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I felt compelled to share a bit of my day since some seem to get a kick out of things blowing up in my face!
As some of you may know, I'm heading out of town tomorrow. In preparation, I decided I'd get everything going with the van today so that I'm not messing around with it at 6:30 in the morning with a bunch of teenagers standing around me...good call.
The first thing I found out was the guy I needed to get with to get the garage open to get the van out is currently in Dallas, TX...a far cry from North Little Rock, AR. No biggie, I'll get in touch with the other guy that has the key. Turns out, he's out of town, too. Well, the pastor recently left the church, so he doesn't have keys anymore to get into stuff. I did manage to finally track someone down who had a key to the back door of the garage and I was able to get in and managed to get the bay door open. Crisis averted.
This has taken me an hour and a half or so. I get in the van, and the battery is dead. So, the guys who broke me into the church garage helped me push the van out into the parking lot. With some small trouble, we managed to get it jumped off. I let it run for a while, to charge the battery up some before taking off. I pulled up by my Xterra to get some stuff out of it while I waved to the guy leaving. It was time to begin the 4 mile journey that would take me 3 hours to complete...
Hopping into the bus, I rolled up the drive (which is on a steep grade). But, when I started to pull out, the van died. Eh, no sweat, right? It started right back up...albeit with some struggle. We're off again. Or not; the van dies again. As I turn the key again, I come to the painful realization that the battery hasn't charged enough to start the bus a second time.
We're ok though, right? I mean, I have some jumper cables in my Xterra. So, I slap it up into neutral and roll on down the hill to my truck. Another untimely discovery...in all my wisdom, I must've put both pairs of jumper cables in my wife's car.
At this point, the time is getting to be 6:00PM. I'm supposed to be across town at the U-Haul to pick up a trailer. The van is currently a wash of a project. I leave it in the middle of the parking lot and hop in the Nissan to go pick up the trailer. I haven't been to that part of town in a while. I took the exit that would normally get me there and loe and behold, there's road work on the access road and I can't turn that way due to road construction (they're changing two-way access roads which are DANGEROUS to one-way access roads). I knew they were going to build a loop, so I got back on the interstate assuming they had put it in if they'd closed down that part of the access road. This, unfortunately, was not the case. And the worse part of the news is I wouldn't be able to turn around again until the next town (8 or 10 miles down the road). Time is running out before they close, so I'm on the phone with them telling them I'm on the way and it'll only take a few minutes to get there.
I pull in and we blow through the rental process, I get hooked up and take off. My wife gets off soon, so I catch up with her and we go to get the bus. It jumps off fine, and after a little tinkering around with it, we get it home...some days just blow my mind
But, I'm still positive that it's gonna be an awesome trip. And we're leaving tomorrow at 6:30AM..even if we're walking!
As some of you may know, I'm heading out of town tomorrow. In preparation, I decided I'd get everything going with the van today so that I'm not messing around with it at 6:30 in the morning with a bunch of teenagers standing around me...good call.
The first thing I found out was the guy I needed to get with to get the garage open to get the van out is currently in Dallas, TX...a far cry from North Little Rock, AR. No biggie, I'll get in touch with the other guy that has the key. Turns out, he's out of town, too. Well, the pastor recently left the church, so he doesn't have keys anymore to get into stuff. I did manage to finally track someone down who had a key to the back door of the garage and I was able to get in and managed to get the bay door open. Crisis averted.
This has taken me an hour and a half or so. I get in the van, and the battery is dead. So, the guys who broke me into the church garage helped me push the van out into the parking lot. With some small trouble, we managed to get it jumped off. I let it run for a while, to charge the battery up some before taking off. I pulled up by my Xterra to get some stuff out of it while I waved to the guy leaving. It was time to begin the 4 mile journey that would take me 3 hours to complete...
Hopping into the bus, I rolled up the drive (which is on a steep grade). But, when I started to pull out, the van died. Eh, no sweat, right? It started right back up...albeit with some struggle. We're off again. Or not; the van dies again. As I turn the key again, I come to the painful realization that the battery hasn't charged enough to start the bus a second time.
We're ok though, right? I mean, I have some jumper cables in my Xterra. So, I slap it up into neutral and roll on down the hill to my truck. Another untimely discovery...in all my wisdom, I must've put both pairs of jumper cables in my wife's car.
At this point, the time is getting to be 6:00PM. I'm supposed to be across town at the U-Haul to pick up a trailer. The van is currently a wash of a project. I leave it in the middle of the parking lot and hop in the Nissan to go pick up the trailer. I haven't been to that part of town in a while. I took the exit that would normally get me there and loe and behold, there's road work on the access road and I can't turn that way due to road construction (they're changing two-way access roads which are DANGEROUS to one-way access roads). I knew they were going to build a loop, so I got back on the interstate assuming they had put it in if they'd closed down that part of the access road. This, unfortunately, was not the case. And the worse part of the news is I wouldn't be able to turn around again until the next town (8 or 10 miles down the road). Time is running out before they close, so I'm on the phone with them telling them I'm on the way and it'll only take a few minutes to get there.
I pull in and we blow through the rental process, I get hooked up and take off. My wife gets off soon, so I catch up with her and we go to get the bus. It jumps off fine, and after a little tinkering around with it, we get it home...some days just blow my mind
But, I'm still positive that it's gonna be an awesome trip. And we're leaving tomorrow at 6:30AM..even if we're walking!