Road Trip Finale

Dearest Readers, Friends, and dare I say it... Blog Fans :)

Jared and I have made it safely to our new house in Oak Harbor. Our stuff made it here with only a few minor problems (dented washer, bent KitchenAid power lever, chipped nightstand) and the decorations are finally make it up on the walls. The weather has been excellent (meaning not a lot of rain) and life is getting into a routine. I will blog about the upcoming events in another posting, but wanted to give everyone the final story of our road trip. Boy, was it fun!

I left off in San Diego I believe. We arrived safely with the car fixed! Woo Hoo! Or so we thought. Jared went out to the woods for a week. He was starved, beaten, and mentally tortured (sorry to all of those that haven't been through it yet). His breath was stANKY! He actually had facial hair (or so I thought - it disappeared after a shower. It was just dirt.) His pits were stANKY! He was just dog tired. So what does Jared do first thing when he walks in the hotel door? Jared: "The car broke again on the way home." Megan: "WHAT?!" This was a Thursday night. We take the car to a dealer when traffic in San Diego dies down. Of course the car runs beautifully taking it in. We leave it for them to work on and tell them our sob story of needing to be in Washington by Tuesday morning. Friday goes on, Jared sleeps, eats, and takes another shower. They call us Friday afternoon and tell us that the computer needed to be reflashed (I don't really know what this means, but Jared had it reprogrammed as a Christmas present for better fuel mileage, etc.). We are at their mercy, so we say just do it if that will fix it. We don't think they did any other kind of testing to figure out what was wrong with the car, they saw the sticker on the engine and said, oh we can do this, and didn't really think about what the problem actually was. Finally they call us to say the car is INDEED fixed. WOO HOO! We drive there immediately and get there about 5:30pm. Jared is driving in front of me and gets on the onramp for the highway. Next thing I know he is slamming on his breaks and pulling into the grass/side of the road. WTH?! The car shut off again. WE ARE .2 (yep, you are seeing correctly - point two) miles away from the dealership. It is in our sight. COURTESY CHEVROLET (in San Diego). Jared calls them, tells them it broke again, and their response is this... our mechanic just left, because it is now a driveability issue we can't get to it until Monday, we can't take the car back, it isn't our problem. At this point Jared loses it. He is so mad. This dealership was basically the only Chevy dealer in SD. We had no idea what to do. Jared and I put out heads together and thought of everything, trading it in (but who would take a broken SUV?) or selling it or hell, just giving it away :) ! Now our leisurely 3 day drive would be turned into a 2 day mad dash for the hills, literally. What we ended up doing was... drumroll for the big announcement because there was nothing else that we could do... we rented a U-Haul (because they are apparently the only moving people that allow you to tow an SUV on their trucks. Who Knew?!?!) and towed his truck up there on a tow dolly. Sadly, we had to shell out even more money to rent the truck. THAT WAS EMPTY! Nothing in it! Nothing! Bare! Nada! So we hitch the truck up (which will of course start and run nicely to drive it onto the tow dolly) and off we go. There are no pictures of road trip part 2. It was really a sad trip. Driving behind an EMPTY U-Haul with a sad SUV hanging off the back. It was not really picture-worthy. It was more like an empty sadness at loss of lots of money ($1200! for a stupid empty TRUCK! - Im a little bitter.) We are here though... but the story doesn't end yet! Oh no! We tow it... this was actually pretty funny! Jared drove the U-haul around for a whole week like it was his commuter car :) hahahaha. It was pretty funny! ... okay, so we tow it to the local dealership. They use a whole tank of gas driving it around trying to get it to break. And what does it do? Nothing. It doesn't break. It drives like the best little car. The engine that could. So yeah, after all that.

As Jared leaves for work each day, he reminds me of how funny he can be. "Keep your phone close to you, I am taking my truck!" :)