Prelude to our escape

So awhile back my husband had asked if I minded a trip south to Alabama in March. He wanted to shoot some Championship State match in Birmingham. Being that I have drug him around to a few events with me, I figured I owed him. Not only that I was ready to get the heck out of the cold!!! I even managed to sucker him into a few days at Fort Walton Beach for me!

Now for those of you who may not know, we have not had the best of luck with vacations. The trip before last we spent more time on the road than where we went due to a vehicle breakdown and a whole assortment of issues. Yet, my plan was for this trip to go off issue free like last trip.

Yeah, not so much the case.

Tuesday Joey and I were trying to get everything ready for the trip. Some laundry, some packing, oil change, vacuum car, etc. I was really busy with work that day, even though I was working from home so time was at a premium. About 7 o clock we decided to go drop the dog off at Joey's mom. On our way, we realized just how incredibly icy it was out. Joey, who plows, decided he better go hit a few places to salt and I was stuck along for the ride. This was not helping out our schedule as we had not had dinner, still had more to pack and more laundry to do.

Just before 9 we made it home. As I was packing up the bathroom stuff, the lights started to flicker. Joey, my all-knowing husband, set out to find a flashlight and no sooner did he find one, our electric went out. So I finished up packing by flashlight, ate by candlelight and so much for the laundry.

Now we were planning to leave bright and early at 5AM. So I set the battery powered alarm and Joey and I discussed the plan. Do we leave if the power is still not on?? We decided we were getting out of this icy he!!.

Joey was a bit grumpy as we laid in bed as he had not showered. We were both hoping the power would come back on so we could shower before we left. Finally I drifted off to sleep only to be awoke about an hour later. Joey exclaimed something hit the housee. While we did not know it then, a huge tree limb, a good 10 inches in diameter came down on the back deck. I hear from the house sitter that it made a nice hole in it...GREAT!

I should back up now. Saturday we came home to a cold house. We were out of oil Not good, especially since I could not even call for more until Monday. Oil was finally delivered Tuesday morning and for the first time the house started to finally get warmer. It sure did not last long because not even 12 hours later, the house already was getting cold again.

After a cold night of sleep, we crawled out of bed to get on the 10 hour drive. We left just before 6 on the icy, snowy roads. The roads were not good and we were not driving the speed limit, but we were heading south to somewhere warmer!!! Woohoo!

Well that lasted for about an hour until my car's windshield wipers decided to quit straight up in the windsheild. Now the roads were covered in crap which meant our windshield was too. We managed to navigate over to the off ramp to check things out.

Upon inspection, these suckers were just not going to work, so we turned around to head directly to the car dealer by our house. It was an awful drive there. We could not see well with the windshield and I was totally on edge. We headed down ST RT 700 through Hiram, to Garrettsville. ODOT was cutting away trees from the road as they were down everywhere. Power lines were down at least evey mile down the road.

When we made it to the car lot, we found that it did not open until 8, so we had some time to kill and went for breakfast. This is the second time on vacation that we have waited for a car dealer to open!

Thankfully we know the dealer and owner well and he told the guys to do whatever they needed to do to get us on the road even if it meant taking the part off another car.

Joey's mom came to pick us up and we went home to her house to grab a shower. No sooner did we get done with our showers, and our luck rubbed off on her and she lost power.

Joey decided he might as well go plow since the snow had kept coming. The call from the dealer came in. Big shocker...they can't fix it with any parts within 100 miles. So no car until the next day. Now what???

Joey's mom came to the rescue and said we could take her car. So finally just before noon we took her car to the dealership and switched everything into her car and finally hit the road.

We drove pretty much all day. One thing for my work got revised, so I ended up having to redo all the work that I had did the past two days in the car on the way down. After awhile I would start to get a headache and would take periodic breaks.

I am still catching up on all the work and it is Friday and more keeps coming in...uggh!

Tomorrow's weather down here is supposed to be snowing and 32....not quite the weather my husband thought it would be for his match. Guess our luck followed us.

Well I will report back with some of the good highlights later, but for now I guess I still have more work to do. Rant over...