The Drive Up
I don’t work in the summers. The perk teachers get for being paid a lower salary than most of the working world. As a result, I volunteered to drive with my Grandfather in Uncle Keith’s van. The two of us decided to drive all of the fishing gear and tackle, along with everyone’s packs and bags, from Florida to Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota to pick the five others up at the airport. Uncle Bob was flying in from Phoenix after being in California on a business trip. The four others were flying in from Orlando.
We opted to drive the gear rather than fly because of all the terrorism paranoia going on in the country. We surely couldn’t bring fishing gear, tackle, and knives on a plane without a headache. Besides, it had been a while since I drove across country, and this time I’d have someone driving with me rather than driving solo. It would be quality time to spend with my Grandfather as well.
I left Seminole, Florida on Wednesday, July 5th, to drive to my Uncle Keith’s house in Safety Harbor to pick up the mini-van. When I got there, it was already packed with my uncle’s stuff as well as my Cousin Lori’s gear. I transferred my sister’s and my gear into the van, left my key on the counter inside for them to move my vehicle, hit the restroom, and was off to my grandparent’s house in The Villages. When I arrived at my grandparent’s, we packed the van with the rest of the gear, ate dinner, slept, and woke up early to head out onto the road.
I had already warned my early-bird grandfather that I wouldn’t be awake enough to drive until about 9:00 AM after the coffee kicked in. So we made a silent deal. He would drive the morning shift. I would dive the middle shift. And he would finish off the last leg, ending by pulling into a hotel so we could start if all over again the next day. It was a good compromise to me, because a few mornings I fell asleep while my grandfather was driving.
We left Thursday around 6:30 AM. The drive was uneventful for the most part. We drove north through Atlanta, Georgia – getting lost a few miles by me taking the wrong exit. However, we were soon back on our way to cruise through Tennessee, Kentucky, and the beginning of Illinois. There we a lot of farming fields of corn and soy beans along the route. At one point there was a giant cross in the middle of no where. We saw a few deer along the side of the road grazing. We also saw a huge land area of windmills – over 50 of them by my count – powering, hopefully, the entire city. We had driven about ten hours and thought that after entering the Illinois border we would stop for the night and find a hotel.
We were driving five miles over the speed limit, as we did the entire trip to avoid speeding tickets. Just after mile marker six on I-24 I heard a sound like a tire blowing out. My Grandfather was driving and thought it was the mini-van next to us until all the air deflated and we realized it was us. We pulled over to the side of the road right before Exit 7 for Goreville / Tunnel Hill and called AAA.
While we were waiting for AAA, we decided it would be a good idea to try to get the flat on. It took a while – figuring out where the spare was, lowering it down, pulling on the lug nuts (which were tight as hell), replacing the tire, then realizing the spare was too flat. We waited for the tow truck, and when he arrived, he told us he’d have to tow us to Marion, because he didn’t have air in that truck. He said Wal-Mart might still be open and they could help us. If they weren’t open, he could drop us off there and we would have to get it fixed in the morning.
The tow truck driver was very nice. The poor guy had a migraine, but he still was helpful. He called ahead to a buddy he knew in case Wally World, as he called it, wasn’t open. The buddy could help us. He just wouldn’t be able to balance the tires.
We pulled up to Wally World at 7:55 PM just as the shop keeper was putting up the closing chain. He saw us, and looking a bit disgruntled, put down the chain. They would help us, and we were saved. Luckily, we would not have to wait in the morning and could get on our way. We had a feeling we would lose a lot of time if all of this hadn’t turned out perfectly well.
The next morning we were on our way again. We had picked up a book on tape – The 5th Horseman by James Patterson – to listen to the day before – ten hours long. We continued listening to the story as we drove on through Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. We arrived in Minneapolis-St. Paul around 6 PM. Uncle Bob had gotten a suite for us on his company’s tab (I believe). We were planning on going there, eating dinner, and picking my uncle up at the airport later that evening if he was able to catch an earlier flight out.
Unfortunately, Uncle Bob didn’t catch the flight and wasn’t going to get in until around 11:30 PM. So my grandfather and I went and checked in, dropped off our clothes, went to eat at Chili’s, then returned to our room to watch television and fall asleep. Everyone else would be picked up in the morning, and we would all head directly out from the airport to Canada.
The others arrived around 11:30 AM Saturday. Earlier that morning we had taken Uncle Bob to rent a car. He had to leave a few days earlier than us due to some business – so he needed his own way to get back to the airport. Everyone piled in to either the rented Jeep Liberty or the mini-van. Rene and I went with Uncle Bob. Everyone else went with Grandpa Joe. We were finally off, and in about 5 hours we would be at Scott’s on Crane Lake ready to be transported by boat to Zup’s Resort.
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