A Fruitless Quest for Perfection

“Are you enjoying this weather?”

My first thought was that she was being sarcastic, but her sweet open face and tidy grandmotherly hairdo belied that notion. “Well, no,” I replied cautiously. “I’d like it to be a bit warmer.”

“Are you from here?”

“No. Baltimore.”

“Well we just love it here. We’re from Georgia and it’s so hot there.”

“Oh, that explains it. You must be enjoying the cool weather.” We were camped just south of Duluth. It was a 60° and cloudy in July – not the best summer weather in my view, and in winter five feet of snow can arrive all at once, all in one day. Sorry, Duluth. Can’t say I’ll be exploring your charms any further.

Summer sunset near Duluth

And that, my friends, is a perfect example of why we have been on a wild goose chase looking for a perfect place to live.

Because we’ve been talking to people.

What you already have – curly hair, skinny legs, a home in the South – is not necessarily what you want. What someone else wants – straight hair, big boobs, a home where it snows in winter – isn’t necessarily what you want.

What Jimmy thinks he wants is not necessarily what I want. And what we both think we want or someone else thinks we‘d like, we don’t want when we get there and see it. It’s too congested or too rural, too busy or too slow, too tired and seedy or too brand new and characterless. I despair.

So let’s review that list of requirements for a perfect place again:

• Ÿ  somewhere not too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry
• Ÿ  no spiders, no mosquitoes or other hideous insects
• Ÿ  no snakes, no bears
• Ÿ  no tornadoes
• Ÿ  no hurricanes
• Ÿ  no floods
• Ÿ  no earthquakes
• Ÿ  no tsunamis
• Ÿ  no volcanoes
• Ÿ  no deep snow
• Ÿ  no humidity
• Ÿ  no wild fires
• Ÿ  a low cost of living
• Ÿ  an ocean or gulf view (yes, realize that eliminates all but 21 states)

  

  Gulf of Mexico from the Panhandle of Florida

• Ÿ  a mountain view would be nice, too

  

  Mountains bathed in sunset light viewed from the warmth of a desert climate

To this list I’ll now add:

• Ÿ  no cattle grids on the interstate ramps (too high chaparral)
• Ÿ  nowhere that traffic on the interstate is the main topic on the local news
• Ÿ  not on a road called Skunk Hollow
• Ÿ  no mudslides
• Ÿ  on second thought, no spiders (above) would certainly eliminate all 50 states so will modify that to no tarantulas or giant arachnids. That might eliminate Florida so I won’t tell Jimmy if I see one. In fact Florida has all manner of shocking creatures, but humans are probably the worst (humans in general, not Floridians in particular) and we can’t get away from them.
• Ÿ  not in a town where the local library sees fit to display a “No Guns” sign listing the pertinent ordinances in case you want to argue the point
• Ÿ  near a major airport to take a teeny bit of stress off trips back to Blighty
• Ÿ  not where we would ever, ever have to use the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River in New York City ever, ever again. Others shudder when you mention it to them and Jimmy pales and starts to tremble.
• Ÿ  nowhere that you can buy just guns, musical instruments, jewelry and car audio in the same store
• Ÿ  that no hurricane and no tsunami thing might eliminate all the ocean and gulf coasts so I’ll choose to ignore the discrepancy for now.
• Ÿ  I’d like to say not within 50 miles of a taxidermist but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
• Ÿ  not in a town where the gun store sells gator meat, hog traps and fresh frogs legs.
• Ÿ  not in a town with a gun store at all. It may be very un-American of me to not want to have anything to do with a gun but I’d like to live somewhere that I don’t feel the need to have one about my person or home.
• Ÿ  nowhere that we’d be dependant on using an Interstate daily as one third of Americans are. They’re a generally a mess – busy and bumpy.

Should we abandon the quest and the list and just live near one of my brothers so we’d at least have family nearby?

That would be Florida which falls foul of many of the items on the above list.

Or under the unending grey skies of Washington State (at least when we lived there) where when Mount Rainier is uncloaked it is event to be remarked upon and pointed out. “Look! Rainier’s out!!”

Mt. Rainier making one of its rare appearances

Fourteen and a half thousand feet of geographical wonder, which when the sky is clear is visible all up and down the Puget Sound, is usually hidden from view under a thick veil of cotton wool. Look at a U.S. weather map and you will invariably see a swirl of muck over the top left corner of Washington. The Puget Sound and Mt. Rainier are under there.

Jimmy is really no help at all. He wants to blow the house fund on a big motorhome.

