Oh Yeah, I Almost Forgot...

[a Thelma & Louise Postscript]

I was looking for a photo I had on my phone and came across a picture I had taken on the very last day of my road trip.  It was the very final picture I took on my Epic Budget Adventure and I had completely forgotten all about it and the "episode" it captured.

I don't think I forgot all about it because it was some little thing.  On the contrary, I think I was trying to forget about it because it was the most wretched and traumatizing part of the entire trip.

The whole affair had been almost picture perfect until the moment I took that very last photo.

Up until then, the entire trip went somewhat smoothly (even taking into account the lost credit card, the lost gas cap, and even the humdinger I didn't mention in my last post about my truck breaking down and having to switch all the contents over to a new one--seriously, none of that was really all that bad when compared to the memory attached to this upcoming photo).

Up until that picture, my only major complaint of the whole affair came from my back, which, by day four began to ache so bad that every so often I had taken to sitting as strait as I could while leaning into the steering wheel just so I could breathe.  (Apparently the BUDGET part of the truck was the driver's seat.)

And as you can imagine, that last hour to home seemed to take forever.  I had that 'so-close-to-home-but-so-far-away' feeling.   At last, when I finally took the familiar exit off the freeway towards home I was relieved.  Home was just four miles away!

Then finally, as I turned around the last bend in the road...this is what I saw...

Road Construction!

Here's the killer part...my driveway is right where the road leads to at the far end of this picture.  Right there!

Mr. Construction worker here stopped me right before the finish line.  2,999.5 miles into my trip, with HALF A MILE TO GO!  My "Victory Lap" had been horrifically interrupted.  And not only that...he stopped me and kept me there for 19 minutes!

Seriously, if you don't quite understand the extreme trauma a situation like this is, then let me draw a diagram for you...

My FIRST thought was...
I can't breathe, I think I'm gonna die right here.

My SECOND thought was...
Maybe I could find something in the back of my moving truck to bludgeon Mr. Stop Sign Holder with and then hide his body in those especially bushy looking bushes on the left-hand side of the road, then I'd simply drive my get-away moving truck strait home.

My THIRD thought was...
To calmly get out of the truck, walk over to Mr. Stop Sign Holder, hand him the keys, and tell him to drive the truck to my house when and if the pilot car arrives because me and my aching back have decided to walk the rest of the way home.

Instead, I surrendered to the calamity and slumped onto the wheel in pitiful wretched defeat.

19 of the longest minutes of my entire life went by before the pilot car finally showed up.  I'm not kidding--19 minutes.  At last the sign was turned from "Stop" to "Slow" and I was making my long awaited finish.

Or was I??

Just as I made the .5 mile drive to the far end of the picture, there in the middle of the road right at MY driveway was this machine...

And naturally my driveway was on the LEFT side of the road.  I was just 6 feet from my driveway!  It was there that I was informed that the paint was not dry enough to drive across and then I was told to proceed PAST my driveway, follow the pilot car several miles farther down the road, at which point I would have to turn my moving truck around (without the help of my slightly inept wingman Thelma I might add), wait again for another pilot truck so that I could approach my driveway from the other way to avoid having to cross over any wet paint.

I think both my brain and back snapped at that point.  It was then I decided that I was not only the "captain" of my moving truck but the captain of my destiny as well.  And although I knew my instructions were to follow the pilot car and turn around and get in line behind the cars already waiting to go the other direction, I also knew that I was at the helm of an extremely large truck and I could use this to my advantage.

So farther down the road, waaaay past my driveway, as the pilot car stopped and gave me a wave signaling me to drive to the back of the long line of cars and turn around, this is where I knew it was now or never  (not to mention the fact that I was 4 times bigger than the pilot truck--this little detail may have emboldened me on a wee bit).  This was my chance!  So in a move that could have only been inspired by my visit to the Talladega Super Speedway, I punched the accelerator and cranked that truck's steering wheel as hard as I could and made a wild sweeping turn IN FRONT of the pilot car, gave him a friendly wave like I had misinterpreted his directions, and headed strait for my driveway in a blazon glory of speed and hysteria.

There, I turned into my driveway!  Me and my aching back...Home at last!