Tuesday, June 15, 2010

(Son) Road Kill

Daisy said she thought I would change the words to the latest song I told you all about. I said I didn’t have to. Suddenly, a dancing pole grew out of the ground and Daisy wrapped her body around it saying something about it being an Olympic sport in 2016. She belted out “Rude Boy” by Rhianna without changing any words at all. Here are the first few lines. I think it’s about flying a kite or something.

Come here, rude boy, boy; can you get it up?
Come here rude boy, boy; is you big enough?
Take it, take it baby, baby
Take it, take it; love me, love me

Anyway, this Vintage post is in 5 sections because it is so freakin’ long. 2 years ago my dad and I drove cross country from Maine to the West Coast. It’s a He Said/He Said.

During the drive we took on trucker “handles”, Goose being Goose and Goose’s Dad being Buddy. Here is how the move across the country went from each of our perspectives…

Buddy:

Picked up rental truck Saturday morning. It is white (not normal yellow),has 36K on the odometer, tires are worn, no cruise control, and the jack is bent on the car trailer. When we try to remove the trailer from the truck, discover that the bent trailer jack is worse than we thought, and it would be unwise to take this on a cross-country trip. Penske representative says nothing can be done about the trailer jack, but we don't take "no" for an answer. Returned non-functional part to Penske and removed serviceable jack from another trailer.

Goose:

Played “good cop/bad cop” with Penske representative with Goose being the good and Buddy being the bad. Seemed to fit our personalities rather well anyway. Goose thought briefly that we could try to go into business selling cars. Packed truck full of everything we own and much of what we gathered over the year in Maine. Fits like a glove and Goose is proud of himself for such a nice packing job. Thank all the guys who came out to help us. With Daisy as our director as to what needed to go and what stayed, how could we go wrong?

Buddy:
Leave Bangor early on Monday morning (8/4). All seem to have somewhat frazzled nerves. It has been a stressful few days getting the truck loaded and the house cleaned. The truck doesn't feel "right" as it tends to sway, and needs lots of pressure on the brake pedal to slow down and stop. Discover the cigarette lighter outlet and windshield washer don't work. The first stop is in a shopping center parking lot to feed Fire. Windshield washer problem is resolved by adding fluid, but not able to diagnose problem with cigarette lighter (need 12v outlet for GPS and cell phones). Several more miles down the road, we went over some uneven pavement and the truck and trailer became uncontrollable. It "violently" rocked back and forth from side to side, and felt like it was going to roll over.

No comments:

Post a Comment