Poems for Boys (and Girls) Squirrel Thieves

Squirrels stole all the bird seed at our wooded site in Washington so I oiled the pole in an effort to keep them off the feeder. Their cartoon attempts at climbing and sliding down the pole were eventually rewarded when they scaled the pole, looped over the top and dropped onto the feeder. It was a one way journey however.

If you’re worried about squirrelly’s fate it was only about a four foot drop to the grass. It didn’t stop him climbing the pole again, and again, and again . . . .

This One Always Makes Me Smile

Gig  Harbor, Washington.

A previously frustrated garage owner with a sense of humor:

At least no one dared park there while we were at the gas pump.

Would you park there? Just because it says not to?

My Husband is an Alien

Credit Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

“American citizens?”

“My wife is American. I’m a green card holder.”

“Can I see it please?”

Jimmy turned his head to me with that startled expression I could read only too well. Oh, bugger. “Where is your green card?” I whispered, already knowing that it wasn’t on his person.

“It’s in my passport.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“Under the slide.” I blew out the breath I was holding and my shoulders slumped in dismay as he turned back to the Border Control patrolmen, who had already scanned the back seat and open boot compartment of our SUV for stowaways. “It’s in the trailer,” he told them.

“Can you pull over please and get it out for us?” The trailer on the road in front of us had stopped at the checkpoint for only a few seconds and then moved on. We were at least 10 miles from the Mexican border. Why was there Border Control here? As we pulled over I said, “Show them your Washington driver’s license. That should do for ID.” We were naïve about the policing of the Mexican border in Texas.

Jimmy stepped out reaching for his wallet as I leapt out of the other side of the car even though Border Control did not seem the least bit interested in me.

The dark complexioned patrolmen were dressed in plain green fatigues and I have a mental image of them clutching machine guns to their chests. Of course they weren’t. I just thought they should. I felt like I was in a movie.

Jimmy offered his driver’s license as he tried to explain how difficult it would be to get his passport and green card out of the trailer. “I’ll have to get the supports out of the locker and snap them into place in order to pull the slide out so I can go in the trailer and get under the dinette seat and get the file box out to find my passport.”

“OK.”

Well that wasn’t the response Jimmy had hoped for. The patrolmen were pleasant enough but they meant business. Dark hair, dark mustaches, dark glasses, their faces softened a little when they smiled but they weren’t prepared to be too friendly yet. The taller of the two of them, about my height, clutched Jimmy’s license possessively. The other one came up to my nose.

Why is it I find short men with olive skin tones and black mustaches so menacing? Was it because we’d had a run in with a restaurateur of similar stature and complexion in Toledo, Spain? (We were completely in the right and he was completely in the wrong for your information.)

Here is Jimmy with Federal Agent Presley. (Don’t look too closely.)

“Can you use my driver’s license instead of my green card?” asked Jimmy expectantly.

“We can run an identity check with it. It could take a while.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen minutes, two hours . . . ?” and then he shrugged.

“I’ll get my passport.”

Being an American citizen with an American passport (somewhere in the depths of our stationery-cum-file-drawer locker) and standing on American soil I, perhaps foolishly, decided to bait the Border Patrolmen. Jimmy would have dug me in the ribs with his elbow at this point but he was busy trying to protect his own identity and grunting as he pulled out the slide (our bed-in-a-drawer that slides out the back of the trailer). “Don’t you want to see my passport?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You trust me then?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t sound American.”

“No, ma’am.”

Well!

Jimmy had pulled the rear slide out and walked around to the door. The Border Patrolmen hustled after him and stood outside the door. They obviously didn’t trust him.

Map: U.S.- Mexico Border SOURCE: THEI Archives (Public Domain)

I kept Menendez and Martinez company while we waited for Jimmy who was crashing around in the trailer.

I was feeling distinctly left out of the process now, so called in to Jimmy “Can you bring my passport as well?” They could look at it whether they wanted to or not.

Once the green card was scrutinized and the American passport was ignored smiles broke out and we established that there would be more border Patrol checks starting with El Paso, then New Mexico and Arizona and on into California.

The passports now reside in the glove compartment much to Jimmy’s annoyance instead of well hidden and safe in the trailer. Don’t tell anyone you know where they are.

“You should have just told them we were both American citizens. They would have let us straight through.” But do you think he would do that? Of course not but then he would be the one to get into trouble wouldn’t he?

