THE BIG ADVENTURE by Rose
Hello. My name is Kate. I am a sixteen year old high school student. My family and I just took a long trip-in fact, we moved everything we owned over a thousand miles across the country. But it wasn't you're average move, no, no, no. Here's how it went:
My little sister and I had to go to school right up until the day that we began our journey. That meant homework and absolutely no time for anything else. Because we were leaving all of our friends behind, our parents were trying to be nice about letting visit with them, but there are so many of them and so few of us and so little time and so much to do and...
So we did our best to do everything, despite all that. But inevitably, the last day before the moving truck came was awful. My dad's cousin came to help us pack, and the whole day was simply awful. It was horribly hectic, and it was just the beginning of it all. the next day the moving truck came it was pretty much impossible to stay out of the way. and what's worse is that I hadn't finished my homework yet, and they had packed everything I needed to do it. So I went to my friend Iona's house, and she was kind enough to let me mooch off of her for the afternoon. I sepnt the next couple of days bouncing from a totally empty house to school to doctor's offices to the to a surprise going away party people threw for me, to friends houses and on and on...It was really happy and really sad. And then moving day came.
the mornign was a let's - rush - around - and - get - evrything - that - didn't - get - on - the - moving - truck - into - the - cars-type morning. No one was in very good moods, and it took forever to get everything together and in the right cars and secured and all that, and it was horribly sad-we loved the house that we were in. We made it out of the house and to the dumpster across the street before we had to stop to readjust the "arch" as we called it-the van that had all of our pets in it. My dad was driving the arch, and I was driving the little blue car, named Mackenzie (After Mackenzie pass in oregon, whose waters matched the color of the car....) Once we got back on the road, we made it maybe a football field and a fourth up the (same) road bfore Dad pulled over, jumped out of the car, slamming the door and yelling "F^(#!!!!" at the top of his lungs, storming around to the other side of the car, throwing open the sliding door, grabbing the cooler and slamming it down on the ground, and then Flinging his suitcase across the field were we had stopped. Its amazing how stress works.
THe cooler (full of water from the melting ice) had fallen over and spilled into the cat litter, making it clump and be useless. Oh well, that's not a huge loss, but it was the principle of the thing. things just weren't going right. My little sister meanwhile was at a friends house so she wouldn't have to sit through the closing. But at last we got there-to the attorney's office, anyway...and we met the lady that was about ot own our precious home. Turns out that she majored in abstract painting at the MFA, but had to give it up 'cause she wasn't making any money. But the whole event was jus so surreal, and upseting. On our way out, we realized that it was over, we oculden't go home anymore-it wasn't our home. We didn't have a home now. WE had a house waiting for us over a thousand miles away, but it wasn't a home yet. On our way out of the attorney's office, we noticed a painting on the wall. It was a huge, beautiful painting of a house that used to be tha Tax collector's office for 'our' town something like a hundred years before. It was my friend Blue's old house.
Before we went to pick up my sister, we had to get something to eat. We went to freakin' Taco Bell, becasue we couldn't go home. SO so so surreal. that whole day was just surreal. My Family has driven long distances on vacations before, and I had the definte vacationing/travel feel that comes with long car rides and stops at gas stations-except this time, the gas station we were stopping at was right in our town-right by our home that wasn't our home anymore.
While My dad and I fixed up the arch, gave the critters food and water and repacked it so it was more secure, my mom went to get my sister. She reported that the friend she had been staying with had gotten sick halfway through her stay. She had the stomach flu.
So finally, we were off. We drove down all of the roads for the last time, and then we were on our way.
WE had wlakie-talkies in the cars so we could stay in touch. We kept track of liscense plates from all of the different states that we saw-a traditional travel game for us. we traveled long and hard, and finally got a hotel room having knocked about four hours off of what we thought was going to be a sixteen hour journey. the next morning we overslept.
