Fickle Hand of Fate, Part the First

My aunt and uncle Rose and Elton will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this weekend, and their children are hosting a party in their honor at Colorado College (where their son works) in Colorado Springs, CO. My sisters from Woodburn, OR and Omaha, NE are flying in to Denver tomorrow, renting a car, and driving to Colorado Springs. Susan, the girls, and I are riding with my dad and stepmom (and their dog) in their motor home. There is a motel at the RV park where Dad has a reservation, and my sisters and my own family both have rooms at that motel for the weekend.

If we ever get there, that is. Perhaps a chronology is in order:

(1) We left Dickinson around 4:30 P.M. to start our journey in the motor home. Dad and I were so busy talking that we missed the turn to Belfield (we had planned to take this route) and didn't realize it until we reached Beach. To compensate, we turned south at Wibaux, MT and planned to drive through Baker and Ekalaka and Alzada into WY, finally connecting somewhere along the line with either Highway 59 or 85.

(2) Highway 323 south of Ekalaka includes a long stretch of poorly maintained gravel road. At first this was merely annoying: bumps in the road, things rattling in the cupboards, dust clouds in front of the windshield, etc. The addition of rain made it slightly treacherous; there's a lot of clay in that area, and a motor home pulling a car makes for a lot of weight to be sliding around on wet clay.

(3) Who had time, however, to rue the bumps or bemoan the sliding about? The radiator promptly went out--letting every last drop of coolant pour out onto the road--leaving us stranded at the side of a gravel road in a thunderstorm at night in rural MT.

(4) Dad thought he had paid for emergency roadside assistance, but a few cell phone calls and a perusal of his policy manuals revealed that that was not, in fact, the case. Still he was able to convince someone to call around on his behalf for a mechanic. One garage phoned back to say that their tow guy wasn't feeling well but might be able to come out in the morning. A second guy phoned to say that he'd be right out, but that he was coming from Belle Fourche, SD--some 50 or 60 miles away.

(5) After an interminable wait, Jim arrived and willingly worked in the cold and rain to investigate the radiator, looking for a disconnected hose or other roadside-reparable problem. No dice. So he connected the motor home (which, faithful readers will recall, was itself pulling Dad's car hitched behind it) to his pickup and began to tow us up and down the wet clay hills and around the many curves of the wet clay roads in the cold and rainy darkness. In no time, he was burning out the clutch on his pickup. The tow chain also broke. These seemed like bad signs.

(6) Last resort: set Jim loose to drive behind us, use the motor home's fresh water supply to refill the radiator, drive ten or so miles until it drained out again, refill, redrive, and repeat ad infinitum--or until we reached Alzada. Jim returned to Belle Fourche to sleep, promising to return in the morning to lead us to Belle Fourche where he would begin repairs to the radiator. We parked outside a bar along the highway to sleep.

We're all cold and muddy, Abigail is feeling nauseated, and the fridge in the motor home is malfunctioning and beeping continuously to let us know that it is not operating on propane. We just want it to shut up so that we can sleep. Morning departure time will be here in about four hours . . .

The girls experience the joy of eating while driving along in the motor home . . . completely unaware that they are hours away from disaster! [melodramatic caption, much?]

Dad and Beverly's dog, Bandy--equally unsuspecting!