Soujin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
psalm_onethirtyone) wrote2010-08-14 07:05 pm
psalm_onethirtyone) wrote2010-08-14 07:05 pm
Entry tags:
"Higher Than a Wild Cat..."
We are a family adept at attracting disaster, such that we are always equipped to deal with something going completely wrong in the least anticipatable way, and nobody is ever really surprised when it does, in fact, go wrong. But even taking that into consideration this trip was a pretty amazing failure.
For instance, we were an hour from home when the kayaks attempted to escape from the roof rack. We stopped, re-secured them, adjusted for the fact that we had filled them with supplies like the charcoal, the cereals, and the bags of chips. Things seemed basically okay. We have had things try to escape from the roof rack before (once I drove all the way to Altoona with my bicycle re-enacting Escape From Alcatraz off the top of Supercar), so no big deal.
Three hours from home, the Cape Cod potato chips flew out of the double kayak like a crunchy tasty missile, launching themselves into the unknowns of I-81.
This proved to be a good thing, however, as when we started to pull off the road to determine what exactly had gone flying (we were unable to tell at the time) the roof rack itself made a go at escape. THE ROOF RACK ITSELF. Bearing both kayaks and all the food supplies in them, as well as Maria’s banjo.
We were able to save everything except the chips: stuffed all the other supplies in around our feet, leaving Maria on top of the charcoal, Daddy on top of the stack of watermelons, the banjo between us in the backseat, remaining chips stuffed in amongst my pile of books. At this point, we decided we had probably weathered the worst of the disasters that our family was by nature going to attract.
Ha. Ha.
Of little significance is the moment when the painter tying the kayaks to the car snapped, prompting another frantic side-of-the-road scurry. Equally insignificant is the realisation, shortly after lunch, that the cereals we had left in the kayaks were about to pop out, spewing bread, Chex, and cinnamon buns all over the highway.
No, the truly amazing moment was when we ran out of gas on the side of the road in the middle of New York nowhere. The farmer’s house we petitioned for house kindly informed us that there was a gas station four miles down the road, and we could make it by coasting in neutral.
And you know what? We did.
But in the three hours left between us and our destination, we ended up having to borrow rope and secure the kayaks to the roof by wrapping the rope all the way around and through the windows of the car, where we hung on said ropes to hold said kayaks in place while I read stories by Bailey White aloud and we tried not to utter the last ominous words that would secure our miserable fates for good and ensure we never made it to our destination:
"Well, it probably can’t get worse."
For instance, we were an hour from home when the kayaks attempted to escape from the roof rack. We stopped, re-secured them, adjusted for the fact that we had filled them with supplies like the charcoal, the cereals, and the bags of chips. Things seemed basically okay. We have had things try to escape from the roof rack before (once I drove all the way to Altoona with my bicycle re-enacting Escape From Alcatraz off the top of Supercar), so no big deal.
Three hours from home, the Cape Cod potato chips flew out of the double kayak like a crunchy tasty missile, launching themselves into the unknowns of I-81.
This proved to be a good thing, however, as when we started to pull off the road to determine what exactly had gone flying (we were unable to tell at the time) the roof rack itself made a go at escape. THE ROOF RACK ITSELF. Bearing both kayaks and all the food supplies in them, as well as Maria’s banjo.
We were able to save everything except the chips: stuffed all the other supplies in around our feet, leaving Maria on top of the charcoal, Daddy on top of the stack of watermelons, the banjo between us in the backseat, remaining chips stuffed in amongst my pile of books. At this point, we decided we had probably weathered the worst of the disasters that our family was by nature going to attract.
Ha. Ha.
Of little significance is the moment when the painter tying the kayaks to the car snapped, prompting another frantic side-of-the-road scurry. Equally insignificant is the realisation, shortly after lunch, that the cereals we had left in the kayaks were about to pop out, spewing bread, Chex, and cinnamon buns all over the highway.
No, the truly amazing moment was when we ran out of gas on the side of the road in the middle of New York nowhere. The farmer’s house we petitioned for house kindly informed us that there was a gas station four miles down the road, and we could make it by coasting in neutral.
And you know what? We did.
But in the three hours left between us and our destination, we ended up having to borrow rope and secure the kayaks to the roof by wrapping the rope all the way around and through the windows of the car, where we hung on said ropes to hold said kayaks in place while I read stories by Bailey White aloud and we tried not to utter the last ominous words that would secure our miserable fates for good and ensure we never made it to our destination:
"Well, it probably can’t get worse."