One-Eyed, One-Horned, Flying Purple Transmission Eater... Part 1.

How can you not continue reading with a title like that, right?

Last week was A WEEK.  You know what I mean... a week that just DIDN'T STOP.  I jokingly kept calling it the nightmare from which I couldn't wake up.  It's too strange of a story not to share.

I'll start by saying that as a family, we took up camping last summer.  We bought an old pop up and tramped around the Southeastern US (ok, mostly just GA but we did make it to KY for a few days) with our trusty 2001 Mazda Tribute pulling our 1997 Palomino Pony here there and everywhere.

It wasn't a fancy setup, but fancy and camping don't really make sense to us.  So in short, we liked camping and we didn't mind roughing it.

But... you get to looking around the campground and you start to feel a little twinge every time someone with a bumper pull camper just backs in, throw their lawn chair out, and starts relaxing.  With two kids and the setup a pop up requires, we were working a minimum 1-2 hours each time we arrived or departed a camp site.  That was sort of a drag.

It was never more of a drag than this January when, on a whim, we decided to go camping on New Year's Day.  Sure, the lows were going to be in the 30's... but we had a heater, and we knew how to use it.  What we forgot about was how we were going to have to be setting up and taking down the camper in realllly cold weather.  Brrrrrrrrrrrr is all I have to say about that camping trip.

So we started daydreaming a little about how fun it would be to have a little bumper pull camper, one that we could park in the backyard and have it be ready at the moment's notice to go camping, and that would require less setup and take down time.

{enter the perpetrator, aka The One-Eyed.... Purple Transmission Eater}

We found an adorable, vintage, renovated camper on a camping classifieds page and fell in LOVE.  Like, over the top, who-cares-if-it's-51-years-old-I-WANT-IT type of love for this thing.  And could you blame us?  It's so.flipping.cool.

It has the original *turquoise* stove and oven, a dinette, a miniature shower stall, and a pull out couch and fold down bunk.  Woodwork and personality galore.

Basically what I'm saying here is that we got major stars in our eyes and admittedly wonder now if we would have stopped at anything to make this camper our family camping dream home.

So, we made arrangements for Chris to take Friday off work and drive a couple hours into another state to inspect, buy, and pull it home.  The camper only weighs ~1700 lbs, and our trusty-albeit-12-year-old Mazda was rated for 3500 lbs, so we were confident the tow job would get done.

We agreed we had no need to be a two camper family, so I posted our pop up for sale on a local Facebook yard sale and within hours had it sold to another family.  This had to be confirmation that adorable vintage camper was meant to be, right??

{I should have at this point remembered what we talked about in church a few weeks back... that sometimes the Great Deceiver works by wrapping things up in a pretty bow to make wrong steps appear right...}

So off went the husband to fetch the camper, and all seemed right with the world.

And then I got The Call.

The call that started with my husband saying, "Hey honey... I'm at a gas station in X other state... the transmission light came on in the Mazda and now it won't shift back into gear..."

at which point I pretty much just fell on the floor and started crying and foaming at the mouth.  I don't know much about cars, but I do know that a car that is over a decade old, with 200+k miles on it, and is PAID FOR probably isn't going to recover from a transmission problem.

So while I'm wailing and gnashing my teeth, husband calls for a tow truck.  Tow truck driver and husband see the transmission fluid everywhere and determine the car needs to go straight to a Mazda dealership.  Game plan was to tow car with camper still attached to the dealership and then drop husband off at a nearby hotel for the night.

Just as they were about to tow the whole rig out of the parking lot, they notice that one of the camper's tires is wobbling.  A quick inspection shows that the tire is missing 2 of 5 bolts that keep it attached to the wheel thingy (again... don't know much about cars) and the 3 remaining screws/bolts are loose.  OMGee.  I still refuse to even think about what would've happened if husband had been cruising down the interstate and the wheel had just fallen off...

So, anyways, they tighten up remaining bolts and drive realllly slow to the dealership about 10 miles away.  Drop off in parking lot, take husband to hotel, husband calls me, I report chest pain and trouble breathing (side effect of stress, haha).

He gives me the further bad news that the dealership service department is closed on weekends.  Grrrreat.  Now he's either a) stranded until they can look at/fix it (unlikely) on Monday, or b) he must strand the car in X other state and find another way to get camper home and deal with the car later.

I call my mom to update her on the situation and she says that her husband is volunteering to drive his truck up there the next day to rescue Chris and the camper.  That is the first good news I've heard all day.

{insert restless night of sleep, including a 4 am phone call from a mama potentially in labor, here}

Saturday morning the husband walks down the street to the dealership while my step dad leaves GA with his truck to retrieve the stranded family member/camper.  It's bad news all around.  Not only can they not look at the car until Monday, they really really want the camper off their lot.  Haha.

Step dad arrives soon thereafter and they begin the Great Tire Changing Caper of 2012.  To sum it up, here are the details "by the numbers":
*1: pair of Sherpa-lined slippers bought to keep step dad's feet warm while he watched my husband try to fix the tire
*2: screws with missing bolts that were actually rusted permanently to the wheel
*3: times the husband's debit card was declined while I was on the phone with fraud detection explaining that yes, it was the cardholder trying to buy $400 worth of stuff at a tool supply company in X other state
*4: hours spent on tire before taking it to a machine shop to have the rusted screws drilled out
*5: bathroom breaks
*6: times my step dad tried to convince my husband to just light the camper on fire and leave the scene of the crime
*7: new tools purchased to remedy tire situation, including but not limited to a grinder, socket wrench, and cordless drill

Then, at only 6 pm, the tire situation was officially fixed, the camper was attached to the truck, and the boys were headed back to GA.

At 7 pm my mom called me to tell me that she had "talked to the guys" and "the truck's transmission was "acting weird" and they were stopping at Krystal for some chili."

I was at home with my bff and her husband and kids (they came over to keep us company) when I heard this news.  Apparently I looked like death when I hung up the phone and only managed to croak out "Transmission #2..." before experiencing a breakdown.  They were champs and dealt with my sniffling, hiccuping, and swearing before I got a follow up call from my husband which said that they were back on the road, the transmission was fine, and it was just "a little windy, that's all."  More confirmation that I should NEVER EVER believe anything my mom says without checking with the original source first.

Then of course my phone chirps with a text from the weather alert system, reporting "high winds, drivers of high profile vehicles should take caution and avoid travel."  Really?  REALLY???  So I can't even breathe a sigh of relief that the truck is pulling the camper with its new tires because now I have to worry about it being blown off the road by 40+ mph wind gusts.

No sooner than I read that text, my phone rings.  My dear friend who has been threatening labor all day is now DEFINITELY in labor and headed to the hospital in Atlanta. Thankfully, my bff (who is also a doula) drives a van with extra car seats and promptly packed my kids up, told me to have fun at the birth and not worry about the boys and the camper/car situation, and was out the door in 20 minutes flat.  I was on the road in another 10 minutes and arrived at the hospital just in time to get a text from the husband that they had made it home with the camper safely.

3 hours later a beautiful baby boy was born and I had momentarily forgotten about the nightmarish events from earlier that weekend.

And while I'd like to say "all's well that ends well..." that will remain to be seen in Part 2.  :)


{are you experiencing sympathy chest pain yet???}