Mini Mileage

On The Oregon Trail – Day #5

Paris, TX to Amarillo, TX. Pretty much traffic and Interstate free day. It took us a while to get out of Paris, but then it was US-82 to US-287 to about 30 miles of I-40. Amazing how fast you can travel 400 miles when you get to go 80 MPH. We had time to do a little Roadside America sight-seeing: Lady Bug VWs in St. Jo, World’s Smallest Skyscraper in Wichita Falls and the Slug Bug Ranch in Conway. A Holiday Inn Express breakfast in Paris where the highlight was the cinnamon bun, and that wasn’t very good. Lunch was terrific at Gidgets Sandwich Shack in Wichita Falls near the skyscraper. We finished the day with a “gourmet” dinner at the Food Court at the Westgate Mall.

Somewhere just before rolling in to the Slug Bug Ranch the Mini rolled past 36,000 miles.

On The Oregon Trail – Day #1

I set my phone’s alarm for 5:00 AM, to get an early start. I woke up at 4:45 on my own, so we just got going. All the stuff we are carrying seemed like an awful lot while it was sitting on the floor inside the AirBnB. It seemed like a lot when making 5 trips from room to car too. But with the back seats folded down flat the Mini swallowed it right up.

I don’t know it was just one of those days or was it because the both of us are so frazzled from the whirlwind last two weeks, but we had a very eventful day. Here are the Top Five:

  1. On one of the trips back into the AirBnB from the car I walked into the glass of the sliding door. Fortunately I was moving slow enough that no damage was done to me or it.
  2. During final cargo arrangement inside the car I accidentally bumped the horn button with my butt. Fortunately it was a short duration contact so that it didn’t disturb the pre-dawn neighborhood quiet.
  3. We were too early getting to the south side Dunkin’ Donuts, they don’t open until 6:00 on Saturday’s. There is another Dunkin’ on the other side of town, basically on the way, so that became our next stop. We were still too early. But only by a few minutes, so we waited.
  4. We were meeting a friend at the Cracker Barrel in Augusta for breakfast on our way west. We didn’t see her car and we didn’t see her in the dining room when we got there, so we sat on a couple of rocking chairs to wait. After a few minutes we realized that she is not a late arrival person, Donna was about to text her to see where she was when her phone buzzed with a text from Carol, “I’m inside.” We forgot to check the store part…
  5. Spurred by a conversation at a farewell gathering about road trips, I thought it would be cool to take a photo of the “Welcome To” sign of each state we pass through, naturally I remembered well after we were already deep into Georgia to get one. I rationalized that crossing the Georgia border didn’t really count as it no major milestone because it is only 15 miles into the journey. We managed to traverse nearly all of the Peach State on two lane back roads before having to get on the dreaded Interstate. This worked out perfectly for me to get the Alabama sign in the Welcome Center. I cruised slowly through looking, but unfortunately there wasn’t one. Dang it, the only opportunity was a mile or so back on the side of the Interstate.

To the best of my guessing ability, either late today or maybe early tomorrow the Mini reached the 35,000 mile plateau.

34,000 Pounds of Thrust

This Friday and Saturday was the 43rd Annual Aiken’s Makin’ Arts and Craft Show. Two rows of tents along three blocks of downtown full of hand made knickknacks, gewgaws, bric-a-brac, trinkets, trifle, baubles, gimcrack, whatnots, thingamajigs, tchotchkes, doodahes and whim-wham. Also about a dozen purveyors of fair food for your dining pleasure.

Because we are people of leisure, we thought a good idea would be to beat some of the crowds and go on Friday, but by the time we did the usual morning stuff it was too hot outside to deal with it. So today we went with Plan B, we walked the 2-1/2 miles up to it, timing our arrival for the official 9:00 AM start. After walking the whole thing and finding absolutely nothing we wanted to buy, except a “fresh” lemonade and an ice cream, we checked out all the food vendors and decided that we would drive back later to get lunch.

