Abilene

On July 12 (only 6 days after returning from NY) we embarked on our next adventure. We were heading to Missouri to visit my friend Rebekah and attend her HBLAMY mini-golf tournament. My car was in need of a 45,000 mile oil change so I scheduled my appointment for the morning of the 12th -- you see, the closest VW dealership is in Abilene which is 100 miles from here! Since we were heading through Abilene anyway we decided to stop for our oil change that morning. I asked the VW boy to check the pressure on my recently repaired tire. Apparently it wasn't very repaired because it was only holding 15 lb of air. We went down the road to a tire store and had the most interesting Texas morning I think we've had yet.

To get my tire off from the car I needed to unpack the entire trunk (and by the way we were camping in Missouri) just to get to a tiny little tool that would unlock one of the lug-nuts. So I unpacked the whole trunk and put everything in the parking lot. I asked our friendly tire man (Peter) if I could repack my trunk while he worked on my tire. He said he thought that would be ok so I packed it all back in there.

Then came the news that there wasn't a new matching tire in all of Abilene. I had two choices -- I could buy a tire that didn't match and spend $100 or I could drive on my full-size spare until I could get somewhere that had a matching tire. I decided to drive on my spare because I knew I could go to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City and get a new tire for free (we bought our tires through AAFES and had a warranty plan with them). So I got to unpack the trunk again!

By the time I was done unpacking the trunk there were workers and customers alike coming out to tell me how surprised they were that I had so much stuff in there. As I was out there sweating in the 90-something degree summer heat I was rethinking my great idea to bring our own firewood just because I had extra room (Brian had urged me to buy some at the campsite but I said "Why buy it when I have this right here?!?")

Meanwhile, the boys were inside the (air-conditioned) store hamming it up with Dale (I think he's the manager) and a customer named Scotty who kept them busy with tales of rattlesnake hunting. He apparently catches and sells hundreds of rattlesnakes each year. And where does he store them between the catch and the sale? ... In his basement, of course.... hundreds of them. I am thinking that someday we might see him on National Geographic or worse yet, Animal Cops! He gave the boys two large and noisy rattlesnake rattles to keep them busy during the last 650 miles of our trip. Thanks Dale & Scotty for keeping the boys busy. Thanks Peter for attempting to help me with my tire. Thanks to VW for making my car with a full-size spare so that I could drive all over the country with it this month! And thanks to AAFES and Tinker AFB for the new tire.

Oh, and BTW -- all of this was free ... the tire store didn't charge me anything because they said that we were the best entertainment they'd had all week!