Road Trip: Harrowing Moments

Note...

<——I hated looking in the rear view mirrors in construction zones!





I’d like to tell you a bit about one of my FAVORITE T.V. shows…

TOP GEAR

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May…and The Stig.

They are witty, smart, adorable and I think I am in love with each one of them.

It’s a show I watch on BBC America. I love BBC America. We Americans steal all the Brits great shows…Being Human, Top Gear and The office to name 3…

…Thank the God’s that they haven’t touched Dr. Who.

Note…I attended a British Primary school in Oman for 5 years. I love British humor.

I have never ever seen the US version…I can’t be bothered.

Top Gear...

It’s a car show.

It’s not really JUST a car show…

They travel the world on adventures in the crappiest vehicles…across salt flats, through jungles and just around the top gear race track.

They also get to drive some of the baddest ass mother fucking cars in the world like…

….the Bugatti Veyron.

I have never driven one but would love to one day.

I love driving.

I did get to drive this bad ass bitch—--—>

The MRap.

This Road trip Kat, our 5 MoFo’s Children and I went on wasn’t all perfect…
It was our own little version of a Top Gear challenge...

We had a few problems, issues and it was a learning experience...

…We used our ingenuity to fix all the problems as well as time…yes, with time some things fixed themselves.

Note…Kat is a 29 year old widowed Mother of 2…a just 3 year old girl, Fatty and Tiny, a 5 year old boy (not their real names). She has over come odds I cannot imagine and I admire her for her achievements so far. She is sharp, witty, very funny and logical.

Before we left on our trip she studied EVERY component to our her hitch.

<------The Hensley hitch...

The second morning we woke to a problem. There was a screw that held in one of the ‘braces’ …(I did NOT study the finer nuances of the hitch)…she explained to me that inside the screw was a spring…well it was stuck. This was a tiny screw, maybe 1 and 1/2 inches long on each end were two cap of sorts that we needed to remove but they were both not budging…we tried and tried...in the rain with the MoFo’s Children running around us getting all up in our business playing. 

We took turns with it. Each of us respecting each other as the other tried…walking away sometimes to think…not being mean and sometimes laughing...as we would have been stranded here could we not figure it out.

…No one to call but AAA or USAA…and that was NOT gonna happen…

Kat finally got a cap off…I had loosened it for her…Ok, not really.

Then came time to get the spring out. She took it to the picnic bench placed holding the screw with pliers and with her ingenious skills and time got the sponge out…and away we drove…

…but not so fast…because as I drove the Sequoia it felt like what can only be described as pushing and pulling…What the Fuck!?…

We kept on driving though hoping it would work it’s self out and it did…but it did happen a couple more times…and we still don’t know why.

One evening she looked at me and said…(having to do with another part)...
Kat…”Hey, you and your monkey strength got this on here…get your monkey strength over here and get it off now…”

Every morning before we started off we would check the turn signals and the brakes making sure everything was kosher safe and in working order…and almost every time something wasn’t working, usually the left turn signal…we would drive off anyway…go about a mile, pull over, get out and…
…TaDa!!! …everything was good to go…however the running lights still weren’t working...
Well…
...On the way home we got caught in a torrential downpour as I drove…The rain ended and we needed gas…we find this shitty place to stop…and what did we discover?

<—Somehow this had happened and we had been driving for who knows how long…! In the downpour! we felt dreadful as we, yes, laughed again crossing our fingers we hadn’t caused any accidents behind us…
…but what to do? You can’t drive a 23 foot 5000+ camper with out electricity to signals and such…

A clip holder of such was clipped (I’m so technical) and we took the other wires that were held back as well and created another attachment for the wires and also enough slack for the electrical thingy to be able to plug into the SUV…Then we opened the hood and looked at the fuses thinking…maybe just maybe a fuse had blown and that’s why the running lights weren’t working…all the while these country bumpkins men gawked at us with our hands soiled and black and the MoFo’s Children screamed and yelled entertained themselves…
…to no avail. It was getting dark and we NEEDED running lights but had none…
So I went into the camper and turned all the lights on I could…hoping it would help...

Driving up and down hills…
…Was approached logically…and often slowly as to not burn the engine out.

I kept the Sequoia in 3rd gear up mountains hills.

<—Third gear is somewhereish between 23000 and 27000rpm’s.

This was not an easy task as we were being sped passed by what seemed like every soul out there. I stayed in the right lane though…as our speed slowed to the pace of a snail. Getting 4 MPG’s I would watch the speedometer and laugh and count down…
Me…”65, 63, 58, 52…Hahahhaaa! Hey Mister trucker man showing off…we got this!”…as trucks would what looked like speed past us.
Down hill I would try to get our speed up…to 71mph so I would at least have a head start up the hills…

This is us going down a hill, please note our gas milage!———>

We got a lot of dirty looks from people and I found that there was little consideration from drivers living in their little bubble world completely unaware that what we were doing was not easy and we could not go fast…When merging nobody wanted to be behind us so they wouldn’t let us in…it was very frustrating sometimes….but we laughed and would say…
…”Don’t be a hater!”

One thing I wasn’t worried about was flat tires…I got that one down…Thankfully we didn’t blow anything though!

We did have a funny moment with the hitch…This stability thing, (Man I wish I knew the names for these things!) we Kat normally didn’t put directly on the ground as we Kat had a ‘holder’…one night though it was put directly on the tarmac…we ended up taking back with us a souvenir which we removed when we landed got home…it’s in a plastic baggy, about 3 1/2 inches of tarmac from Ohio…

<——This is fatty, one of our many distractions.

I wonder how Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May would do under our circumstances? Two women with no mechanical training…with 5 MoFo’s Children to entertain, keep an eye on as they steal play with our tools …on a trip from the Rocky Mountains to the Smokey Mountains and back…having never done anything like this before?

Note…Kat, you are one fabulous woman and I learned SO much from you it’s ridiculous…and…
…”You are probably right."