The wife and I are frugal; at least that is what I was
telling myself as I lined up all of the particulars to take all eight of us on
a very Brady Hawaiian vacation. Frugal? Hawaii?
Not really two words that go together, but after squeezing every drop of
value out of my credit card and frequent flier points, I was able to fly the
whole family to Hawaii for $40. Not bad
huh? There was one catch however, and for $40 how could there not be one, we
had to fly out of San Diego. Still totally
worth it, but therein lies the challenge.
We have two vehicles, none of which seats Eight-Is-Enough. The newest of
our vehicles is a ’07 Chevy Silverado with 220,000 miles on it, but it only
seats six with one kid having to sit in the jumper seat with his knees in his
chin. The older of our transport is a
minivan that seats seven and consumes oil and fuel in a 1:1 ratio… Oh and it has
no /AC whatsoever. None, not a
lick. You turn on the blower and it’s
like four hairdryers blowing in your face.
So what’s a father to do?
Well this father consulted the wisest of the wise oracles; a
spreadsheet. The great Excel gave a
clear answer; fly one kid to San Diego and then bring a butt-ton of stray
bottles and cold water to trek through the desert. Now the A/C in the van went out on a trip
from San Diego the year before while picking up my oldest from Marine Corp boot
camp. On that particular trip it was 118 degrees in Temecula while stuck in
traffic. We eventually just bought a
large bag of ice and took turns hugging it all the way to Vegas. That was July though, we were going in
September, how hot could it be… ugh… 110 degrees. Fortunately, my wife, despite being
perpetually cold, likes iced-drinks. This often results in most of the drinks being
undrinkably frozen, but in a 110-degree car, these bad boys would melt as fast
as we could drink them. So this could
work.
Still with no A/C and in a van of questionable mechanical
integrity, I repeatedly had this premonition of the van breaking down in Baker,
California right in front of that giant thermometer as the 110 degree light
illuminates. So as we screamed down to
California, windows open and sipping ice water, I breathed a sigh of relief as
that giant thermometer breezed by in my rear view mirror. So much for my premonitions. We made it to Hawaii with no troubles and
other than a 10-year-old losing a tap-dancing contest to a sea-urchin, it was a
pretty smooth trip.
Now the return home arrangements were another aspect of the
trip that accounted for the rather low cost. First, it was a red eye. Second, after a sleepless night, we would be
flying back to San Diego for the A/C-less drive back. Checking the weather forecast, it would not be
110 this time, but 102 hardly seemed a consolation. Also, since we were just coming off a flight,
we had no frozen drinks or icy spray bottles.
Nevertheless, we made it back to the van relatively smoothly and hit the
road.
We were making good time with a lunch date at In-n-Out Burger
in Vegas less than an hour away. Without
warning though, the van began to squirm side to side at 85 MPH. Fighting to keep control, I managed to herd
the van just onto an off ramp before stopping. Breathing a sigh of relief that we managed to
keep all wheels on the ground I looked up at the location sign in front of me. It's
never promising when the first word in the sign is “death,” but so it was “Death
Valley.: Then I saw the second worst
word I could think of… Baker.
Dodging traffic that whizzed by just feet away from my door,
I extracted myself from the van and then I saw it. Just as I saw before in a vision, it was that
unholy giant thermometer that haunts the skyline of Baker, California. Oh, and it read 100 degrees. One day I would like to be an oracle of good
fortune and not an inescapable seer of bad omen, but it was true. We broke down, right there in front of that mocking
thermometer in the no-mans-land of Baker, the temperature in the 3 digits, and
no AC. The EXACT scenario I told my wife
ten days ago that I was fearing… true story.
I didn't have to examine the car too long to realize that I
had a flat tire. What was worse, I knew this car did not have a spare. It used to have run flat tires on it - emphasis
on the words “used to.” They'd been changed out years ago, but no spare was
ever added back to the van. Instead, we had a strategically stored can of Fix-a-Flat.
This should be fine, I used it before
on this van and it worked great. Shaking the can I threaded the hose onto the
valve stem and immediately noticed a series of cracks radiating from the stem
whenever I flexed it even slightly. Still, I thought it might be good enough to
get us to a tire shop. Filling the tire with the strange goo, I disconnected
the hose and hurriedly jumped in the car to start driving , just as the can
told me to. I made it five feet when a large “pffftttts” was heard as the valve
stem split entirely open and the van settled down to the ground.
No problem though, I could see the tire shop two miles away
and I have roadside assistance from my auto-insurance AND through my credit card. We should be back on the road in no
time. Calling Nationwide (and calling
out Nationwide here), I navigated through the directories and finally reached a
human. Explaining our situation with
emphasis on the ambient temperature and the lack of AC and multiple reference to
six kids; I requested a tow. They said they could help and would message me
with the estimated arrival time shortly. Sure enough, within a few minutes they
told me my driver would be there in… 90 minutes. 90 Minutes? I could see the tire shop. Its
website said it was also a towing service. How on earth could this take 90
minutes?
We called the local shop and they said they could have someone
there in five minutes, but no insurance company had called them about picking
us up. Perplexed, I called back Nationwide as to the reason for the time
discrepancy. They casually informed me that my driver was coming from Las Vegas.
“Las Vegas?!? That's an hour away.” I said with no small level of frustration. They acknowledged this but said that this was
the nearest tow truck driver. I informed them there was five minutes away just
sitting there waiting for their call. After plugging away at their computer for
a few moments they informed me that no one in their tow network was nearby. Now
that's a different story. They didn’t
call the most convenient driver, they call the guy that fit with THEIR plans,
not mine. Thanks Nationwide.
