It’s about 1 p.m. CDT and we’re somewhere over southern Utah or western Colorado. There are no bright geographic markers on the ground and I’m sitting in an aisle seat making seeing the ground even more difficult. We are cruising along at 33,000 feet in a fairly smooth flight. The “we” consists of grandson Michael and me (and about 150 other people). Michael and I will eventually end up in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania (if not, then this is the last blog entry, I expect). The itinerary has us changing planes in Houston, Texas and then continuing on to Cleveland, Ohio. Pam (Nina’s sister) will pick us up there and drive us the rest of the way to New Wilmington. This was by far the least expensive routing for the trip. I’m taking three days of vacation for this trip.
The trip evolved over time and finally came together. Nina has wanted to go out east for some time (and this trip only whetted her appetite for a much longer stay). Daryl was taking a new job in Philadelphia and needed to get his stuff out there. Dawnmarie and family have moved into a new home and really wanted us to come and see their new surroundings. Meanwhile, grandson Michael had reached the age where he needed to be invited to spend a week with Nina and me. Of course, that visit had to include a trip on an airplane, because everyone else before him had flown on an airplane. In fact, when Michael learned that we were moving from Colorado Springs (thirteen hour drive) to Pocatello (three hour drive), he was decidedly unhappy because that might mean no airplane flight to go visit grandpa and grandma.
We decided to meet as many of these needs as possible. Nina would drive the motorhome out east, taking Daryl’s stuff and towing his car. He would go with Nina providing an additional driver and assistance if anything happened (which it did, of course). That would get him moved out there as inexpensively as possible. Nina would then go on to Connecticut where she would visit with family out there. Dawnmarie and family would join her there for several days of fun at the beach and in the sun. They would then go to Dawnmarie’s new home for another several days. Michael and I would fly out to Pennsylvania, giving Michael his big plane ride, and then he and I would drive back with Nina.
So far, that plan has worked out. Nina’s trip got off to a rocky start, however. The first problem was that the tow equipment on the back of the motorhome used to tow our car had to come off so that a U-Haul vehicle dolly could be used to tow Daryl’s car. When I bought the tow equipment, I put on a locking hitch pin. We couldn’t find the key! Finally Nina had to leave Pocatello and go to Salt Lake where she called a locksmith to come and pick the lock. It took him about 5 minutes to open the lock and then he made a new key for the lock. By this time they were a couple of hours late leaving Salt Lake City. Then U-Haul didn’t have the promised equipment! They had to go to another U-Haul location about 45 minutes away. All in all, that put them about four hours behind plan. U-Haul is a very difficult company to do business with and this just continues to prove how bad their customer service is.
The motorhome has not been on a trip of this distance before, at least while it has belonged to us. As luck would have it, a tire blew out about 30 miles from Des Moines, Iowa. The vehicle has a spare tire, but changing it is nearly impossible without some heavy-duty tools. For that reason we have Good Sam Emergency Road Service. Nina called them and they dispatched someone — not from Des Moines which was about a half-hour away, but from some place over a hundred miles the other direction! They sat on the side of the freeway for almost three hours waiting for assistance. I’m sorry, Good Sam, but we’re going to look elsewhere for road service when this policy expires. This was just plain stupid.
As an aside, whenever I post an entry to my weblog, notification is sent to several search engines that a new post is available. Some of these search engines are geared towards searching weblogs — Technorati and Pubsub are two examples. Several large corporations are searching these weblog search engines for mentions of their company name because they’ve learned from sad experience that people who write weblogs can be very vocal about bad service when it happens. In this case, I expect that neither U-Haul nor Good Sam are smart enough to look at weblogs to know what is being said about them on the Internet.
Daryl arrived safely and intact at his new digs near Philadelphia. Nina had a good week in Connecticut visiting with Peter and his girlfriend Moe and with her aunt Jean. Dawnmarie and family had a great several days staying in the motorhome with Nina and playing at the beach for several days. Nina is now back at Dawnmarie’s house and Michael and I will arrive there late tonight.
This trip didn’t start off to smartly for me. I needed to be to the Salt Lake Airport about 8:30 a.m. The drive down was wonderful until I got to Ogden. From there it was very heavy stop and go traffic the rest of the way to the I-215 turnoff for the airport. I had not expected the traffic to be so bad (I’m glad we don’t live there anymore and have to make a daily commute in that traffic). Consequently, I was about 15 minutes late meeting Michael and his dad Ty at the airport. We had plenty of time as it turned out, even with my problems at security. I packed this morning with the intention of checking my suitcase. It’s a small suitcase, but in it I had some scissors, a small pocketknife, a Leatherman tool, and a couple of screwdrivers so I could see about fixing the microwave in the motorhome. At the last minute, I decided not to check my suitcase because Michael also had a very small bag and didn’t need to check his either. I forgot about the stuff in my bag! Security found them, of course. So I’ve joined the list of dumb people who bring dumb things to the airport in their suitcase. My choices were to give the items up or to mail them back home. I choose to mail them. It’s a good thing that we had plenty of time!
The flight is completely full. I’m at the front of the plane, a bulkhead seat just behind first class. Michael is back in row 23. He originally had a window seat, but the flight attendant moved him because a woman needed to sit beside her infant. He’s now in an aisle seat. The next flight is not so full as this one and he has a window seat on that flight.
The motorhome has a couple of other problems. The fridge for some reason has stopped working with the result that a lot of food had to be thrown out. The microwave didn’t work when we were in the Tetons in June. That is probably an interlock problem. The machine doesn’t think the door is closed, so it won’t turn on the wave generator. I’ve no idea what the problem is with the fridge. When we get back home I’ll take it to the RV repair shop and have then fix the unit or replace it. Other than all that, the vehicle has performed quite well for Nina.
We’ve started our descent into Houston. We should be on the ground in about 45 minutes (it does seem a bit early to be going down as quickly as we’re going). It’ll be good to get some lunch!