Adventures with Grandpa – Episode #2

One thing you must remember when traveling with Grandpa – no matter whether you’re driving or letting him drive, you can’t win. If you get behind the wheel, he thinks it’s because you doubt his abilities, think he’s getting old, or just plain don’t trust his driving. If you stand back and let him get behind the wheel, he wonders why he has to drive when you know where you’re going better than he does and besides, you got more sleep last night than he did (and who doesn’t?).

Heaven help you if you are driving and you let him hold the navigator (GPS). The first time I took a trip to Utah with Dad after I got mine, we were driving around one rainy night in heavy traffic, trying to find Jill’s new apartment. I was exhausted and getting a little cranky (I know, nobody has ever seen me get like that), and the navigator was telling me to turn here, turn there, and make a U-turn when I thought I knew where I was. I finally dragged my eyes away from the road to see what Dad was doing, only to see that he had been rotating the navigator every time I made a turn, making the navigator “think” that we had gone the wrong way. It would recalculate the route and instruct me to make another turn. At that point, Dad made the comment that “this thing really isn’t much good.” I was ready to snatch it out of his hands and toss it out the window, with him right behind it.

Anyway, back to the current trip.

It started to rain shortly after we left Vegas, and we had varying degrees of rain the whole way. In some places it was raining really hard, mainly when I was driving. I began to get concerned about the cedar chest in the back of the pickup, along with the stuff in our suitcases. I mentioned it to Dad, and he said that there was nothing to worry about. He said that at our rate of speed, the water would just fly backwards off the truck at an angle that would prevent the stuff in the back from getting wet. Besides, the cedar chest had so many coats of sealant on it that he didn’t think some water would harm it. In case I forget to mention this later, he was right. In spite of the many hours of rain we drove through, nothing got wet.

Anyway, I found that like many other men I have known, Dad doesn’t like to turn on the windshield wipers until you have already had your nervous breakdown and are ready for the straightjacket. Picture this: it’s beginning to rain. He doesn’t seem to notice. More and more rain is clouding up the windshield, and he doesn’t turn them on. Now you can barely see, still no wipers. It’s raining harder and you think, okay, any minute now, any minute now … when you have gone around the bend, he finally turns them on – to “mist.” And then he wonders why you are banging your head against your window.

Something happened as we were exiting the freeway onto the highway that eventually goes to LR's house. I was driving, and it had been pouring buckets of rain for a long time. A river of water was running off the highway. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous. I worried about hydroplaning, but I hoped that the truck was heavy enough, especially with the cedar chest in the back, to keep it on the road. As we were exiting the freeway, though, I felt a complete loss of traction under our wheels and we began to glide. Our momentum kept us going, but I had a sensation like I had years ago when I was idling our boat on a windy day in Lake Mead harbor, waiting to put it back on its trailer; like we were drifting towards danger and I had no brakes to stop it. I mentally prepared for the danger and tried to remember if you’re supposed to turn into the slide, away from the slide, whatever it is you are supposed to do to try to regain control. The thing is, though, we didn’t slide. Although I could feel nothing under our wheels, we exited the ramp, went straight down to the bottom, and I managed to pull the truck to the side of the highway to get traction again to stop at the bottom. I can still feel the strange sensation that I felt, and it felt like we were gliding on angel’s wings. And maybe we were. Come to think of it, maybe even Angel Ardyth, my mother.

Dad, who had been napping, stirred and asked, “Are we there yet?”

Stay tuned for the next episode …