about an hour and a half, and the sun was truly up and shining when we were able to set off once again on our journey northward.
Oh, and Sir Rupert did his Bassett thing. I took photos for posterity.
