Waking up at four a.m. should have been the first clue that it was going to be a rough day. It was confirmed with the torrential down pours I drove through, it was solidified when I got stuck in the mud and there was no turning back when we encountered a tornado.
I was just about to my exit when I had to pull over to wait out the rain. It was raining so hard I couldn't even see in front of me or the lines. I thought about just pushing forward, but wasn't really feeling adventurous enough to drive blindfolded. So I waited, and waited, and waited until it let up enough to solider on.
The mud was all my fault. I was an idiot, parked where it was soft and found myself stuck. I should have known better. Truth is I didn’t want to get wet, so I just pulled up to the door and jetted inside. I was inside a little too long because when I came back outside my tires had sunk in the soft grass, and I was not moving.
Did I mention I was running a little behind schedule?
As I sat there wondering how late I would be to the airport my poor sister was pushing (as the rain poured down on her) and not getting anywhere. We used towels to try and gain traction (my idea), we rocked it back and forth and I even tried gunning it – but as suspected it just buried it a little bit further. My sister even brought out a couple of two by fours. I have to admit my first thought when I noticed her walk out of the garage with them was.
"Really? Like, what the hell am I going to do - ramp on out of the mud like Evel Knievel?"
The wood didn't work.
We thought about pulling it out, but didn’t have a tow rope and the time continued to tick down. Thankfully, a couple of city workers stopped by to help us and I was free with a good heave-ho after I put it into four wheel drive. Which, yes, I probably should have tried in the first place.
That wasn’t the last of our issues. Weather came next.
As we approached Kansas City we needed a pit stop for gas. While we were stopped tornado sirens started to blow. This prompted us to hop in the car and find a station. Sister wasn’t really game on getting back on the road, but I had places to be – so we carried on – parallel to the storm. We could see what they were watching.
“Should we be on the road,” sister asked.
Probably not. “We’re fiiiiine,” I said with confidence in my lead foot.
“I don’t think we are,” she said back to me as the phone started ringing off the hook and the radio was telling us what we already knew - we shouldn't be driving.
I drove like hell and she talked on the phone and then hung up, looked at me and says, “she says to just get our ass to the airport.” Finally, somebody on my wavelength.
We high tailed it to the airport and to the underground parking garage only to get inside the airport to see it was carrying on like nothing was happening. There weren’t any people in shelters, maybe a few waiting for it to pass before heading out – but the airport didn’t seem concerned at all.
Well, if they weren’t concerned I wasn’t either and the good news was that I was on time and the flight was scheduled to take off at the right time too.
In other words, I wanted to get to the Queen City pretty damn bad if I managed to make it through all the travel foo that battled us in full force.
I’m just glad the flight went as planned – minus a few patches of turbulence – but as planned.
No comments:
Post a Comment