Waking up at the exact time we had expected to be back on the road, we got a late start around 9:30 am. It was a saturday, and traffic was fairly light. We piled everyone back in the car and headed out ofr our longest day of driving. Again, I was driving the little blue car.we got about two or three hours in that morning-and then the trouble began.
Mom had put a tape in the tape deck, and suddenly it started to freak out. it kept clicking like it was changing sides, but it wasn't recognizing anything on the tape. (Keep in mind, this whole time it's raining off and on-throughthis whole story, rain.) Then the cruise control just stopped working. suddenly. it just quit. And the windshield wipers started to go Vv-ee-rr-yy slowly. Oh, shit. said I in my head, The car is going to die. The same thing had happened to me about two weeks earlier under exactly opposite condiditons-it was hot, sunny and dry the first time, but it was the same situation. All of the electrical equipment suddenly stops working, and then the car can't function and just dies.
SO we radio over to dad and let him know that we have to get off the highway, like, NOW, and proceed to do so. At the bottom of the exit ramp, ther is an intersection with both a stop sign and stop lights. I knew that if I stopped, the car wouldn't start again, but I couldn't just barrel into traffic like that, so I had to stop. and the car died. boom, just like that. When you turned the key, nothing would happen. it wouldn't turn over or anything. So my dad used the van to push the car to the saftey of a driveway at the other side of the interesection, where we waited for the towtruck. The tow truck arrived, and we explained what happened (And that we thought it was probably the alternator, which he agreed with,) and he agreed to tow us to the nearest car place, which just so happened to be a Pep boys only 1/2 mile down the road. Seem to good to be true? well, it was. He got the towing apparatus down and was attempting to adjust it to fit the car, when he realized that his tow truck had broken down. So now we were sitting there with a dead car, a dead tow truck, and an arch full of totally freaked out animals. Yi-pee. So the tow truck guy calls his boss-a guy named Fred. (There were stickers on his towtruck saying "When you car's dead, call Fred") Luckily, fred is very punctual in arriving on the scene, spends maybe 3 minutes there, and leaves. The other guy then shouts "And that's why he's DA MAN!!!" At last, we make it to pep boys. yeah! to kill time, we went and ate at the chinese restaraunt at the top of the hill. By the time we came back the car was (GASP) Done! Again too good to be true? of course. They said that in order to install the new alternator, they had to disconnect a computer part. this is ok, they said, the car just has to relearn things like idle speed and such, so it will probably stall a little bit, but just keep driving, it will be fine. So, we're on the road again. or are we? We get back onto the highway and downt the road maybe a mile or so, and it starts to pour. naturally, mom (who is drving now,) goes to put on the windshield wipers. but alas! they do not work. they don't even budge. Then the lights go out of the control panel, and the car starts to lag. At first, we think its stalling, but as we attempt to get off the highway (since visibility without the wipers was basically 0) the car dies completely. same damn thing that happened the first time. Al the electrical equipment dies, and then the car does too. so this time dad has to push us the rest of the way down the (extrememly ong) exit ramp, with mom and I in a joint effort to see something in order that we might not hit it. this time we were really stuck. there were absolutely no landmarks anywhere around where we were, and we hadn't a clue what road we were on. Somehow, we managed to amuse ourselves for nearly a half an hour while dad drove around trying to figure out how to tell the AAA people how to find us. When they finally do, guess who it is? the same guy who was driving the broken tow truck. and where does he take us? back to the same pep boys at the bottom of the hill that the chinese restauraunt was on. This time we waited for a very long time for the car to be done. Guess what they tell us? it's a computer problem. only a dealership can get you new computer parts - or even fix them! well, now, ain't that just dandy? and its a saturday (evening, at this point,) and all the dealerships are closed until monday. so they sent out a towtruck to take the car to a dealership, and we can call on monday and explain our situation. The sent the same guy again. this time when he got out of his truck, he said, "I'm George, by the way." So we put as much stuff as we could in the van, and George took our car to a dealership. WE decide that we'll just have to rent a car and continue on our way (we have to be at the new house by sunday afternoon, and we've just been