Two Trips to Houston in Two Weeks

I thought that our last trip to Houston was going to be the only one we made.

But then, on Friday afternoon, Kevin came home from work at lunchtime and asked how quickly we could all get packed and get into the car for another trip to our house there.

And, in short order, we were on our way.  (It was helpful that I had spent Friday morning cleaning the house and doing laundry, so everything was ready for the weekend.)

And then, when we were in the middle of nowhere between Amarillo and Dallas (which is a six hour drive through nothing) on a Friday afternoon (where little towns are pretty much closed for the weekend anyways), the air conditioner in my car quit.  And you don't know hot until you have driven through Texas on a 90 degree day in a car with no air conditioning.

We stopped at a few places to try to get it fixed, but the first one sent us packing, and the second one sent us packing, and then Kevin bought a do-it-yourself recharge kit at the third one, but it didn't work.  So we just decided to stop stopping and get it fixed in Houston the next day. H.O.T.

But then I found a place to get it fixed the next morning.  And it was only the second place that I tried.

After that, the kids had a good time eating cheeseburgers from the corner store in our neighborhood, swimming in the pool, and playing Pokemon and video games with one of their old friends that lives on our street.



In fact, while I was walking them down the street to go play, we heard a very loud explosion.  We figured someone had just let off a firework or something, and continued on our way.  Just as we got to the neighbor's house, Kevin called me to let me know there was no power at our house.  It coincided with the boom.

Yeah, so no more lights or air conditioning for us.  At least the kids were set up at the neighbor's house, where there was still power.

It turned out that the transformer right behind our house shorted to the ground because a vine had climbed all the way up the pole to the wires.  I can't believe it happened right after we got out of the pool and the back yard.  I don't want to think about what would have happened if we had still been playing back there and splashing around.

But an electric company guy came out to fix it all up.  He even strapped some spikes to his boots and just climbed right up that pole.

But after he fixed it, we had power again, and all was well.



See?  Here is a puppy, and he says so.

And so we made the 11-hour trip between Amarillo and Houston four times in just 10 days.  That's at least 44 hours in the car if you don't feel like doing the math.