Saturday,
May 24, 2014
Once again
we woke early had a cold breakfast and headed for Wal-Mart in Birmingham. We were headed for one on the far side of
Birmingham when I spotted one just as we were entering the city. It was already pushing toward noon.
Once again
only one tire was available and once again the guys used it for the spare. At this point all they wanted to do was get
on the road because we had reservations booked for St. Augustine, Florida for
that night and the next night. We all
wanted to sleep comfortably so bad.
To help make
the day a little more relaxed we decided to play travel games like we had when
the kids were little. The first one I
pulled out the road atlas and using the info in it had the guys trying to
figure out the nicknames of all 50 states, thoughtfully supplied by Rand
McNally.
A side note
here about the Rand McNally Atlas’. I
know using an atlas seems so old fashioned in the age of GPS, but don’t get me
started on the errors on a GPS, let’s just say we’ve taken many an adventurous
side trip depending on first Fiona, our name for the one that we ran on my
laptop when we were mystery shopping full time.
And you
really don’t want to talk to me about Dora, what we call the one on my dh’s
phone that uses google maps. Dora has a
real love for taking us on little side trips through not so good parts of
towns, and always where there seems to be the most traffic and construction. You’ll hear more about Dora on the blog post
about our recent trip to Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri that we went
on just recently—after I finish all the posts on the wonderful WDW trip first.
Anyway, we
usually purchase a new Rand McNally road atlas from Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart
every 2-3 years. I am a good navigator
when I have good Maps and their maps tend to be very good. But even more important is an index they have
in them of all the Wal-Marts and Sam’s Clubs across the nation.
This info is
very important to us because the index lists which ones are 24 hours, the ones where we can generally boondock, and
which ones have fuel stations, even more importantly, which of those fuel
stations have diesel. So we had purchased
a new Rand McNally for this trip and it turned out it was a very good thing we
did. Now back to my narrative.
Once we were
out of states I told the guys a story about when I was traveling the Rendezvous
circuit with some friends and we’d played the travel game where you start with
a city and the next person has to name a city that starts with the last letter
of the city you named, the third person then has to use the last letter of the
second city to name a third and so on. The only rule being you could not use the same
city twice.
The thing
was the woman who seemed to being having zero trouble in naming cities was,
well not someone you would think to be that knowledgeable of US cities.
I happened
to look back at her from where I was riding in the front seat during one of her
turns to discover she was using the index of the road atlas to find cities.
Both men
know the woman well, so they got a good chuckle out of it. Ds suggested we play that game with NO road
atlas.
I suggested
a Disney twist in honor of our trip. The
rules were simple, play the game the same as the cities version, only we could
use anything Disney, movies, songs, theme park attractions, actors etc. The only exception ds made was we could not
use Star Wars or Marvel because while Disney owns the franchise to them now,
they were not actually Disney products, yet.
Folks let me
say right here and now the game was MUCH harder than we expected. We started with Minnie, moved on to Elsa,
then Ariel, and so forth. There are
certain letters that are REALLY hard to think of after the first few.
We played
for about two hours and the highway flew by as we did.
I know some
of you folks live in and love Atlanta, Georgia.
Not so with our family. Our first
trip back in 1980 I was driving through on one of your tall bridges when a bird
smacked into the windshield, scaring me silly.
Another trip we saw a horrific wreck, with a body we will never forget,
other times it has been awful traffic (is the traffic ever good in Atlanta?)
and this time we were tense about tires.
We made it
onto and off the loop headed down the highway without getting lost and through
awful traffic and of course construction and just as we were just about to join
back up with the main highway …
You guessed
it tire #3 blew, taking out the bumper of the driver’s side of the camper. I had absolutely had it. I told the guys right then and there we were
buying TWO tires come hell or high water and there would be four new tires on
the ground or I wasn’t getting back in the truck.
This time
they had to change the flat on the side of the road under a bridge and we were
all really nervous because the traffic was whipping the trailer around and zipping by
so fast I was afraid one of them would get killed.
While they
changed the flat I looked up Wal-Marts on our route and found two within 10
miles and a Sam’s Club as well.
As soon as
we were back on the road we went to the first Wal-Mart, ZERO tires
available. But the tire and lube guy was
nice enough to call first the other Wal-Mart, no tires there either.
I prayed as
he called the Sam's Club and they had two, exactly the number we needed! So we cautiously traveled the 9 miles to the
Sam’s and then I ran in to pay for the tires,
while dh took the trailer around back and to start removing the remaining
tire that could still blow out on us
I shop Sam’s
on a regular basis and generally the greeter doesn’t even look to see if you
have your card. The greeter at this
Sam’s was determined I was not going in without her examining mine closely. I was not in the mood for her nonsense, and
no matter how hard I dug through my belt bag I couldn’t find that elusive card.
So when she
got a phone call I slipped past her and went to the tire counter a few feet
away, where I told the gal who I was and that I wanted to pay for the tires
that the man from the Wal-Mart had just talked to her about. All the time I was digging for my card and
the greeter was fussing at me. What was that woman's problem anyway, I mean if nothing else I could have got a guest pass for free!
Finally I
called dh and told him to bring me his card so we could get the tires. Turns out my son had my card because he had
used it to get fuel for his truck a few days before. Duhhhh, I remembered that as soon as I saw ds
coming through the door.
We had to
wait for the two tires to be put on the rims before the guys could put them on
the trailer. The wait turned out to not be the few minutes we were promised, but HOURS. Sitting in the truck on the hot asphalt waiting on the men to put the two tires on the rims was agonizing. I just wanted to get to a campground, have a hot shower and a cool night's sleep.
With this
final trailer tire purchase we were now down $700 of the cash we had budgeted
for the trip, but knew we had it in savings where we could easily transfer it
when we could get on a secure server. I had made arrangements with our bank for just such an emergency prior to leaving for the trip. Always let your bank, or if you still use them, credit card company know when you are going to be traveling out of state. You will save yourself a lot of time and embarassment by doing so. Nothing is more embarrassing than having your card declined while traveling and knowing you have sufficient money available.
Prior to
being on the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover program such a huge expense would
have wrecked our vacation and forced us to use credit cards, even if we didn’t
want to. This was not an option for this trip at all because we had closed all our credit card accounts five years ago and have never regretted it.
After being
on the program and without credit cards for five years we are not only very
near the end of the massive debt we started with, despite being unemployed 18
months of that time, but we have sinking funds for things like tires that we
keep fully funded. It is from the tire
sinking fund this money came. I thank God constantly for the freedom we now
have by not using credit cards and highly recommend that everyone check out the
book Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, your local library probably has it
and it won’t cost you a thing.
Of course
Murphy wasn’t through with us and our tires.
When dh tried to put the spare back up under the trailer where it
belongs the mount wouldn’t work, naturally. Disgusted he threw the old tire spare up into the bed of the
truck, vowing to work on the storage mount later in the trip.
We left Atlanta with four new tires on the
ground on the trailer and an old spare we wouldn’t trust very far if we had to
use it. We’ll buy a new tire for a
spare, as is our habit, once the tire fund is refilled after we get home.
By the time
we left it was almost dark. We generally
don’t travel after dark because if you break down, you are stuck. After a short bit it became very clear to us
we weren’t going to make St. Augustine that night. I tried to call and cancel that night’s
reservation, but the office was already closed.
We ended up
boondocking yet a third night, this time in the parking lot of the Valdosta, GA
welcome center. A nice parking area,
security, and HOT! Miserable hot, none
of us slept well at all.
Murphy was
really being a brat!
Jan who
agrees with dh that we will never boondock in the hot weather again if we can
help it either away or in OK