Halfway home Donna said, “Oh, I forgot, we were supposed to go to the Indie Arts Vintage Market.” I said, “We’ll do that at lunch. We can even park there and walk the 2 blocks back to Aiken’s Makin to eat.” The vintage market is every other weekend and this one coincided with the big one. After seeing literally 6 blocks full of crafts in the morning we breezed through the market, right until we got near the other exit. Both of us stopped and went, “Cooool!” There was one guy1 there with these vintage cameras turned into lamps. They were sitting on old wooden tripods with an LED bulb in the metal flash reflector.

But the cameras weren’t what we were looking at, it was a couple of Flash Gordon spaceship looking lamps made from explosion-proof light housings and other found metal objects. We just had to have one.


On Monday the Ladybug passed through the 34,000 mile mark.

33,000 Feet in the Air

Next time we drive…

Our flight home from the northwest started very early Monday morning or very late Sunday night, east coast time. We went to bed at the Portland Airport Hampton Inn at about 7 PM on Sunday night with a 2:00 AM Monday wake-up call because we had a 5:00 AM departure time on an American Airlines 737-800. We woke up on our own at about 1:30 and just decided to get the trip started.

We got to the airport at around 2:00 and it was a ghost town. Fortunately the Hampton Inn Desk Clerk warned us it would be that way. He told us the gate agents wouldn’t even open up until 3:00 AM and TSA wouldn’t start up until 4:00, so we found a couple of seats and got comfortable.

At 3:00 we got in line to check our bags. When that was done the agent told us that TSA didn’t start until 4:00 on our departure concourse, but on D & E they had 24 hour service so we could go though security there and just walk back to our gate on C concourse. So that’s what we did and then we found a couple of seats and got comfortable.

Boarding the plane went smoothly, but after we backed away from the gate and got on a taxiway, we came to a stop. The pilot came on the PA and said something about a center fuel pump and getting a technician to maybe cycle a circuit breaker. So they found us a different gate to park at while maintenance was called to trouble shoot the problem. Two hours later we left our plane and walked to the neighboring gate to begin the boarding process all over again. We rolled back from our second gate in our second plane 3 hours past our scheduled time. I wonder if American could still count this flight as being on time since we did in fact roll from our original gate at the correct time…

Those 3 extra hours in Portland greatly outstripped our 1-1/2 hour layover in Dallas. Once the airline’s app on my phone knew we were not going to make our Dallas to Augusta flight it offered up several options for other flights. Unfortunately they were all listed as for the next day, Tuesday. Turns out there is only one direct flight between DFW and AGS per day, so I picked that one rather than and earlier flight that stopped in Charlotte where we’d change planes to fly to Augusta.

On arrival at Dallas we sought out a customer service person to see about a voucher for a couple meals and a hotel room. (I’ll skip the whole finding the customer service counter fiasco in an unfamiliar airport thing.) The person we did find was very helpful and said she could get us home today, but we would have to go to Charlotte first. The CLT flight was going to be first class (like we paid for), but the AGS trip would be in coach. She couldn’t get us seated next to each other on either flight either, but we figured during boarding we could work a swap with someone. We were ready to be home, so we said we’d take it.

When we got to the gate for the Dallas to Charlotte, the departure time was pushed out a couple hours. While annoying, it wasn’t as bad as the Portland to Dallas delay. We had a long layover in CLT, so the delayed DFW departure just shifted the layover to Dallas. When we boarded our plane in DFW, Donna asked the fellow on her aisle seat if he would swap for an aisle seat two rows back so we could sit together, he agreed.

When we got to Charlotte, the sun was going down on Monday. We had enough time to use the rest rooms and walk slowly to the gate. The flight to Augusta was scheduled to board at 10:00 PM, which was 24 hours since we had woke up in Portland. I was in row 9 at a window seat next to a blind guy I had to crawl over to get in, because he had his headphones on and ignored my tapping on his shoulder. Donna was in row 7 just in front of a noisy, anxious kid. When they closed the aircraft door, Donna could see that the last row of first class was empty, so she called over the flight attendant and asked to get us moved. At first, she didn’t want to do it, but when Donna told her we paid for first class tickets for the whole journey and it was the airline’s fault we were inconvenienced, she relented. So I crawled back over my blind guy and Donna squeezed by her seat neighbor and we settled into some bigger seats right next to each other.

