Vacation, Day 1 (AKA – driving day)

The start of vacation was going well. Too well, in fact. I told myself I wanted to be out of work by 11:30, so I told everyone else I was leaving at 11. Then I set my out of office messages for phone and email at 10:45, or there was no way I was going to get what needed to be done, done. Left the office at 11:20, got home and had the car packed and we pulled out of the driveway at 11:55. Woo hoo! We’ve never had that little time in between me getting home and getting on the road. This was a definite first.

I should have known better.

Went to McDonald’s to pick up lunch and while waiting for the food, realized we didn’t pack any hats. So, it was back to the house we went to get the hats rather than spending the money to buy new ones along the way. Finally get on the road, and we have intermittent rain for the first 3 hours or so of the drive. Not horrible, but I hate traveling in rain. At least it wasn’t the hail storm that rolled thru town the day before, so it could have been worse.

I should have known better.

About 2 hours into the drive, I was getting ready to pass a trucker when he started swerving into our lane. I hit the brakes and backed off, and then he got back into his own lane. When it looked like he was set, I went ahead and went to pass him again. That was when John noticed that he could see the driver in the truck’s side view mirror and the guy was lifting weights.  And we’re not talking about a small 5 or 10 pound dumbbell here that can be bought at Target or Walmart. This was a good size metal weight like you would see in a gym.

I wish I was kidding.

So, I got back in the left hand lane and started  to slow down, hoping that the truck would pass so we could get the “How’s my driving” number off the back of it to call in to the company. And wouldn’t you know there wasn’t one damn piece of identifying information on the truck for who owned it except a name and location in small letters on the side of the cab. A mile or so down the road, the guy passed us again as we were pulling in to a rest stop. We talked to the security officer there and she called highway patrol for us while we took the kids inside so that they could start looking for the guy. Not sure if they ever found him, but I never saw him again. Hopefully he didn’t cause any accidents along the way.

 

That was pretty much the excitement of the drive for us. We got into Mobile and took the long way around to the hotel we had booked so that we could take the kids across the bay and they could see where the USS Alabama was before getting up on Vacation Day 2 to go there before heading on to Gulf Shores.