Today has been one of the weirdest days in my life. It’s one of those days that is so far beyond NOT funny while it is happening, but maybe we’ll think it’s a little funny after it’s over. Only because we never could have dreamed up any of the situations we have found ourselves in today.
As Monk would say, “Here’s what happened:”
Early Monday morning Grandpa Sipes (Jesse’s grandpa) was taken to the ER with heart problems. Luckily, Jesse’s aunt happened to be in town visiting them so she’s been able to help out Grandpa and Grandma with all the hospital stuff. Jesse let her know that we could make ourselves available if they needed us or if anything about his condition got worse. She told us Tuesday afternoon that it would be great if we were able to stay with them for a while after she left to help get them all set up on new home health care. Jesse felt strongly that this was something we could do so we decided to get packing and leave as soon as we could.
I packed up a bunch of clothes pretty quickly. I’m usually not a very light packer to begin with because I like to have choices, but packing in such a rush means I brought even more than normal. Then I made a quick trip to Nutrition S’Mart to stock up on my special allergy foods that I probably wont be able to get there. I felt like a fugitive, packing everything we might need and stuffing it into the car and taking off. It’s a good thing we decided to drive because there is no way we would have been able to fly with all the stuff we brought.
So the day started off great. Jesse even let me take the first driving shift since I knew I would crash as soon as the adrenaline rush from my packing high wore off. We were talking and snacking, enjoying the road trip. Then all of a sudden all of the warning lights in the dashboard come on at once and the car started loosing power. Jesse immediately moved over to pull off at the next exit. By the time we were off the exit ramp and on a little side road, the car had lost all power. We coasted down the deserted road wondering where we would stop. We pulled into a boat shop just as the car stopped running.
It was completely dead. Jesse went into the boat shop to ask if one of the guys could try jump-starting the car. So the guy pulls his tractor over and hooked up the jumper cables. I just had to get a picture, I’ve never seen a jump-start from a little tractor. Unfortunately, that didn’t do the trick… fortunately, the guy happened to have a boat battery that would work for our car. We bought the battery and went on our way. We are so thankful for the help from this kind stranger… we happened to die right where someone was able to help us.
We were pretty sure we had solved the problem since the boat guy ran a test on the battery to confirm it was truly dead. A few hours later the car repeated the same thing! This time we noticed the signs faster and quickly turned off the air conditioning, radio, and all the lights. That gave it enough power to drive a couple exits to where there was an auto store. Too bad it was already closed! Another jump-start from another stranger got us to Walmart for a battery charger and to a hotel for the night. We were pleasantly surprised with the fanciness of the hotel for the low price.
So now we’re here for the night and looking for a place to take the car in the morning. This is SO frustrating because this car is still new to us and we have had absolutely no problems with it. We even had it all checked out before we left to confirm it was in good condition for a road trip. Now we are stuck with no choice but to spend extra time and money to get it fixed so that we can get to where we are going.
We have two pretty funny things running in our hotel room tonight. We are charging our car battery to make sure we will have enough power to get to the car shop. That wasn’t easy to carry in. At least there is no chance someone can steal our car.
Jesse has his entire office set up since he needed to bring the computer to work on once we were at Grandpa and Grandma’s house. After unpacking the car he sat down and started answering emails like we were at home. At least something productive got done today.
Exhausting day… now it’s time to sleep in our king sized bed and hope for a more successful day tomorrow!
