SOLD !!!

Recently, Fiancé made a discovery. 

Not to be outdone, I also had a Eureka moment.

My discovery was that a woman with too much time on her hands and a knack for surfing the internet will find new and strange ways to spend money and cause general mayhem.

She discovered online auctions.

Did you know, for instance, that, for just a few dollars, you can buy a storage room full of junk?  Honestly, I didn't know that.  But, may the good Lord have mercy upon my soul, I know it now.

The super cool thing about this is that for, say, five or ten dollars, you can be the proud owner of a room full of garage sale items.  But the thing I love most is that this cheap room full of stuff is usually in another city.  It's ideal, really.

Just this past weekend, I had the good
fortune to travel to Houston to pick up a room of junk.

The trip was going to be a bit tricky because it would require a trailer and a full day of travel.  I had the day, but the logistics of the trailer was the tricky part.

I own a decent trailer, but it lives in another city with my friend, Mike.  At the time of this writing, I think that Mike is questioning the wisdom of friendship with me.  Can't say that I really blame him, but he should have known what he was getting into.  That's hardly my fault.

The original idea was for us to take the new bus to Houston and pull the trailer with the bus.  I invited Mike to go along for what I thought would be a nice way to spend the day catching up.  All he had to do was bring the trailer.

It all seemed so simple.

Then we looked at the weather forecast the night before.  Bad storms.  Heavy rain and winds.  Probable tornado activity.

But, other than the rain, how bad could it possibly be, right?  Weathermen are such blowhards.

Mike suggested that, perhaps, we should pay attention to the 100% chance of rain.  I decided to humor him.  His idea was to borrow a covered trailer from one of his pals.  That way, we'd not have to worry about the rain.  Solid.

To give him credit, it actually was a solid idea.  Looking back on it, I also think it was the last good idea we had all weekend.

Securing the trailer took Mike most of the night.  He had to unload it before he could take it to his house for an hour nap before heading our way.  He was an hour late.  Bum.

But, it was okay, I had built some slush into the time schedule for just such an event.  It was all good.

All we had to do was back the bus up to the trailer and be on our way.  No problem.

Unfortunately, the light connectors didn't match.  Neither did the hitch.  But, lucky for us, there was a Wal-Mart just up the road, so we set off to set the situation right.

They had the hitch stuff, but not the light adaptor.  Not a problem because we could at least get on the road and then stop at an auto parts store to get an adaptor.  Time and fate was on our side.

There was little doubt that all was well.

The next thing ya know, the bus was loaded with fiancé, tornado boy, puppy maximus, Mike the too-trusting friend, and yours truly.

Yes, indeed, it was a fine day for travel.  Soon the garage sale junk would be all mine.  It was like stealing.  It only cost ten bucks.

And a king's ransom of fuel.

And the extreme, good-natured hardship of a friend.

And a full day of travel.

But those things are really intangibles, right?  It was only ten dollars.  Focus, man, focus! 

Only in America.

About 45 minutes (and approximately 100 are-we-there-yets from the little tornado) I noticed that one of my dashboard lights was on.  I pulled over and discovered during the turn that I had no power steering.  Good thing I'm all buff and strong, cuz that monster is a monster to turn.

And there I was ... in a parking lot with some kind of oil pouring out of an intimidating metal box of some sort.  Well, #&@$.

We found what I assumed to be a hydraulic reservoir which was low on oil.  As luck would have it, there was some oil in a storage compartment that matched the writing on the reservoir tank.  So I poured it in and, what do ya know... there was power steering again and there was oil leaking from the aforementioned metal box.

Only thing to do now was limp the bus back home and get a truck to pull the trailer to Houston.

Time was starting to matter now.  Gosh darn it, and gee-willikers.  That's exactly what I said.

Sooooooo... we hooked the trailer to Mike's truck and he and I set off to Houston sans tornado, hound, and woman.  Now it was just the guys off on a big adventure.  We called the auction place and they would stay about 30 minutes late to accommodate our tardiness.

All was well.

Then, it started raining.  Turns out, the weathermen weren't just whistling Dixie about the storms.  Holy cow.  The miles wore on and the rain kept coming.

Poor visibility.

Fogged windshield.

Flash flooding.

Water over the roads.

It was exhausting, but we made it through the storm.  It slowed us down a bit, but the auction people were still willing to wait an extra hour for us.

The hardships were over now, however.  We were home free.  All we had to do was get some fuel and continue on our way.  It turned out that, while we were trying not to drown, we didn't pay much attention to our fuel.  We were on fumes when we pulled into the first town after the heavy rain, but it was no biggie because we were now at a gas station.

All was well.

"Hey Mike, look inside the store.  Why do you think it's so dark in there?"

"I dunno, why do you suppose the pumps aren't lit up?"

A sickening horror then fell upon us.  The power was out at the gas station. 

No real worries, though, because there was another one just down the street.

All was well.

On the other hand, the power at the next station was also out.

All was a bit shaky.

We could barely see another station way down the road, so we limped into it.  The pistons were knocking; we barely made it.  Whew.

Luckily, it was the last station in town.

Unluckily, the power was out.

Turns out that a tornado had just gone through town and knocked down some power lines.  The whole town was dark.

All was very rocky now.

Especially when I called fiancé to give an update to the big adventure.  She was not pleased.  She kept saying something about how she had never run out of gas.  I didn't really understand her point because we weren't out of gas and stranded on an isolated road; we were out of gas at a gas station.  See the difference?

Neither did she.

Finally, we found a guy who owned a cab service and who, for the cost of a trip to Tahiti, was willing to bring us some diesel from the next town over.  He reminded me a lot of the locksmith in Denver.  (See: On the Road).

Also, his name was Dago.  This detail is true; there are some things one just can't fabricate.

The folks at the auction warehouse in Houston were willing to wait three extra hours for us to show up and haul off their junk.  I was beginning to get suspicious about their motives.

With fuel in the tank, we headed south again.

This part of the trip actually worked.  We sailed right into Houston and found the warehouse without a problem.  We were only four hours late.  No problem.

Then we loaded.  And loaded.  And loaded.

We were hungry and we no longer had a time schedule, so we found a Thai place to eat.  I was happy.

The trip home was uneventful, we only stopped for fuel and snacks.  I love snacks. 

Fiancé, who is wonderful, found some neighborhood guys to come over and unload our prizes.  Because of that, I decided to give her the fudge I'd bought on the way.  She had her stuff.  She had some chocolate.  She seemed to have forgotten about the fuel thing.  Mission Accomplished.

Oh, I know what you're thinking, "She'll bring up that fuel thing again, so you didn't really win."

While you're right about the first thing, you're wrong about the second.  Any avoidance of misery is worth the cost, so I dodged at least one bullet.

My plan is to always have fudge on hand.

TheCurmudgeon

Disclaimer: Portions of this post may have been exaggerated for effect.

Translation: Fiancé says, "You're full of #&$%."