informed that our original calulations of time were incorrect, our destination was still 16 hours away!) We thought that would be the best solution-and then we'd just have to come back sometime and get the car. oh well, at least we can still get there. Unless every single car rental place within a hundred miles is closed until monday. which they were. oh, yea. We even went to the airport to look for an open car rental place, and there was one counter with someone behind it-they were supposedly closed, but there was someone behind the counter, who would have let us rent a car-had they any left. which they didn't. So, we made the decision to just pile into the van with all our stuff (Except the stuff that we hadn't been able to fit and was now awaiting our return in the car) (keep in mind, we had only planned for seating for two people in each vehicle.) We've also lost about six or so hours of driving time by now, and still have 16 hours of driving time to get there by the next afternoon. In the dark, we arranged all of our stuff in a reasonalbe manner, with two people laying down in the back, one in the passenger seat, and one drivning. There were also all of the critters, as well, and I'm still not sure just how we did it. but the adventure is not nearly over, oh, no. TO make up for the lost time, we decided to drive all night. We've done this before, its not fun, but it gets you there. It would have been fine had everything gone smoothly from there. But the fog on the highway was completely unpredictable. it would be perfectly clear in one second, and the next, visibilty would drop down to less than a yard in front of the car. the going was slow, especially since the road was full of huge trucks, who had to slow down to 20miles an hour to avoid hitting anything that they couldn't see due to the fog, but then they would set the crusie control (which I didn't know those big trucks had until, upon setting the cruise control in our van, we stayed equidistant form a truck for nearly a half an hour) and then wouldn't bother to speed up when the fog cleared. And on top of that, there was road work being done on the highway for nearly 3/4 of the trip-so there was only one lane. Things seemed to be looking up, though, as we were actually on our way again. That was before my sister woke up with the stomach flu. We pulled off the highway and spent about an hour at a gas station dealing with her sickness and trying to decide what to do-do we press on, or do we get a hotel since my sister was sick, which would mean that we would have to drive all day the next day no matter what to beat the moving truck to our new house. (which, I might add, I had never seen before.) My sister fell asleep in the car before we made a decision, so we decided to drive until she woke up and take it from there. Luckily, she's a kid and heals quickly, so when she woke up the nest morning, she felt perfectly fine. by that time, we were almost "home." we stopped for a nice breakfast and then set out on the final leg of our journey. We got to our house in the late mornign or early afternoon. we'd made it. everything was wonderful from here on in. in theory. THe real estate agent arrived with the key, opened the door to our beautiful house...and we walked in to an absoulutely filthy, smelly old house. the previous owners had left litter in the yard and trash in the house, they hadn't even bothered to vacuum the place. THey left their refridgerator in the kitchen, and it was so dirty it had fuzzy mold growing in the freezer, despite the fact that it was still plugged in and running. So this was how we came to our new house: we spent our last week in our old house doing nothing but cleaning, have a horible trip down and arrive on absolutely no sleep, completely fried, to have to do a whirlwind clean to get the place ready to recieve furniture and make it livable. over the course of that afternoon, (with some help from our really nice real estate agent who felt horrible that the previous owners were such slobs and so rude) we cleaned as much as we could, and were still at it at 7:00 the next morning when the truck arrived. During that day and the next two, we found several other bad-luck or whatever things. This house has old fashioned phone jacks, and the previous owners had taken the adaptors with them, so we had no way to plug in our phones. The don't sell adaptors any more, at least around here, so dad had to buy modern phone jacks and manually change any jack we actually want to use, and we're going to have to do some rewiring as well. The kitchen and bathrooms haven't been fixed since the 70's, and the toilet in one bathroom (Which is literally small enough that only one relatively small person can fit in it at a time- and quite uncomfortably at that) the toilet leaks. The water heater in the house was 30 years old and really only heated things to a luke warm temperature (And to anyone who may not know this already: