2009: The Journey Home

In many World War II movies, you see the story of a bomber returning home from a mission over Germany. Shot up, and torn apart, the plane comes to a crash landing on only one wheel. The crew is a mess, the plane is a mess, but at least they made it back alive!

Before leaving Disney, we had an engine light on our van. Jim Gordon checked the error code and said, "it is just an evaporated error. Stay close to us on the way home and let me know at the first sign of trouble."

I tried to stay in front of the Gordon's by several minutes for the entire first day of the journey home. The challenge was our misdiagnosis of the food poisoning. Come to find out... It wasn't that $25 steak at all because two hours out of Disney, Mark (my oldest son) surrendered his breakfast to a barf bag.

During the first day, Mark would throw up a total of ten times. Linda spent most of the trip riding backwards in the front seat, hung over her chair and holding the barf bag. It must have been an interesting site for passing cars! At least all the barf went in the bag because I've been on trips where we weren't that fortunate, and the stench of barf is repulsive. This time, the van would flood with the stench of barf, but we could close the bag and drop off the barf bags at the next gas station.

Unfortunately, I am a sympathetic barfer myself. If someone around me barfs, I have a tendency to follow. So, when the barfing started, I would roll down the window and hang my head out of the van (while traveling 80mph, of course - we had to stay in front of the Gordon's).

We entered the Virginia Mountains at dark. Driving in the dark through the mountains at a high rate of speed is about as close to the video game Mario Cart as you'd ever want to get in real life. When they report the highway dead statistics, I am convinced the majority of those deaths occur in the Virginia Mountains. In fact, due to the steep cliffs, I would bet there are more deaths then known - there are just piles of crumpled cars at the bottom of the ravine. In one situation I saw, a tractor trailer was so heavy that, while traveling down the mountain slopes, he couldn't hit his breaks and stop before hitting the car in front on him. So, to avoid an accident, he kept yanking his rig into the passing lane. That was a good strategy until a small black car was passing. The truck suddenly jumped into the car's lane! With nowhere to go, the car was riding between a guard rail and the truck at 75 mph!

We arrived at the Comfort Inn exhausted. The Comfort Inn was carved into the side of a mountain such that everything was uphill.

I loaded our overnight luggage (only 12 of the 37 pieces of luggage) onto a luggage rack and then pushed the rack uphill from the van to the hotel. When I reached the hotel, I made the mistake of letting go of the luggage rack so I could pull the door open wide enough to push it through. You can probably imagine the results without my elaboration, but please permit me to describe seeing the cart roll back down the hill with me in chase yelling and trying to reach the cart. It slammed into the front of the van and then dumped its contents all over the parking lot while the van's alarm system fired off. I now have a nice two inch dent in the front of my van from this.

We had a late start the following morning, but I managed to stay in front of the Gordon's even though we grabbed an early lunch at a gas station. Mark was feeling much better because Linda had stayed up all night hydrating him.

Around noon, the Gordon's called to see if we wanted to stop for lunch. We were racing to stay in front of a snow storm, we had already eaten, and I feared getting sick before getting home. Nevertheless, we agreed. Instead of eating another meal, we would just get ice cream. While my family got a table at McDonalds, I retrieved a large tray of ice cream. When I returned to the table, the Gordon's were gone!

"Where did they go?" I asked. As I looked out the window, I saw them with food in their hands, climbing in their car to leave. Why did they ask us to stop for lunch if they had no intention of stopping for lunch? There was no time for questions! "Oh no! We need to stay in front of them!" I shouted. We grabbed our ice cream and ran for our van as the Gordon's pulled back onto the highway.

"What do we do with the ice cream?" Linda asked as I revved up the van in pursuit.

"Eat it!" And with the ice cream in one hand, spoon in the other, driving with my knees, and rocketing to 80mph, I woofed down a hot fudge sundae with only two splashes on my jacket.

We were catching up to the Gordon's until we neared Mansfield, Pa where Rt 15 joins Rt. 80 and 180 and 122. The GPS was screaming at me to take the ramp to the right, but I was convinced it was wrong (regardless of its protests) to take the ramp to the left. 15 miles later, Linda read a road sign, then looked at her map and said "Oh gee, we aren't supposed to be way out here. We are headed to Ohio!"

After correcting our course, I apologized to the GPS for not listening and yelling at it. Even though I apologized, the GPS refused to talk to me for ten miles! I guess it was really upset.

Other than an engine light at the start of the trip, the van ran pretty good. We have a bad front passenger tire that caused the van to vibrate every time we went above 65 mph (which was most of time). Somewhere in Pennsylvania, the transmission started doing a long shift. The van has had this problem before, so we kept going. Then, as we approached home, the alternator went. I had to drive the final hour with one foot on the break and one on the gas!

Just like bringing in a torn-up World Word II bomber, I bought that van home! We made it to the house, and slid the van into our ice covered driveway. What an incredible adventure!

'Holiday Roooooo oh oh oh oh oh oh oad.
Holiday Roooooo oh oh oh oh oh oh oad.'