Poor Judgment

“There is an awful lot of not very much here,” said Jimmy as we drove and drove and drove through the high desert of eastern

Columbia River from the Rowena overlook. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Washington – a dry, barren, biscuit-colored landscape. It dulled our senses after the lush, picturesque bank of the Columbia River. We had kept to the north bank of the river except for one brief interlude when the navigator zoned out and sent the driver over a bridge giving us lovely east and west views up and down the river, or so I insisted, and taking us into Oregon briefly.

With only had two tasks to engage my mind over the hours on the interstate I missed the exit, and failed to find a suitable campsite for the night. It was like choosing a line in the supermarket; I narrowed it down to two possibilities in the camping directory then chose the wrong one, but how do you know?

Our first clue that I’d made a bad choice should have been when we drove over an unmanned railroad crossing 50 yards before the entrance to the site. The alarms bells did not go off in our brains as they would in our ears later.

union pacific freight train (Photo credit: jefzila)

We’d unhitched the trailer from the car and plugged in to electricity before the first WHOOWHOO! WHOOWHOO! DING!DING!DING!DING!DING! Four locomotives and 110 freight cars rumbled past. Jimmy and I just stared at each other in open-mouthed stupefaction. That was strike three against the campsite. We’d already had a run in with the owner of the site for daring to drive on to his campsite and had tried unsuccessfully to outrun the flies.

It had appeared to be a pastoral, tranquil campsite with individual sites lined up along a lake, half of them under the trees and half in the open. As soon as we stopped under the trees, flies descended on us so Jimmy wisely chose to move further along to an open aspect.

He pulled forward into a field ready for a reversing maneuver as I skipped from site 19 to site 20 to site 18 and back to 19, evaluating the merits of each – level ground, good view of the lake, pretty tree outside my bedroom window.

“Make up your mind!” he yelled. His demeanor deteriorates after eight hours of driving.

Just then the owner bowled up to me in a golf cart. “Can I help you?” he began, almost pleasantly. I would have thought it was obvious why we were there.

“We’re just trying to choose a site.”

“Well you should have come to see me first,” he spat. “I’ve got a lot of people coming in.” It was five o’clock on a Thursday and I looked up and down the line of 38 empty campsites.

“The office was closed.”

“You can’t expect me to sit in there all day.”

Oh no? “As the office was closed we took a late registration envelope to pay our fee,” and I waved it at him to confirm that we hadn’t tried to sneak in behind his back.

“You have to register first. Didn’t you see the sign?”

“I saw the sign. How can we register when you’re not in the office?”

The office!

“I was on the phone in the house. You should have waited.”

How am I supposed to know that? “We phoned you for a reservation but you didn’t return our call.”

He ignored that and continued his rant. “You can’t just park anywhere.”

“Where can we park?”

“How long are you staying?”

“One night.”

“Well get set up here and then come and register, but you’ll have to leave by 12:00 tomorrow.”

Oh trust me, I thought, we’ll be long gone before then and why couldn’t you have asked that question first?

And that was just strike one.

The Sub Sub Plan while Still Homeless

Can you see John Wayne waving at you?

Route 66 (Photo credit: eGuide Travel)

Please help us find somewhere to live. See opinion poll.

Due to Jimmy’s American wanderlust we have a Plan, a sub plan and a sub sub plan. The Plan is to find somewhere to live. It gets lost sometimes. The sub plan is to see as many national parks as possible as we ramble around. The sub sub plan is to take in every city and town and place in America that has crossed his consciousness while growing up in 50’s and 60’s England.

Song titles and lyrics, film titles and settings have led us on detours of hundreds of miles from the see-the-national-parks route by veering off to Tombstone, Cheyenne, Chattanooga, Route 66, El Paso, Houston, Deadwood, Monument Valley, St. Louis (but only if you pronounce it Sint Lewie) Laramie, Key Largo, Dodge City, Tacoma, Garryowen, Big Rock Candy Mountain, Tallahassee, San Francisco, San Antonio (abbrev. San Antone), San Jose, Seattle, New York New York, Chicago and on and on in a maddening zig-zag across the United States. Our route from west to east and then west again looks like Zorro has attacked the map with his sword.

The Plan has also been partly determined by talking to people everywhere we go. The simple statement, “We’re looking for the perfect place to live,” always elicits an enthusiastic response. We’ve added thousands more miles to our groaning car’s odometer. Back tracking and unplanned side trips have taken us to these perfect places:

• Fresno, California
• Murray, Kentucky
• Asheville, North Carolina
• Fernandina Beach, Florida
• Chattanooga, Tennessee
• Fort Bragg, California
• Murfreesboro, Tennessee
• Sarasota, Florida (A realtor told us everyone in Sarasota was happy because the sun shone all the time and all the old people were on drugs. . This cheered us immensely after our drenching
  in Washington.)
• Bend, Oregon

  

  The Gulf coast. Lovely.

