How Come it Never Goes Smooth?!
So Mike gets up and turns on his machine, it hiccups for a second and turns off again. Great. Meeting on Monday, stuff to get done, and the hardware packs up.
I shower and get on with getting us ready to go, say goodbye to the chickens, and Mike tries to set up the little ASUS eee to work on.
TWO HOURS after I wanted to leave we're on the road.
Just as we're pulling past the plaza into Sultan there's a terrible bang. To me it sounded like we'd driven over a sheet of aluminum. Nothing in the mirror, I thought maybe the ladder had fallen off the back or something. "Pull over."
Mike pulls over, we give the beastie a once over and everything looks normal. We fire it up again and he goes to turn around in the McDonalds parking lot and we hear whump whum whump. Tire.
We've got duallies on the back and the inside passenger one had pretty much exploded. After some frantic pacing I dial 411 and ask for LEs Schwab in Monroe. Dude says since it's a duallie we'd probably be OK limping it the seven miles into town. Mike, terrified, got us through Sultan. At that point the tread came loose and was banging against the wheel well, it tried to cut it off without much luck, tried taping it down, which got us a quarter mile and traffic starting to back up behind us. I've never used our jack and the one I usually use was in the Golf, and the spare was a cross-ply and everything else is radials, so if we'd had a decent jack I could've got into town at least, but I didn't. "Have the guy come out."
Soooo I called Les Schwab and they sent a guy out with a big truck and a new tire.
While we were waiting on the side of Highway 2 I popped over to the nearest house, which was selling yard art, planter boxes and starts. "We don't usually get walk in customers." says the guy. I had a chat with a really neat couple and met their great dane. Definitely going back there; great folks and they have nice plants, and some unusual ones. The woman is a master gardener and had some great planter boxes.
So Hollan(the Les Schwab guy) shows up in his shiny Ford super diesel with his pneumatic wrench and replaces our tire. My card doesn't go through. Bugger. We start up the beastie and drive to tha bank on our new tire, get there with 15 minutes to spare, I move some money around, and then walk across the street to Les Schwab and take care of everything. MAN those guys are friendly.
Back in the beastie we dump our tanks and manage an uneventful trip to Olympia, calling and informing the fam that we will not be making it in time for dinner at 6:30. As we take the exit off I-5 toward my brother's place, I gasp, scaring the shit out of Mike. "WHAT?"
"I thought of something."
"Was it worth scaring the shit out of me?!"
"You'll forgive me."
"What?"
"It's Thursday."
Mike's annoyance level spiked. "So what's on Thursday?"
"Sushi Boat is on the way." It was ten minutes to eight and our food intake so far had been a Clif bar each.
"I forgive you. Where do we turn?"
Sushi Boat is no longer Sushi Boat, they don't have the tiny river and the wooden boats with moving food for me to hunt down, which made me sad, but they DO have AYCE sushi, and it's ALL WEEK, AND two bucks cheaper.
So SOMETHING went right today, and that thing was a couple of pounds of Sushi rolls and nigiri. Mike and I sat back and signed contentedly. Perfect end to a shitty day, with a Hornsby's on top.
Now to get Mike a working machine.
I shower and get on with getting us ready to go, say goodbye to the chickens, and Mike tries to set up the little ASUS eee to work on.
TWO HOURS after I wanted to leave we're on the road.
Just as we're pulling past the plaza into Sultan there's a terrible bang. To me it sounded like we'd driven over a sheet of aluminum. Nothing in the mirror, I thought maybe the ladder had fallen off the back or something. "Pull over."
Mike pulls over, we give the beastie a once over and everything looks normal. We fire it up again and he goes to turn around in the McDonalds parking lot and we hear whump whum whump. Tire.
We've got duallies on the back and the inside passenger one had pretty much exploded. After some frantic pacing I dial 411 and ask for LEs Schwab in Monroe. Dude says since it's a duallie we'd probably be OK limping it the seven miles into town. Mike, terrified, got us through Sultan. At that point the tread came loose and was banging against the wheel well, it tried to cut it off without much luck, tried taping it down, which got us a quarter mile and traffic starting to back up behind us. I've never used our jack and the one I usually use was in the Golf, and the spare was a cross-ply and everything else is radials, so if we'd had a decent jack I could've got into town at least, but I didn't. "Have the guy come out."
Soooo I called Les Schwab and they sent a guy out with a big truck and a new tire.
While we were waiting on the side of Highway 2 I popped over to the nearest house, which was selling yard art, planter boxes and starts. "We don't usually get walk in customers." says the guy. I had a chat with a really neat couple and met their great dane. Definitely going back there; great folks and they have nice plants, and some unusual ones. The woman is a master gardener and had some great planter boxes.
So Hollan(the Les Schwab guy) shows up in his shiny Ford super diesel with his pneumatic wrench and replaces our tire. My card doesn't go through. Bugger. We start up the beastie and drive to tha bank on our new tire, get there with 15 minutes to spare, I move some money around, and then walk across the street to Les Schwab and take care of everything. MAN those guys are friendly.
Back in the beastie we dump our tanks and manage an uneventful trip to Olympia, calling and informing the fam that we will not be making it in time for dinner at 6:30. As we take the exit off I-5 toward my brother's place, I gasp, scaring the shit out of Mike. "WHAT?"
"I thought of something."
"Was it worth scaring the shit out of me?!"
"You'll forgive me."
"What?"
"It's Thursday."
Mike's annoyance level spiked. "So what's on Thursday?"
"Sushi Boat is on the way." It was ten minutes to eight and our food intake so far had been a Clif bar each.
"I forgive you. Where do we turn?"
Sushi Boat is no longer Sushi Boat, they don't have the tiny river and the wooden boats with moving food for me to hunt down, which made me sad, but they DO have AYCE sushi, and it's ALL WEEK, AND two bucks cheaper.
So SOMETHING went right today, and that thing was a couple of pounds of Sushi rolls and nigiri. Mike and I sat back and signed contentedly. Perfect end to a shitty day, with a Hornsby's on top.
Now to get Mike a working machine.