Collecting the Car

July 5, 2010:

Garrison and I head down to southern New Jersey in his Ford Expedition, with a U-haul car carrier in tow. The original plan was to leave at 2:00 AM in order to get me back in time for a family picnic. That was deemed unfavorable, so the time was shuffled to 4:00 AM.

The road to the car wasn't bad. It took a little longer than planned, partly due to construction, partly due to the classic GPS "Fooled you!", and partly due to filling the Expedition's gas tank, which is roughly the size of any major sports stadium.

Tom couldn't wait for us to arrive (meaning he had to leave) so he left the key and the title concealed for me to pick up.

We pulled into the lot to find the SVX sitting alone, and Tom was not kidding when he said he hadn't driven it in a while; it was well covered with dust. The battery was ten times dead. We put the jump charger box on the car, and it fired up. In an attempt to pull it onto the trailer, I found out that the car has plenty of power right from idle. Garrison decided that he shouldn't be between the trailer and the truck while guiding me up the ramps... I wasn't sure the car wouldn't wind up in the back of the Expedition, too!

The journey home was uneventful until we hit Route 33 in Pennsylvania. There was supposedly a three car accident that also involved a rig some number of miles ahead. We found this out from a guy who was in the highway-turned-parking lot with us. It took us over two hours to move 4/10ths of a mile in 100+ degree heat. We killed a cooler full of Gatorades and Vitamin Waters.

I told a woman who was trying to scoot past everyone else by driving up the shoulder to get herself back in line, and she and the two other cars that were following her did just that. A matter of minutes later, we were on our way.

Garrison seemed quite frazzled during the last two hours of the trip. I suppose being on the road for over 14 hours with 11,000 lbs. of metal under your control in ridiculous heat without air conditioning can be a little intense. Today, he plays it up as just tired and says that he didn't feel like clobbering me. I wouldn't have blamed him if he had!

We got back to town for the final minutes of my family's picnic, had some food from the spread that was set out, and skipped out so we could both just go home. What a freakin' day.