water heaters are supposed to be upgraded every 10 to 12 years...) SO now we spent the money for a new one. The previous owners taste was atrocious-the kitchen is covered in fruit, the wallpaper is fruit print, the borders around the room are a different fruit print, the covers on the light switches and outlets are porcelain (that doesn't fit, the lightswitch is buried in it, you can't reach it to turn on the light) painted with fruit-even the light fixtue on the cieling had ceramic fruit on it. (I was sitting on the counter looking at it and I thought: "it's very fru-fru. and its fruit. its fru-fru-fruit.") the rest of the house is leaves and carpets that don't match anything. except for my sister's room, which is hearts and stars and chalkboards. Her bedroom and the hallway have wooden floors, and the bathroom is carpeted. the big bathroom (which is a relative name, by the way-its smaller than the small bathroom in our old house) has the bathtub in it-but I don't think the room originally had a bathroom in it-they seem to have simply built a tile wall in the middle of the room and extended a shower stall to it. The previous owners also left us all of their toxic waste to deal with-and they certainly had a lot of it. Meanwhile, the car people weren't cooperating. it was phone tag with them-as well as with UPS who had attempted o bring us a package before we lived here and sent it back tothe sender-which was staples, and nobody has a clue what the hell the package was, or where it is now...and we went on a quest for a phone book. Dad attempted to borrow one from our new neighbors, but when he went to thier house (oh, get this...)he could hear then talking inside but they wouldn't come to the door. yeah. While I was typing this all up, I had to take a break-and in that interval, the computer monitor died. (Now we have a new one.) also, the refridgerator (Now ours...) couldn't be hooked up to the water lines because they didn't make the connector parts anymore. (By the way...each of these projects takes approximately one day at least to be solved. most of them more. the little things like the freakin' nut blot thing take one whole day...) then the plumber comes, we finally get the right part for the fridge, and we find out the damn thing os on the hot water line, which you can't drink from or anything so we had to wait to use that until we could hook the pipe up to the cold water line. The screen door handle is broken. their is poison ivy covering an entire section of the yard. My parents bedsheets seem to have simply disappeared into thin air-those still haven't been found, as we speak... basically everything we touch falls apart. I can't expalin it at all-you know those little things that words can't describe, the moods, the tiny little decisions that we don't even realize we're making, the stubbig of toes, (or in my case, the slicing of it with a file cabinet) little frustrations...we've been positibely plagued by them lately, we've had not but bad luck. Today we even decided to treat ourselves to some ice cream. the local ice cream place around here is Baskin robbins. there are three of them very close to my house. we drive past them all the time. Except now that we're looking for them, and despite the fact that we've got their addresses written down on a piece of paper, we drive around for a long time without finding a single one. they just vanished. boom. just like Brigadoon. we never did find them. yesterday at quarter to one in the morning, the vase of flowers we had on the kitchen table sponateously dies. (i.e. shatters into little bits spewing water and glass all over, and abandoign the flowers to a noisy mess.) WE've got phantom light switches and burnt out lightbulbs, you name it, we got it. We finally got the car back, and hopefully that will continue to work. The worst of it was yesterday (which was, contrary to the heading on this page thursday the 28th of june ) when I learned via e-mail that a friend of mine from where my journey started had passed away the night before. He would have been a senior in high school at the start of things in the fall. that was probably the worst of everything thats happened. Then, today, Lightning was abig factor in our luck. Lighting struck directly above the car while we were in it (Scary scary scary, ears ringing) Later on, as well, we discovered that (we think) our house was struck by lightning, and fried the TV. yi-pee. We were told by an astrologist friend of ours that this is all happening because we travled durign mercury's somehting-or-other, and that's a very bad thing. and because of something blah blah blah, this will continue (though the mercury thing is done) until the next full moon. SO, perhaps there will be more before the next full moon rolls around. The hopefully end. I'm sure I left something out of my story, but I am too tired at the momet to remember. THat's my story! I hope you enjoyed it! goodnight, now. Rose