• Allardt, Tennessee
• Beaufort, South Carolina
• Natchez, Mississippi
• Ukiah, California
• La Conner,Washington State
• Destin, Florida
• France

Eiffel tower (Photo credit: Moyan_Brenn)

Each place has been visited and is under consideration and this haphazard list will undoubtedly be expanded, explored and rated one to ten but we’ve come to suspect that local pride in one’s own state, town, community or vacation destination may be a source of prejudice against the rest of the country. As endearing as this is, we are learning to sift through people’s comments and opinions in the same way you would read with suspicion a real estate agent’s glowing description of an aging or surprisingly underpriced house.

Our needs and tolerances seem to be so very different from just about everyone we’ve spoken to. Are we expecting year round perfection where it just doesn’t exist, just like the perfect man (or woman, before himself cries foul!) doesn’t exist?

Where is your perfect place? Please help. We’ll go and have a look and give you all the credit.

They Have Monsoons in Washington?

No one told us they have monsoons in Washington before we naively moved there from Europe. November had been a record breaking month for precipitation and December looked set to be worse. What could be more terrible than wading through three inches of water to get to our car? We were about to find out.

As forecast, gusts became more fierce and whistled through the towering pines throughout our development.
We watched the 11:00 news before going to bed and gusts were then predicted at 90 – 110 mph; 5.7 inches of rain had fallen in Seattle that afternoon; there were mudslides, trees down, roads blocked, bridges closed, flood warnings, blizzard warnings, thousands of homes without power, drivers killed by falling trees and a woman rescued from her flooded basement by divers. People trapped in their cars by flood water had to be rescued; the Amtrak train just quit; Qwest Field where the Seahawks were trying to play football was shown with waterfalls cascading down the steps; the reporter on the coast said it was raining so hard it hurt just to stand in it and there were 30 foot seas. A house was cut in half by a 140 foot tree. It had been the largest black poplar in the northern hemisphere and now it was blocking Lake Washington Boulevard.

Not the very one but you get the idea.

We went to bed on the gloomy note the worst is yet to come. As we had not yet been affected by the calamitous weather and were cocooned in our apartment, we still felt there was a degree of media hype in the reporting.

The next morning the apartment was ominously cool. I turned the thermostat and nothing happened. I tried a light switch and nothing happened. When the stove failed to heat up we both had the same reaction – no tea! What a couple of bubbleheads. Everything ran off electricity in the apartment and we hadn’t even begun to think through the consequences.

After a cold breakfast we set off for IKEA but found to our amazement that it was closed due to the power outages. Having driven for an hour on the tedious interstate Jimmy didn’t know whether to be put out or pleased at not having to traipse around IKEA’s intentionally baffling layout.

On our way home we decided to hunt for firewood and some dinner. There was a modicum of warmth left in the apartment so we ate our tepid teriyaki chicken by candlelight and proceeded to light a fire in the fireplace. This went well for Jimmy despite constant interference from me until he decided to shut the damper down to try to preserve our one bundle of firewood. The apartment filled with smoke.“You need to open the damper.”

“I have.”

“It’s still smoking.”

“No it’s not. You just smell the smoke that already came out.”

“Yes it is. I can see it. You can’t see it sitting so close to it.”

“It’s fine. I know what I’m doing.”

BLEEP!! BLEEP!! BLEEP!! BLEEP!!

We had set off all the smoke alarms in the apartment. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know!”

“Can you turn them off?”

“NO!!”

BLEEP!! BLEEP!! BLEEP!! BLEEP!!

I thrashed the fireguard aside and opened the damper fully as Jimmy dashed to the front door and opened it wide to let the smoke, and our precious warmth, out. Cringing under the onslaught of the alarms, the bleeping became intermittent, then stopped.

Just as we exhaled in relief, fire sirens started up in the distance. “Are the alarms connected up to the fire station?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think they are coming here?”

“I don’t know!”

“What do we do now?”

“I DON’T KNOW!” We stood fixed at fireplace and door, gawping at each other as the sirens became louder and louder and louder . . . then quieter and quieter as they raced off to their real emergency. The fire in the fireplace was short-lived, we saved a few logs and went to bed early under all the blankets we could find.

