The last big trip we took this summer was with my family up to Boise to play a little gig for my brother's ward party. This was the most interesting and eventful trip of the entire summer...for various reasons.
Let me begin with some background on one particular part of the story. My family has a long and somewhat sad history with cars. Every time we go on a long trip, we of course say a prayer for our safety, but we also remember to tack on a special plea for our vehicles. Why? Because, more often than not, we end up with some sort of random car trouble and several trips to the mechanic after we finally get home. We call this the "Durrant Car Curse". Just to give a few examples, we've had engine break-downs on the interstate, mufflers fall off on the high way, entire wheels (complete with half the axle still attached) fall off on canyon roads...well, you get the picture. (I thought marrying out of the family name would "break the curse", but several tire changes, engine lights, loose fan belts, a broken fly wheel, and one complete engine rebuild later, it's easy to see the effects haven't quite worn off yet...)
Well, a few years ago, my family bought a monstrous red and white 1987 Chevy Suburban. I mean, the thing is a BEAST. Since then, and not the least bit surpisingly, we've had some interesting episodes with this car as well. The first long trip we took it on was to Boise for the State Solo Ensemble competition when I was a Junior in high school. Long story short, we got as far as Pocatello and actually had to rent a car at the Pocatello airport just to get to Boise in time for the competition. There have been several more sad instances, but in order to spare you a long and depressing tale, I'll skip ahead a few years to our latest adventure.
So this time around, dad naturally took great care to have our beast looked over and checked out thoroughly before we even hit the road. After getting a tune up, everything was in order and ready to go...or so we thought. The 6 hour freeway drive went smooth and we rolled into Boise around midnight with high hopes, a false sense of security, and (we didn't know it yet), only one lugnut left on the front left wheel. Thankfully, the first sign of trouble came when we turned down the street to go to my brother's house. We heard a weird, crunchy grinding noise and our hopes of having a normal trip quickly went down the toilet. A couple minutes later, we pulled into Matt and Brittany's driveway with a wheel that was barely attached but feeling very blessed that it had decided to come off while we were going 20 mph on a residential road instead of while doing 80 on the freeway in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing we could do but wait until morning to call a tow truck and get the wheel and the lugnuts put back on. That was the end of our worries, right? Wrong.
The "beast" at a rest stop on the way up to Boise
The interesting thing about this story is that it wasn't just our cars that had problems. Almost everything that could go wrong did. Don't get me wrong, though...the trip was still fun, there were just some weird things that happend.
The first day in Boise was great. It was bright and sunny out and we went to the state fair and had a blast looking at all the cows, sheep, llamas, horses, tractors, booths, produce, flowers, chickens, etc.
Holy Cow!
Me and Jill with the biggest pig in the U.S. or something like that...it was only 50 cents to see him so we figured, "what the heck?"
Llama!
Pretty flower at the fair
That night we played our gig at Matt and Brittany's ward party. The food was amazing and the games were fun. It was exciting to meet new people and especially to have a chance to spend time with Matt and Brittany.
Playing our little show
One of the games we played was "Minute to Win It". Patrick had to unwind all the ribbon without breaking it in under a minute. Brittany had to lift the M&M's up to her face and eat them without dropping them.
There was also a cute little photo booth set up that we all took pictures in. It was especially hot that day so we all look really sweaty.
The party was so much fun in fact, that nobody really noticed the giant, ominous clouds rolling in and the breeze picking up. By the time we left the party, it was pretty dark and stormy, but we didn't really think anything of it. To us, a storm was just a good excuse to stay in at Matt and Brittany's, play games, eat snacks and take advantage of some cooler weather. And we did...until the huge gust of wind that took out the power in the middle of our first game. This was about 7 or 8 PM.
As the night went on, the wind got stronger, tree branches blew down all over the place, the power stayed out and it got really hot without the fans to bring in cool air from outside. We called the National Weather Service hotline and learned that the entire Boise area was out of power and the surge had caused a major power station to blow out. The name "Boise" literally means "City of Trees" for a good reason, and all those trees were posing a major problem. There were downed trees and branches taking out power lines and starting fires everywhere. We could hear sirens and fire engines all around the city. Fortunately, we were in a more sheltered neighborhood so we only got some branches down (one hit Brittany's car and scratched it, but that was the only damage).
Patrick with one of the branches that came down in the front yard that night.
All we could do was wait out the heat and hope the power would come back on so we could use the fans in the windows. We played more games, ate more snacks, talked, and joked about how we were about to play the X-Box just before the power went out. We actually had a lot of fun, but we were still a little nervous about branches or whole trees coming down on the house.
It was pitch black so you can't see anything in the videos, but you can hear all the sirens and stuff going on in the background.
Finally, around 1 AM we decided just to go to bed and hope for the power to come back on. It did...at 3 AM and woke us up when all the lights suddenly flipped on. Fortunately, I usually get up around that time for my early morning prego bathroom trip so it didn't bother me too much. I was just glad the fans came on so we could get some relief from the horrible heat!
A few hours later, we got up to go to church and on the way there, we were able to see some of the carnage from the night before. It was as bright and sunny as it had started out the day before. The area of Boise Matt and Brittany live in mainly had a lot of branches down. From what we heard, though, the areas that were hit the hardest had downed power lines, fires, and uprooted trees that had gone through a couple houses. Some areas were still out of power and stayed that way for the rest of that day and even part of the next.
One of the big branches that fell
After church and a delicious dinner, it was time to head home. We couldn't help wondering what else could happen after the car and the huge storm...
Two hours out of Boise at a rest stop in the middle of the desert, our fears were confirmed. We stopped for a bathroom break and the beast decided not to start up again. We were sure we were going to have to call Matt to come pick us up and we'd have to stay another night in Boise. Fortunately, dad and Patrick decided all we needed was a jump and a guy who happened to be from Bear Lake provided us with just that and we were on our way.
These are a couple good views of the area surrounding the rest stop. There's NOTHING around for miles.
The rest of the ride went just fine...that is until we got pulled over 5 miles from my parent's house for a broken tail light. When my dad told him about our insane trip, the officer just laughed and joked that maybe he should escort us the rest of the way home. The good thing was that he must have felt really sorry for us because we didn't get a ticket or anything.
Man, what a trip! All I can say is this one will definitely go down in history.
