Vacations, vacations

It wouldn't be summer without some type of vacation. This year we embarked on a 4-day trip to Duluth, aka The North Shore, July 29 - August 1. Our vacation was again shared with Bill's sister Kim, her husband Terry and their kids, Andrew, Matthew and Marah. We began with an aggressive plan to meet at McDonalds for a 9:00 a.m. breakfast. We had checked the hotel web site and learned check-in was at 1:00 p.m. so our plans were to be there no later than check-in time. All was going well; Bill and I stayed up rather late to have the car basically packed and ready to go. Bill spent a good amount of time in the garage with all the doors open to his van cleaning it out in preparation for the trip. Given the heat wave we have been enduring, the garage was basically a sauna. The alternative was having the van outside in the bug-infested evening so the garage/sauna option seemed pretty good. Now you must know that from a woman's perspective it seemed odd to me that Bill wanted to clean the van only to go on vacation. Those of you with children know how dirty one's vehicle becomes on a trip with kids! Me -- I would be cleaning AFTER the vacation. Nonetheless, it kept him out of my hair as I attempted to pack everything for the kids and I. :-) Unfortunately for us the time spent with the doors open wore down his battery ... unbeknownst to us ... and we were in for a treat in the morning ....

The morning was going well -- we were behind schedule but only by about 15 minutes. The van was loaded to the gills (hmmmm were we going cross country or only two hours north???), the kids were buckled in their seats already fighting over what movie to watch on the DVD player and I was doing the usual female "final sweep" of the house to ensure nothing important was forgotten. That was when Bill appeared and said the dreaded words, "there is something wrong with my van." We have been suffering various car maladies with my van this summer and didn't feel comfortable taking it on a long trip so I immediately starting having visions of our vacation being on our deck. Don't get me wrong I like our deck but for me vacation means you leave your home. Turns out his van won't start, nothing, nada, not even a weak attempt to turn over.

Is it the battery, the alternator, something worse? Grab the jumper cables, pull my van out, hook everything up and ta dah! Van starts. Bill and I vow we will not turn it off for the remainder of the trip . . . a bit extreme . . . o.k., we vow to only park in places we can easily use jumper cables.