The topper on the travel day was of course our luggage was not on the carousel at AGS. The “Track Your Baggage” section of the American Airlines app, told me that one of the bags was in Charlotte and the other was still in Dallas. The friendly baggage guy filled out the forms on the computer and told us that more than likely we would get our bags on Tuesday. A quick check of the time showed that what he meant to say was later that day, as it was already 12:15 AM on Tuesday. We walked through the nearly deserted airport parking lot to get in the Mini for the drive home. It passed through the 33,000 mile mark somewhere on the trip.

Twenty-eight hours after we woke up in a Portland, Oregon hotel room, we climbed into our own bed in Aiken, South Carolina.

About 10 hours later the two suitcases were delivered to our door. Looking at the airport stickers on the luggage, it seems like the big bag made a quick trip to Las Vegas before coming home. I’d ask what the deal was, but you know what they say – What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

32,000 + 73,000 = 8 Day Blogging Hole

Somewhere in the last eight days on one of Donna’s trip’s to the gym the Lady Bug passed the 32,000 mile mark.

This past Sunday afternoon on the way home from the South Carolina coast the CTBNL passed through the 73,000 mile mark.

In that same time frame we have taken 8 Motoring Challenge photos worth almost 20 points, but we missed out on the big one (a separate post that will happen sooner than eight days from now.)

After About 31,000 Minutes

We went up to Hendersonville, to the SMH to visit with my sister and her husband the weekend before Christmas. They had just moved in and wanted our help in hanging all their paintings, prints, diplomas, bits of memorabilia and whatnot. We originally planned on spending two nights, but by late in the second day, having finished hanging everything up, having not slept well on night one and me starting to feel a little sick, we opted to pack our bags after dinner and leave. This got us home early enough get a full night’s sleep in our own bed and not have to drive on the roads on Christmas Eve.

Part way home, Donna decided to put some hand cream on. As she always does, she removes the wedding ring from her hand and places it on the pinkie of my right hand to hold while she completes this task. Trouble was, there was no wedding ring on her left hand. A quick search of her purse and immediate passenger seat area turned up nothing. When we got home we made a more thorough search of the car interior and every nook and cranny of our luggage, but still no ring.

We figured the most likely spot the ring was left was on top of the dresser, in the bedroom we spent the previous night in. Donna does remember putting hand cream on shortly before we made the decision to pack up and go. She texted my sister to go in the bedroom and see if she could find it. The reply came that the ring was not anywhere to be found in there. Our speculation was that it probably fell off the dresser and hit the carpeted floor so it wasn’t heard and one of their pesky cats has batted somewhere not easily visible. We asked for a second check around and they still didn’t find it.

After a couple weeks, or about twenty thousand minutes, Donna felt funny not having a wedding band on, so we took her retirement watch that has been collecting dust for the last year and a half down to a local pawn shop and sold it. We then took the proceeds and walked next door to one of those perpetually Going Out of Business jewelry stores and bought a wedding ring as similar as we could to my band.

About 31,000 minutes after the wedding ring disappeared, it magically reappeared. My sister texted Donna that she had looked down, and there it was. Obviously our cat theory was right and now one of them had batted it back into the daylight. Yesterday we made a day trip to North Carolina to retrieve the wondering ring. While motoring along I-385 not far from Gray Court, SC the Lady Bug passed the 31,000 mile plateau.

30,000 Damn Yankees

We saw this sign on the way down to Hilton Head on Thursday, but Donna was driving and there was some traffic, so I said we’ll be sure and stop on the way back home. I had a good idea of where the sign was, but still had drive by it and then find a spot to turn around to go back.

I took the picture and as I was getting back into the car another vehicle slowed down next to us. The driver zipped down their window and said, “I stopped, took a picture and sent it back home up north and everyone got a big kick out of it.” “Actually it used to be a giant Confederate flag, but someone burned it down.” (you can see that sign on an old Google Streetview)

On the way home on SC125, about halfway through the Bomb Plant, the Ladybug blasted past the 30,000 mile barrier.