You Just Never Know…

And the adventure begins! Karen, Tammy, Raelene, Carol and I set off yesterday morning for Chicago to attend the Paper Arts show. We will be attending two days of classes and vendor presentations before the show even begins and then we will spend two days at the show finding brand new products for you!

So, just to let you know we have already had quite the adventure! The day started out well enough with sunshine and open roads as far as we could see! We said a prayer for safety, stocked up on coffee, tea and water and we were on our way!

Coffee, tea and water you say??? Yup….one hour in, as we were zipping through Ohio…you guessed it…potty break! But that was ok, it was a quick stop and fill up on gas .30 cheaper than in Pennsylvania and that was totally planned out ahead of time!

Off we went again and we were doing great until we got two hours outside of Chicago. The skies darkened, the wind picked up and all of the sudden we were smack dab in the middle of a Tornado watch with roadside traffic signs flashing “ALERT! ALERT!” in huge light up letters to us! The rain began to come down in torrential curtains of water that completely obscured the road. So, we pulled off to wait it out. We didn’t have to wait very long for the worst of the rain to move along and off we went again in a hazy drizzle.

However, there were no more open roads, we were in a traffic jam that would last the entire 150 miles that we had left to go! Shortly after we started off again, I spotted piles and piles of trash on the side of the road that was spilling into my “fast” (fast=40 miles and hour creep) lane. I couldn’t avoid it because of the traffic and so drove on through. As I did I mentally noted the broken glass bottles as I passed.

Yup…you guessed it…an hour later my tire pressure light binged on. My should be 36 PSI rear driver side tire was down to 27 pounds! Uh oh!  But, I told Karen that surely we can make it 30 more miles and she readily agreed.

Mmmmm….not going to happen! Forty-five minutes later, and only 21 miles from the hotel, we are crawling along at 10 miles an hour and three very cute, young men pull up along side of us with their windows down waving at us. Raelene rolled her window down and was all “Hey guys! What’s up?”

“You have a flat tire,” they say and they move on as we pull of on to the side of the road.   I guess if we had looked like this…

they might have pulled along side and helped us out…but nah off they went. But that’s ok, we are strong, independent woman…we can handle this!

Now God is really good and the rain had stopped at this point, so we were really happy about that! But, still…it was going to be a messy job and I was not looking forward to it in the soggy, humid 85-degree weather. So, I called roadside assistance and I figured I would let them deal with it!

No sooner had I gotten through the automated system to an honest to goodness human being when a huge yellow truck pulls up behind us! It was the Illinois Emergency Roadside Assistance truck! Yippee!!!

Out hops and a big burly guy that I knew could change our tire lickety split and boy did he ever! Before we knew it Terrence had our doughnut tire on and we were off again! Creeping down the road at 20 to 40 miles an hour, but we were off!

But, thanks to our doughnut tire and the continued traffic jam, it took us an hour and twenty minutes to go those 21 miles…but…alas we arrived safely! So…now, after a good night’s sleep we are off to the convention center for a full day of classes and vendor previews! We do not think we will run into any torrential rain, tornados or flat tires today…but with the five of us around you just never know!