Disaster strikes - August 1, 2015

(I wrote this after getting back on the road)

Well, as luck would have it, the wheels on the bus came off our trip about 3:30 a.m. We were just outside of St. Louis when I stopped to get gas before our MO pic (the girls decided to take a body letter making pic for each state sign) and switching drivers. As fate churned, I mistakenly put regular gas into the diesel truck. I had three signs I had the right pump, but in hindsight, I also had three that it wasn't. Bottom line, it was the wrong thing, and I unknowingly killed the truck. Nine hours and $600 later, we're back on the road. We're doing our best to make up ground and stay on track, but that's to be seen. MidAdventure McCanns - that is our family motto!

(update)

Tony had asked us to start a journal that stays in his truck to document the trip. We all laughed a bit because he was so excited about it. The funny part is that it's a journal that he made out of leather. He's a leather nut, but the look of excitement on his face when he told us was priceless. He didn't like us laughing at him, so I agreed to update it.

When we stopped in at the MO welcome center, I decided to correct the bad luck we were having by finding a four leaf clover. I've always been able to find them and have had fairly good luck in life. I even have one tattooed on my foot with all of our initials in each leaf. I'm a firm believer in their luck generating capabilities!

No sooner did I finish the journal entry and put the four leaf clover in the back of the journal, and I looked up to see traffic at a dead stop ahead of us. Tony was somewhat of a zombie from lack of sleep from our interesting night and wasn't paying attention. I let out a screech and he fortunately was able to lock down the breaks in time without hitting them. My heart was pounding, and I had more than my tired body could take. Everyone in the car was discussing their reaction to the near accident. It was somewhat funny (for example Cass said she thought she crapped her pants), but no humor could stave off the meltdown that burst out of my body.

I think the lack of sleep, peri-menopausal PMS, and just too many things going wrong in too short of a period of time mounted into a full on sobfest for me. I had cried the night before when Tony wasn't as kind as he could have been initially when I killed the truck. But this was a whole new level of tears gushing from my eyeballs. I couldn't stop them. And then I just wanted it to be over. The WHOLE TRIP!! I begged them to just stop and put me on a plane home. I had endured enough and just wanted OUT of that truck.

Fortunately, I came to my senses, moved to the back seat, and got in a nap. I woke up with a better frame of mind and didn't insist on the plane ride home. I didn't return to the front seat again until the very last leg of the trip last night coming into Denver. The truck started experiencing some electrical difficulties after the gas situation was corrected. The dashboard would just lose power and all the gauges would drop to zero and the battery light came on. Tony messed around with it a bit and we diagnosed the problem as being all the gadgets we had plugged in pulling too much electricity off the battery. We did various things to try and correct it, but each time it would happen again. When we pulled in to the hotel, there was a horrible smell coming from the engine. We had no idea what that was, but decided to sleep on it.

In my planning, I had allocated 26 hours for a 22 hour google map estimate. It only took us 36! The fortunate piece is that our plan may not have to change if we can get the truck issues resolved. We'll see how that goes come Monday. Our hope is that every bad piece of luck seems to have struck in this 36 hours. We're hoping it's done with us! Maybe I'll just go out and pick every dang four leaf clover in Denver to make sure of it.