Adventures on I-90

I'm sure you've noticed by now that we spent the entire last week visiting family. It was a blast! Over two thousand miles on the road (well over 2000), driving through four states... And, of course, it couldn't have gone by without some rather memorable moments...


We drove on a Friday after Dan got off work and after we'd packed the car. Four hours later we're in Montana and it's dark, so we pulled off and found a campground. This particular campground had an abundance of cottonwood trees, which are not my favorite trees ever- my allergies don't get along with them. So we pull out our brand new tent that my parents gave us for a wedding gift, and set it up. Piece of cake, right? So we go over to the car and blow up the air mattress that they got us as well, using the car pump. Another piece of cake. We take it over to the tent.


It doesn't fit through the door.


....figures. So we let some of the air out and shove it in, and I'm thinking that we'll have to blow it up ourselves, with no pump, when Dan says, "Grab the tent." So I do as he says, and we haul the entire tent up to the side of the car, where he hands me the pump and I crawl in and pump up the mattress again inside the tent. Then we carry it back down and crawl in to sleep. I'm pretty sure the guy in the RV across the green from us stayed up a few extra minutes to see if we'd come up with any other shenanigans...


Lesson: Make sure your air mattress pump is battery operated... or at least set up your brand new tent in the daytime at least once before use.


The next morning we get up and load the tent back into the car and get back on the road. On our way to Dan's parents' house we were going to pick up my foster brother Gabe, who was visiting his mom in Montana, and drop him off with my parents on our way through. No problem at all, right? Take an exit, grab him at the gas station, get back on the interstate. We cross the border into Wyoming, and are about thirty miles from Sheridan when we blow a tire.


Neither Dan nor I have ever had a tire go out on us. One time I came out of seminary and found one of the tires on the suburban I was driving had gone flat, but that was it.


Fortunately, both Dan and I know how to change a tire, so I called my Dad for his advice on what to do after we got the donut tire on while Dan and Gabe changed the actual tire. Near the end of the call, we were trying to see how far we were from Sheridan, so I sent Gabe to run down the highway just a little ways to see what number the exit sign had on it. (We could see the sign, but we just barely couldn't read it clearly.) He runs down there, reads it, and runs back. The unfortunate thing for him is that the tire blew as we were going uphill, so he had to run back uphill to get back to us. He's a bit of a clown, so as he gets tired he just falls over on his face on the side of the interstate.


"Gabe!" I yelled. "What's the number?!"


Without saying anything he uses his fingers to hold up each of the three numbers. I tell my dad, and he says we'll make it to Sheridan. As I'm hanging up, a sheriff's car pulls up behind Gabe, who's still laying by the side of the highway... I'm sure he thinks we hit him or something, so I start yelling at Gabe to get up, and he jumps up and looks over at the sheriff, who has his window down and I'm sure is either wondering what's going on or thinks we're crazy. Either way he drives off once he knows Gabe is fine. We laughed for so long!


The other funny thing about blowing a tire is that when we first got on the highway that morning, Dan had passed a Walmart semi truck at one point. When we pulled off to pick up Gabe, as I was merging back onto the interstate the Walmart truck passed us, and Dan urged me to pass it again. However... we were about halfway through fixing the blown tire when this Walmart truck passed us a third time.

"Dan! There goes the Walmart truck!" I yelled to Dan as the truck flew by.


"Nooooo!" he wails. Gabe and I laughed so hard! We never saw that Walmart truck again. It was long gone.


We spent an hour in Sheridan waiting for them to put the tire on for us. We got there and they had a used tire that they would sell us at a discounted price, so since we didn't know when the other three tires had been put on the car, (we just knew they hadn't all been put on at the same time,) we purchased it and got back on the road.