As this conversation went on, the interior of the van even
with the windows down became unbearably hot. Not wanting to wait an hour, I took a stab
with my credit cards towing service. Oh yes, they responded I could use any towing
company I liked. This would be perfect… but then the catch. They would only reimburse up to $50. I knew from my previous conversation that the
local truck driver charged $200. When you've got a monopoly, you swing it like
a battle axe… and they did. Now I mentioned
at the beginning that I was cheap. I meant
it. So I opted to wait.
The other catch to all of this was that neither of the
towing companies could transport 8 people back to whatever semblance of
civilization existed in this area. We would have to get them back by some other
means. Looking at my “some other means” options, there were no taxis, no Ubers,
no buses, and virtually no chance of a good Samaritan coming along I-15 with an
empty church van. Thus, there was one
option… walking. Fortunately, my wife takes
a disturbing pleasure in hiking the family all over the desert, so with little
to no fuss, the kids pack some waters and disappeared into the desert.
Waiting in the van, windows down and sweating, I sat there
watching the clock. Finally hearing a
vehicle pulling up behind me, I turned around.
Was it a tow truck! Nope, it was CHiPs.
An officer got out and came to the passenger side window. He recognized
I'd broken down and made the observation that I was not all the way off of the
road. This was caused quite obviously by the fact that there was zero shoulder
whatsoever at this location. I could either be partially in the road or flipped
over and 100% at the bottom of an embankment. I felt I had made the more
prudent choice, though for the insurance value of the van, I might prefer the
embankment. Reluctantly conceding that I had done the best that I could, the officer
offered to stay behind me to make sure that no one hit me. So we both sat there
for 30 minutes waiting for the mystical tow truck of Las Vegas.
Finally, a tow truck driver arrived. He was a chipper fellow
from what I guessed to be Romania or Bulgaria. For reasons unknown to me, he
had his father stashed in the front seat who did not seem to be an employee of
the towing company or of any use to the operation other than to hold the clipboard
that would normally lay on the seat he now occupied. The father hesitantly slid over to the middle
jumper seat and tucked his knees under his chin and every adult must do in that
seat. Perhaps i should have respected my
elders and offered to take the middle seat, but there is no way of squeezing in
between those two after having had to wait 90 minutes. So I took that the last seat in that truck. Good call on the family walking, that is so
long as they didn't die in the desert.
15 minutes later the van was on the back of a truck and I
was moving once again. He asked where he wanted to be taken to and I gave the
name of the tire facility that was still only two miles away. I said you'd
recognize it as the one that has the tow truck out front that's not in use. OK,
I didn't say that, but I sure wanted to. As we drove along the small Main
Street of Baker, which is all Baker really is – one long Main Street, I didn't
see my family anywhere which I took as a good thing. Finally, at the far end of
town I was delivered to the tire shop.
By this point, the explanation of my plight to the tire guy was
a rambling mass of complaints and frustrations which nobody but me seem to care
about. The young guy that the tire station said he could probably help me and checked
the size of tires on my van. Disappearing into the back of a tire shop clearly
intended to repair semi-truck tires, he came out a few minutes later and said
he didn't have my tire. This is getting ridiculous. He did say he thought he
had one that he could make fit. I inquired if the car would still drive
straight and he assured that it would. So his definition of “fit” and my
definition were clearly not the same under the circumstances. If it was round and it would hold air, I would
take it.
I didn't even inquire as to the price, I just said to put it
on. Taking the van off the back of the tow truck and driving into the shop he
got it up on a lift and then leaned around the car and asked, “do you have the
tool to remove the lugs?” Oh no, this van had anti-theft lugs which included a
key lug nut removal tool. I vividly remember seeing it sitting right next to the
dryer as we cleaned the van out prior to the trip. I never inquired whether anyone had put it
back in. I looked through all the side panel doors the glove box the jockey box
(or so my wife insists it's called) and finally took out half the luggage in
the back of the van searching for a tool which wasn't there. Ready to drop a
burning flare into the back of the van, I told the shop guy we didn't have it. Thinking
for a second, he said he could probably get it off with a different tool, but he
might damage the lug nuts.
I assessed the van, the air conditioner does not work, it's
dripping oil as we speak, there are various mismatched touch-up paint all over the
body of the van. The front panel, side panel, quarter panel, are all slightly
dented, and the bumper is held on by zip ties. Not even flinching I responded, “can’t
say I care. Go for it.” And this is where my luck turned. It worked. The lug nuts came off and were only
slightly damaged. He showed me the inside of the flat tire. It looked like Freddy Krueger had an
epileptic fit inside with strange strips of rubber flowing here and there. He chucked
the old tire out on a pile of equally destroyed tires; which were all likely designated
as burn fodder for the next LA riots. I
watched each step of the repair, praying I would not see the repair guy scratches
head or mutter occurs that something else had gone wrong. Fortunately, my wrong
sized but right enough size tire fit well enough. Soon the van was lowered onto all 4 inflated
wheels for the first time in more than 2 hours.
I gladly paid the man $160 and jumped behind the wheel.
I called the wife and found out that they made it to the
Dairy Queen. Where else do you hang out in a one-horse town? I should have
known. Fighting the urge to speed down Main Street of Baker, I pulled in front
of the DQ and found my family inside safe, full, and even doing homework. Grabbing
a pile of food myself, I gave Julie the wheel as I dug into my lunch. It was
still hot, still sweaty, I hadn’t slept since the day before, and we still had nearly
7 hours to go. Yet, I did get my family to
Hawaii for $40… plus $160 for the tire… oh, and a few hundred for gas… any way
I got the whole family there for cheap and I broke down returning from
and not going to Hawaii. And sometimes,
that is win enough. Now if only have had
a premonition of winning a new Escalade from a slot machine in Vegas, but alas…
ney.
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