One of Those Days

April 11, 2013

This turned out to be “one of those days.” The day began well, with us meeting Lauren, Matt and Catherine for breakfast at the dining hall at 7:30 am.

Catherine, Matt, Lauren, and Carol

Jack, Catherine, Matt and Lauren

We said our goodbyes there and headed back to our room to pack up, as we wanted to get on the road fairly early. We have extra time allotted for our drive to West Texas A&M near Amarillo (4 days) but a massive rain/wind/thunder/tornadoes/hailstorm is headed this way and we’ll have to either drive through part of it or hunker down somewhere. So we wanted to make a little progress toward our goal at least, before hitting nasty weather.

We are usually pretty careful about liquids and foods around our computer equipment, but unfortunately, while cleaning off the desk, Jack knocked over an old coffee cup that he thought was empty but wasn’t totally, and a bit of coffee (with cream/sugar) spilled onto his Mac laptop keyboard! Catastrophe! We grabbed towels, turned it off, turned it upside down (all the things it tells you to do on the internet). It also told us that we should have the computer checked out immediately at an Apple service, so I looked up the nearest and fortunately there’s one right on the way, on the west side of Knoxville. We finished our packing and punched the Apple store address into our GPS.

Found the store easily, and got a quick appointment with one of their “Genius” staff. We had to wait about 45 minutes, so were forced to share a Cinnabon roll at the nearby food court to kill time while waiting. Back at the store at the appointed time, and the Apple guy was great. He took the back off the laptop and inspected the board and found no moisture inside, although the keyboard was still somewhat moist. He told Jack to wait 24 hours before turning it back on and hope for the best. He gave him a microfiber towel to keep on the keyboard and told him to keep it upside down for the 24-hr period. No charge. We can see why Apple is doing so well. BTW, we got there right at opening time and there were a BUNCH of blue-shirted salespeople standing around talking to each other, with the store virtually empty. Made me wonder. By the time we came back for our appointment, every salesperson was talking to a customer and other customers were lined up waiting to talk to someone. Not wondering now, instead thinking of buying more Apple stock.

Back on the road, still a bit worried about Jack’s computer but hopeful that he lucked out this time. We’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see. Now I’m checking the weather report to see where the storm is and how far we think we can get. The sky is getting darker and the satellite image shows a nasty-looking, large storm out there waiting for us. We make a general plan to get past Nashville if possible and look for either a campground or cheap but clean hotel/motel. (Our goal is to average no more than $30/night for lodging on this trip—so far so good, especially with the two free camping nights on the Chattooga River.)

We ran into the storm right around Nashville. The sky got very dark and scary and buckets of water fell from the sky. We kept going for a while, but then decided to pull off and reconnoiter. In addition, a strange chirping sound started coming from the vicinity of the engine compartment, like birds under there. We tried to diagnose it but couldn’t find exactly where it was coming from. I looked it up on my iPad and concluded that the main belt might be slipping, somehow related to all the moisture. The rain was letting up and as there was no other sign of engine difficulty, and since many of the internet folks with similar problems drove their vehicles for months with this symptom, we decided to keep going a bit farther down the road and look for a good auto shop to check it out. (Note to self: don’t believe everything on the internet.)

 I’ll cut to the chase, as drawing it out is painful. At a point on I-40 between Nashville and Memphis the red “check gauge” light came on in the van. The heat gauge started going up. Then the power steering went out. Uh oh. We limped to the next exit (fortunately in one sense it’s a low traffic exit for the Natchez Trace State Park, but unfortunate in that we’re a long way from help and we only get a 3G cell signal so our internet service doesn’t work too well). But at least our cell phone works and, our ace in the hole, we have AAA Plus!

 So this is our second call to AAA in a few days. They don’t make too much money off us. In fact, I keep waiting for them to fire us as a customer, but so far they still treat us like queens and kings when we call, always thanking us for our “loyalty.” Paying a bit extra for the Plus service more than pays for itself, with our fleet of “older” vehicles—we get 4 free tows of up to 100 miles in a year. (This makes our second tow this year, as our Jeep had a broken alternator when we were driving home from our New Year’s trip.)

This time it took a bit more than 5 minutes for the tow truck to show up. The driver called us after we’d waited at the exit about an hour and explained that the roads were all flooded and he’d had to find an alternate route. After about 70 minutes, he pulled up and quickly got the van loaded onto his state-of-the-art tow truck. No problem at all that it’s actually an RV and weighs about 8000 lbs. He boasted that he’d towed a 30-ft “real” RV yesterday with no issues.

Chad loading our wounded RoadTrek

So we had about a half-hour drive to the nearest AAA recommended auto repair shop.

Carol with our baby on arrival at repair shop.

Jack crying and trying to console our baby before its operation.

Chad, our driver, is a part owner of a successful towing company. Interesting man. He and his siblings were raised by his grandparents on a 4000-acre cotton farm after his mother went to prison when he was 8 (didn’t get the full details on that). Sounded like a fairly rough life but, as he said, “It didn’t hurt me none.” His grandmother was apparently one tough cookie who tolerated no nonsense; he had us laughing hysterically at a story about how his grandma would tell him “Let the chickens in the yard,” point out which exact chicken (among the 20 or so in the flock) she had in mind for dinner, and then let fly with an empty Coke bottle and hit that chicken every time. “She would bounce it off her hand some way, and hit it every time. That didn’t kill the chicken, just dazed it,” said Chad, “Made it easier for her to catch it and wring its neck. She was an expert. That chicken would go from peckin’ in the yard to being served on the dinner table in under an hour and a half!” Chad was a great storyteller. We learned many details about cotton farming. Who knew?!

Saying farewell to Chad.

The upshot of all this is that we are ensconced in a Days Inn waiting for the verdict on our vehicle repair. Hopefully it will be repaired today. We’re also waiting to see how Jack’s Macbook does when he turns it back on.

On the bright side: our hotel is next to the Casey Jones Village and Museum which we will undoubtedly take in this morning. We probably would have missed it otherwise. And all the rain has made my hair curlier, so my new haircut looks even better than usual. 

Thank you, Lord, for keeping us safe through all this “adventure”!

State count: still 5 [Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee]
Odometer count: Surber, VA: 107,435 Jackson, TN: forgot to get it off the vehicle—will update later!