A rocky start

What Bishop vacation wouldn't start off with drama?  NONE.

Oh there's drama.  There's all kinds of drama!

First of all, let me thank my awesome friend Jennifer for staying the night last night and being available to take me on an emergency run to QT to purchase a one gallon gas tank.  Yeah, that's right.  The van wouldn't start.  I knew the gas was low, but there should have been enough to start it and get to the gas station this morning.  Alas, at 6:20 when we were trying to leave, the van would not start.

So because she's pretty much the best person in the world in my eyes, she got OUT OF BED and drove me to QT.  Our green van was "conveniently" parked under the carport, so we couldn't get it out to run to the gas station.  But Jennifer is a trooper.  And off she and I went to QT.

Then things started to get really interesting.

I was SO thankful they had a little tank I could fill to begin with.  The guy at the counter was really helpful and showed me what to do and added $3.25 to my card so I could fill the tank.  He made sure to let me know I had to push the nozzle down into the gas can.  It was Jennifer who saw me starting to just hold the can and put the nozzle in who told me to put the gas can on the ground.  Great idea!  Two hours of sleep does not often lead one to think clearly though.
 

Thanks Jennifer for not letting me expose one of my "girls" to the camera!

 So, I'm standing there, pumping the handle and nothing is happening.  Then I hear the guy inside say "You have to select what kind you want."  It seems that the fact that I pre-paid combined with the fact that I was not filling up my van led me to be an idiot and not realize that THAT was why the gas wasn't coming out.  Cheap unleaded selected, I proceeded to pump gas into this tiny little tank.  Then Jennifer took me back home.  FYI-I am pretty sure she thought the whole situation was hilarious!

To make it worse, or better, some older creepy guy in this beat up car saw me walking with the gas can to the pump and said "Are you out of gas?"  And I'm thinking #1 - Duh.  #2 - No, I'm going to mow my lawn at 6:30am in khaki capris and a nice shirt.  He asked me if I had walked, as if he was going to offer to "help" me.  Yeah...I'll bet he was going to help me.  Not sure if I would have ever gotten back home though.  Fortunately, Jennifer walked over and I politely thanked him and told him my friend had brought me. And back we went to my house.  *Disclaimer* - He could have been a very nice man, just wanting to help, but no thanks!

So after we get back home, I am standing there outside, trying to figure out how to get something seemingly self-explanatory to make sense to my tired brain. Kris comes out and says that the Internet told him it was most likely the battery, not the gas. How the battery would have died I had no clue, but I was hopefully that the van was just out of gas. Kris took over at this point and poured the tiny bit of gas into the van. Did the van start? As you can guess, it did not. Why would it? We're just trying to go on vacation after all...

Once again, I was thankful for Jennifer who had jumper cables.  I have wanted to keep jumper cables in my van for quite some time, but we just don't have them.  I will not expound further on that at this time.  Because we were unsure of what to actually DO with the jumper cables, we asked the Internet to help us once more.  At one point, when Kris was trying to connect the cables to the vans, and seemed unsure of himself, he said "This is what happens when you marry a computer geek."  I assume he was talking about the fact that he had to ask Google how to appropriately jump the van!  Red to dead. Red to undead.  Black to undead.  Black to dead.  Start undead car.  Wait several minutes - Kris waited I think about 54 seconds, but it started right up and we let it run for about 15 minutes before we told Jennifer goodbye and headed to the gas station to fill up and FINALLY get on the road, an hour and a half LATER than we anticipated leaving.   

Oh and I'd like to include a couple of quotes from the article we read that told us how to jump start the van. 

First:

"The first thing you want to remember when jump-starting a car is that a slight possibility of explosion does exist." 

WOW.  That's comforting.  No wonder Kris was nervous!!

Second:

"Step One

Park the booster vehicle close to the one that needs to be jumped, but not so close that the vehicles are touching in any way." 

I know I was tired, and that some people are just plain stupid, but at what point would anyone think the vehicles had to TOUCH in order for this process to work and also, that's just an insurance claim waiting to happen!

Here are some pictures Jennifer had us pose for.

Kris successfully connected the cables without anything exploding!!  It was a proud moment, for sure.

FINALLY.  The van is running again! We can head to Florida, by way of an overnight stop near Macon, GA.

Packed up and ready to say goodbye to St. Louis for a week!  By the way, I packed the van up, because as you may or may not recall, I am known for telling Kris "You're horrible at putting things places."  I'm quite proud of my organized van.

And we can't forget the most important thing of all.  52 oz peach white tea for the road...and just over 100 extra ounces to sustain me for me a couple of days into vacation.  Truth be told, it'll be gone today or tomorrow.

Can't wait to see what the rest of the week brings!