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Okay, sorry to interrupt, but I feel the need to share a bit about my crazy road trip now that it’s behind me…
I left Wednesday morning to take #1 daughter up to college in Virginia. She’s at Hollins now, and it was a major haul! Under perfect conditions the trip should take about 10-11 hours from south GA to Roanoke.
We left early, stopped south of Atlanta to pick up my mom, had lunch at the Varsity in Atlanta, and headed on. South of Charlotte, NC my Tahoe began to make a knocking noise. Just for background, the 'ho has majorly high miles, so I had taken it in for a tune up before the trip - and my mechanic blessed it. Anyway, I called USRiders to get a number for a service center in Gastonia since the time was fast approaching 5:00. The guys at the service center felt the motor was going ($3,000-$4,000) :eek:
I managed to find a rental car place not too far away and a chevy dealership almost across the street from the rental place. Yay! We loaded all the stuff that had been in the Tahoe into the rental, dropped the Tahoe off and headed on to Roanoke. Thankfully, the kid wasn’t upset by the slight detour that took about 1 1/2 hours and the whole trip up only took 12 1/2 hours.
Thursday the kid did orientation stuff while I spent too much time on the phone. At first the chevy place thought the car could be fixed for not too much money (relative to the monster figure for a new motor). That turned out not to be the case, so the phone calls began to figure out a way to get the Tahoe back home since, amazingly, it seems to still have some value. I also needed to find a rental company that would let me rent a car one way so I could get home.
Friday I wrap up college drop off with the kid and hit the road pretty early. Since things seemed to be under control with the cars, I go ahead with plans to see a horse that wasn’t ‘too’ far from Charlotte. I missed a turn off and ended up going WAYYYYY out of the way, getting stuck in traffic all over the place, and arriving hours later than planned to see the beastie.
The beastie was lovely, but now I’m seriously behind schedule! The car dealership and both rental car places will probably close before I can get to them… That’s not so bad for the car I’m dropping off. I can just do the drop box thing. The other two places involve much begging and some $ tips to keep people there on a holiday Friday evening.
I throw my mom out at the dealership to pay for the useless repairs and empty out the Tahoe. Then I rush to rent the car that will take me home. I park it outside the fence to pick up later. I go back to pick up mom and contents of the Tahoe (packed in the XL ziplock bags that formerly held college kid’s stuff). We backtrack to pick up the new car and she follows me to drop of the old rental. Finally, we’re on the road again!!
We arrive at my folks’ house 15 hours after we started out :dead: I had to crash for the night and drive the last 3 hours home this morning. The second rental car has been turned in and I’m now driving my late MIL’s Lincoln Towncar :lol: I’m afraid to add up how much that little trip cost. Between gas, hotel, two car rentals, and a major non-repair…
So, I finally went back and edited post 10,000, but for those of you who don’t want to go back that far, I pretty much just added a big fat
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WOW:eek::eek:And yet you still found time to pop in on lil old us… :yes: