I’d love to be able write more about our recent trip, but it’s just that nothing really blogworthy happened. It was just a genuinely good time with no real mishaps, which is never very fun when you’re trying to write about something.

Oh wait. How about the fact that a four hour trip took more like five because the last hour was spent driving up and down the same stretch of road looking for the house? Alright fine, I guess I’ll tell that story.

It started out bad because we left town about an hour later than we should have and we were already going to get to our final destination well after dark. The majority of the trip went smoothly, Brad drove and I talked his ear off about nothing important. Then suddenly, mid-pointless-sentence, we hit a pothole and my right leg lifted into the air and slammed back into the floorboards, splashing water all over. Water. Water that had leaked from the air conditioner and flooded my side of the Jeep. Water I hadn’t noticed until it was running down my legs.

Now my shoes were soaked and the cold air from the vents was doing nothing to dry them quickly. I tucked my feet up under myself and patiently waited to just get there already. We found the right road no problem, but weren’t sure about the address. It was getting dark fast, but no need to worry because Brad had been there before. Ten years ago.

We drove for what seemed like an eternity, what with my legs falling asleep underneath me and my arms tired from holding my shoes in front of the cold air. Brad scanned every house we drove by, hoping to find this place on nothing but a whim and a 10-year old memory. In the dark.

It probably would have been a good idea, at this point, to look up the address in Brad’s email. That’s what the ever-present Blackberry is for right? Constant connection to the world. Or maybe we could just call his aunt and uncle and ask for more specific directions. We would definitely have done that, I’m sure, if only we had even the faintest hint of wireless service. No bars my friends. We were on our own.

And then? Just then, when we were lost miles away from a cell phone tower and even further from a gas station and even further than that from an open gas station? Yes that is when the gas light came on and glared at us in the darkness.

We drove on though, not knowing how far we might have to go or how long the gas would last. We kept thinking maybe it’s the next one or the next one. Let’s just go a little bit further. Finally, after nearly hitting our ninth deer, we aborted the mission and turned around towards town.

That’s essentially where the story ends because we didn’t run out of gas before finding an open gas station, and by then we had a few bars and made our phone call. We turned around again and found the house in the dark. We didn’t hit any deer. And my shoes dried in the sun the next day. In the end, all was well, which makes for a very anticlimatic tale. If it makes you happier though, we did have to live with the stench of rotting water in the floor mats for a couple days. Mmm, moldy carpet, how your smell will always remind me of a trip to Manistee.