Saturday dawned late – foggy, cold and bleak. We’d been without power for nearly 48 hours and were forced to contend with other unprepared residents over the dwindling supplies of firewood.

Later we had a pleasant evening in front of the fire drinking wine, playing Rummikub, a board game like rummy, and cheating wildly as the different numbers and colors on the tiles were indistinguishable by flickering candlelight.

The mathematical thought processes necessary for the game became increasingly difficult with each glass of wine so we gave up and were gazing into the fire.

“Would you want to know when the power is going to come on again?” Jimmy asked.

“That depends on whether it’s tomorrow or next Friday. If it’s next Friday I’d rather not know.” We continued fire-gazing.

“Do you hear that?” Jimmy asked me.

“What?”

“The fridge.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know do you?”

“No. What?”

“The fridge.”

“So?”

“Think about it.”

“The fridge. THE FRIDGE!!!” and I jumped up and bounded round the apartment like a jackrabbit on steroids. I flicked a light switch, “YES!” then cranked up all the thermostats, plugged in the Christmas lights, put the light on over the stove for a homey kitchen glow, turned the spotlight on the wreath over the fireplace for seasonal cheer, then touched every warm heater vent in the whole apartment in a very proprietorial and self-satisfied way.

Ahhhhh.

How Not to Buy a Car – Part 2

The rest of the story is so excruciating I can hardly bear to relate it to you. After waiting a week, Teddy, the grinning salesman, was anxious to conclude the deal and phoned us to check on the progress of our funds. Jimmy advised him that we were approximately $3,000 short of the total not feeling the need to explain why (sales tax booboo).

Teddy was asked if a post dated check for the balance would be acceptable and he agreed. We borrowed truck and drove a wearisome hour and a half in the snow up the busy Interstate 5 through Seattle to pay for and collect our car.

On our arrival at the dealership Teddy showed us the car, anxious to get rid of it and us no doubt, handed us the keys and our temporary license plates. We moved on to the reception desk to make payment with two checks, the second of which would be post-dated as agreed. Only at this point did dear Teddy decide it would be prudent to check with his manager if that would be acceptable.

We were left standing drumming our fingers on the reception desk for ten minutes, dangling the new keys and expecting at any moment to drive away in our new car. You can guess the rest. I’m a little too ashamed of my behaviour to relate it in full but I let the sales manager and finance manager know that I was displeased that they had all wasted our time.

Jimmy was angry as well but anxious to salvage the deal that had already been struck for the one car in the whole of the State of Washington that was exactly what he wanted.

Before embarking on a fourth trip up the tiresome Interstate, Jimmy took the precaution of phoning the finance manager to be told he wasn’t in on the day and at the time when he had promised us he would be.

The duty manager phoned back and told us that our now proposed plan of paying partially by check and the small outstanding amount on my brother’s credit card (our own credit cards were still an unresolved issue, No Credit !*#@!), as had been suggested previously by the finance manager, would be subject to a 3% charge on the credit card portion. Apoplectic, we got increasingly terse with this new member of the saga until he said he would take care of it.

Jimmy went in to conclude the deal while I was told in no uncertain terms to stay in the car until the transaction was completed. I pondered possible scenarios of outcomes at great length to amuse myself; the dealer would knock the outstanding $3,000 off the purchase price as compensation for our wasted trips and distress or throw in a motorcycle that stood oddly out of place in the showroom or give us free coffees. It was only the previously offered car keys and temporary plates with which Jimmy returned.

When we went back to collect our permanent license plates I asked to be dropped at IKEA on the way. Foolishly, I thought I’d seen the last of that dealership. There is, I’m sorry to say, a Part 3.

A Chevy Tahoe at Lake Tahoe. Well we thought the association was cute!

We drove the Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry (in St. Louis).

Wheels on Fire!

“Yer wus a fur!”

“What?” Jimmy bellowed.

“Yer wus a fur!”

“OUR WHEEL’S ON FIRE!!” I shrieked.

We’d just picked up our travel trailer from its 6,000 mile brake and wheel bearing service and were winging our way north on I5 to a campsite when a car with two girls pulled up level with us, shouting and pointing.

Jimmy reacted very quickly, carved up two lanes of rush hour traffic and pulled onto the hard shoulder. A following wind brought the frightening stench of burning rubber to us when we stopped. Thick black smoke was pouring out of the wheel as it sat at a forlorn angle.

It was exactly five o’clock and the garage we’d just left closed at five.

