Hot Off The Presses: Column #2

Here's the second column I wrote about our trip. This one will be printed in the January issue of the Kickapoo Free Press.

Postcards From The Road

When Bad Things Happen To Road People

It has been said that you learn more when things go wrong than you do when they go right. If that is true, then I am now officially brilliant.

The first few weeks of our great big road trip have seen one problem after another. And the problems started just a few minutes after we left home.

In Westby, we pulled into the Ace Hardware to top off our propane tank. While pulling up the small hill into the parking lot, our motorhome got stuck on the ice. I couldn’t go forward, so I tried to back up. That was a mistake. When I backed-up, our tow dolly jack-knifed and our van (which was on the tow dolly) slammed into the corner of our motorhome. The damage wasn’t too bad, but the incident was an omen of things to come.

As we struggled to move the motorhome, the folks at Ace Hardware and Mr. Tire came to our rescue. They helped us get the van off the tow dolly and then put some sand on the ice so the motorhome could get enough traction to get up the hill.

As we were doing this, I noticed that we had run over a screw with the left front tire of the motorhome. The guys from Mr. Tire took a look at it and thankfully, the screw hadn’t penetrated too deep, so the tire wasn’t leaking air.

Before we left, Richard from Mr. Tire helped us add air to the tow dolly tires. As he was doing this, he noticed that the left wheel on the tow dolly was really loose. The nut that holds the bearing in was almost all the way off, which could have allowed the wheel to fall off the tow dolly. That would have been a mess.

I once read that it’s less important what happens to you in life than it is how you react to what happens to you. With that in mind, we decided to look at our little misadventure in Westby as a blessing rather than a curse. After all, if we hadn’t gotten stuck on the ice, we wouldn’t have found the screw in our tire and we wouldn’t have known that the wheel on the tow dolly was falling off. I guess it’s all in your perspective.

Space prohibits me from detailing all of our misadventures, but the results have been a cut hand, a sprained thumb, a scrapped leg, and a damaged tow dolly. The capper occurred on a Saturday night when we were on our way to visit with friends in Tennessee. On the way to their house, we hit not one, but two deer with our van. A buck and a doe were trying to cross the road. We hit the buck with the right front of the van and the doe ran head first into the right side of the vehicle. The deer both ran off, but our van was pretty badly damaged.

According to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.” So even though we’re feeling a bit beaten down right now, we apparently are growing stronger with each mishap. I guess that’s one silver lining that is coming from all of the clouds of bad luck.

Fortunately, the bad luck hasn’t stopped us from seeing some great sights. During our first few weeks we’ve visited the Stones River National Battlefield, seen the unbelievable Christmas decorations at the Opryland Resort, and we attended a fantastic concert by Nashville native Jonell Mosser. We’ve also had the opportunity to visit with friends and family.

I’m a big believer in karma. With all of the mishaps we had during the first few weeks of our trip, I’ve got to believe that we are due for some very good karma the rest of the way.