From Sea to Shining Sea!

When a dear friend of some 20 years told me that he was about to move to Florida from our beloved Las Vegas I was both delighted and disappointed.  Disappointed that I was losing a dear friend and delighted that he had finally fallen on good times.

His father-in-law had passed away and had left him his house in Florida!

There was however a problem, my friend had recently fallen down and broken his arm.  Now in his 80s, neither he nor his wife felt up to the drive, which would entail hiring a truck and towing their car behind.  At least a four-day journey.  Enter yours truly.  Alan [my friend’s name] asked if my son and I would be available to drive the rented truck with their vehicle in tow from Las Vegas to Ft. Lauderdale in Florida; they would of course meet all expenses and Fly us home to Las Vegas. They would follow by air in 4 days time.

I discussed the trip with my son Robert and subject to him being able to get time off from work we agreed to undertake the adventure.  We had no idea what we had let ourselves in for!

I immediately went to my computer and requested a printout of directions. Las Vegas to Fort Lauderdale, Florida my computer told me, was a total distance of 2645.4 miles [4257.2km].  An estimated traveling time of 38 hours 19 minutes.

Three nights and 4 days later, I, and my son, two parrots, and a truck loaded with furniture with a car on the back arrived in Ft. Lauderdale. Whoever created the on-line estimate obviously wasn’t driving a truck towing another car! The recommended maximum speed towing a trailer is 55 miles per! This put an additional 10 hours on the journey.

To say that everything that could go wrong did go wrong would be an understatement.

The rental truck had a faulty hitch that took two trips to their depot to resolve. One day and a night into our journey the credit card we were using to purchase gas was blocked. The gas company became suspicious and as a security measure decided to block its use.

$195.00 and one full day later we got the matter resolved!

Two days into our marathon we came out of our hotel to find two of the four tires of the trailer carrying Al’s car were flat! A rescue call to the hire truck company brought a tire company’s mobile unit and three hours later we were once again on our way.

Our journey was over the 4^th of July weekend and the south coast of America was enjoying a hurricane. Two of our 4 days were spent driving through pouring rain.

Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, back to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and eventually Florida!

We arrived just in time to welcome our friends into their new home!   After all – what are friends for!