Jimmy hurriedly dialed Walter, the garage owner and we waited a few tense moments until he picked up. We then waited a very apprehensive half an hour for him to drive the 10 miles (checking to see if his liability insurance was current?) to turn up in an ancient battered minivan.

I was not heartened.

Walter suggested he remove the smoking wheel so we could limp back to his garage towing our dual axle trailer on three wheels keeping to the back roads with him following. We’d spend the night on his not picturesque forecourt and then limp a bit further in the morning, presumably to a garage that wouldn’t forget to put the cotter pin on to secure the brake drum.

Jimmy and I exchanged that special look we have perfected, a pinched expression that says Oh sh*t!

“I’m not sure about this,” I muttered.

“Me neither.”  Jimmy looked beyond pained.

Walter joined in, “I’ve seen it done loads of times.”

Not with our trailer, buster, I thought but left Jimmy and Walt to iron out the details.

Back in the car, fretting in relative safety, I felt the whole rig shaking as ol’ Walt battered the wheel and chassis. Jimmy appeared at my window. “Walter’s swearing a lot.  I thought I’d get out of the way.”

Apparently after he got the wheel off he was trying to wedge some planks of wood between the chassis and the leaf spring to keep the brake drum from dragging on the road. I daren’t get out and look as we’d several miles to lurch along propped up on scaffolding and didn’t want the image of potential disaster ruining my blinkered thoughts.

Jimmy drove down the hard shoulder ve-e-e-ry slo-o-o-wly, exited the Interstate, crossed over and headed south again on the worst piece of road in Washington State.

We’d been so impressed with the kindness of people in Washington and the courtesy of its drivers so everyone we encountered that day as we bumped along with our hazard lights flashing must have been from out of state. They blared their horns at us, gestured rudely and screeched past as we negotiated potholes trying to keep the low slung underbelly of the trailer off the road.

“This will give you something to write about,” Jimmy quipped in an attempt to distract us both from the anxiety we were feeling.

“I like to write about things that strike me as funny. I’m not finding anything remotely humorous about this.”

“Well, no. I’m nipping my bum a bit.”

Indeed. I was so tense I could have cracked walnuts with several parts of my anatomy. My stomach seemed impaled on my backbone.

As my eyes bored holes in the windshield willing us forward safely, I heard CLANG!! TINKLE! Tinkle, tinkle, clink, clink, clink. I’d imagined we’d broken our back like a freighter in heavy seas and spewed the whole contents of the trailer across the road – plates, glasses, cutlery, saucepans all sounding like they’d been dropped from a great height. But we were still rolling along so I gripped the armrest for its comforting reassurance and waited for the calamity to unfold.

No, this isn’t us. It wasn’t this bad! (Photo credit: calaggie)

Jimmy pulled off the road, opened the door and jumped out all in one swift movement. I closed my eyes and pretended I wasn’t there.

The brake drum had fallen off the axle and rolled across the road into the path of oncoming traffic weaving its way into a ditch. The ever incompetent Walter, who hadn’t secured the brake drum for a second time, retrieved it and put it in his jalopy along with the previously stowed reeking wheel.

Ten miles and ten minutes due north on the interstate highway became an agonizing eternity of twisting country roads to return south – and east and west – to the garage.

At the end of the journey, we unwound our adrenaline flooded bodies from the car and took a look at Walt’s handiwork. The front axle of the twin axles on our trailer – minus the bulky brake drum – was a mere inch off the road.

It wasn’t all bad news though. The next morning when we were cast adrift – trailer-less and homeless as new brakes, brake drum, calipers and seals were fitted, not by the witless Walter – we paid Courtney’s cousin, Chrystal (How to Render your Husband Speechless, Again) a visit at the NASCAR decked espresso hut.

Chrystal wore a whole dress, but it barely covered her bum and was unzipped in front to her waist, her exuberant breasts launching themselves into the steamy coffee scented atmosphere.

Not Chrystal! Too many clothes! DSCN3065 (Photo credit: &y)

Jimmy approached the drive-through window, having prepared to acquit himself in a manner befitting a Grandad. He did quite well with the coffee order though I couldn’t see his face or keep track of his eyes.

She was the one who lost her cool. “I just love you guys’ accents. Where are you from?” and as she chattered and gushed, encouraging Jimmy to keep talking, she unthinkingly put the coffee grounds back into my coffee.

In a fit of giggles, she dumped out the murky mess and started the long process of brewing coffee all over again, much to Jimmy’s delight.

Florida, not Washington, but keeping with the NASCAR theme!

Sorry fellas. No pictures of Chrystal. Thoughtless of me.