Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Murphy's Law of Roadtrips

Chapter 1 : Murphy's Law of Roadtrips
Goodbye Colorado

I’ve been telling myself for weeks now that I need to blog about our adventures leading up to Hawaii and then all that’s happened since we’ve been here so that we can look back on it all one day and laugh.  This is our first big move as a family.  Dave and I met while I was stationed in Colorado Springs in 2005.  We got married in 2006 and stayed in Colorado Springs until 2008.  Then I was assigned to Kuwait, so I was able to leave Dave and the kids in Colorado Springs.  I was fortunate enough to get a return assignment to Colorado Springs in 2009, which is where we stayed until July 1st

On July 1st, the 6th Anniversary of our wedding, and the day after Jake and Bri’s wedding, we started our adventure – 3 carseats, 5 kids, 17 bags, a bunch of food, 2 cars, and a bunch of stuff we had yet to sort through, but figured we would do it along the way.  We had been in lodging on Peterson AFB for about 8 days by that point.  We had to drive west to ship our cars from LA.   We decided to make it a mini-vacation for the boys.  We drove down to Albuquerque the first night to spend some time with Grampy.

About an hour before we got there, I started to smell rubber burning, followed by a bit of white smoke coming through my air vents.  Immediately, I knew what the problem was.  Just about a month before that, I had experienced the same thing.  It turned out to be my air compressor and AC clutch.  I paid the $700 to have it fixed before we had to drive cross country.  Here we were, only 5 hours into our trip, and the darn thing quit again.  The parts and labor were warrantied, but by a mechanic in Colorado Springs.  There was no way we were going to drive back to Colorado Springs.

We ate dinner at Red Robin with Aunt Penelope, Travis and Grampy.  Aunt Penelope was able to help me find a decent place to take the Jeep in the morning to get it fixed.  At 7:15 the next morning, Grampy and I made the 45 minute trip to the reputable auto shop.  Sure enough- the compressor was bad again.  They told me it would be done by noon.  Dave made the command decision to continue forward on the mission west with 4 of the boys while Kaleb stayed behind with me until the car was fixed.  At 8:30 am, Dave left with a few bags and 4 of the boys.  Around 12:30, the shop called to inform me that there was more wrong with the car then they thought- a bad fan, some bad tubing, and it would cost more money to fix.  Needless to say, $842 later and at 6pm, Kaleb and I were finally back on the road.  Next stop Phoenix…

We are officially living examples of Murphy’s Law of Roadtrips. Some other time I will account all the ridiculous things we have had happen on EVERY single road trip we've been on.