Branson Bound

Today's lesson in Murphy's Law 101 is: "If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something."

Dan and the kids left right after a hearty breakfast of french toast and turkey bacon.  I, on the other hand, ate a healthy breakfast consisting of two scoops of Brahm's Birthday Cake ice cream.  Perhaps you are saying to yourself that ice cream doesn't sound like a good choice for breakfast but I threw caution to the wind and suffered no ill effects.

Putting to use the Trip Planner I bought from All About The House on etsy, I felt I had planned this trip better than many of the other ones we've taken. Every thing was going like clockwork. There were just a few last minute chores I had to take care of before Darryl arrived home at 10:30.

Any time we travel my husband finds something, actually many somethings to complain about.  I was not about to be disappointed this time.

"What's up with all this crap?" he asked.

The simple answer, of course, is that we NEEDED all of it.We had to have the suitcase with our clothes.  We also needed the cooler for drinks on the trip and later for the picnic I had planned the next day.  Then there were towels for lake as well as paper products for the aforementioned picnic we planned to have at said lake.

My husband rolled his eyes and mumbled something about how we didn't need half the stuff we were taking.

Once we were on the road, Darryl began complaining about the way the tires were riding funny.  Did I feel it?  Why hadn't I noticed it?  The daily recounting of how great the car used to drive and how he's going to replace it one day.

I let him rant for a little while before I finally asked him if he wanted to listen to the David and Goliath book I had checked out of the library.  Generally we both love books by Malcom Gladwell but that certainly does not mean that we agree with all his conclusions. I find that Gladwell tends to over generalize, relies heavily on anecdotal evidence, and conveniently selects and interprets scientific studies.

Things were actually going pretty fine for most of our trip.  As a matter of fact I even found a $5 bill in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven so I felt it was a very lucky day.  Then it happened.   The front tire blew out and we found ourselves stuck on the side of the road in Arkansas.

Darryl tried for an hour to get the air compressor to get the tire pumped enough to take us to the nearest town.  After an hour he finally decided to mount the spare tire.

We stopped for about an hour in Fayetteville, AR to get new tires at the local Walmart.  Darryl had told me all week that he was going to get new tires because the other ones were defective but he'd never gotten around to it.

The rest of our trip was uneventful but I was dead tired when we arrived so I fell asleep pretty quickly after unpacking the car.