Looking back at the trip
To get in the swing of posting to a blog I decided to write up a few of the memorable things about the last two months and then go from there. Mark has chimed in here, Tammy should soon, maybe even Kirsten. So to get this going, here's the story of our trip down.
We left early in the morning back at the beginning of March, when it was still in the low 20's in NJ. There was no snow to worry about, but the weather reports predicted high winds and I was a little concerned. By the time we got to Washington DC the sun was rising, it was hovering at about freezing and it began to pour rain as we eased into rush hour traffic and began to crawl around the city. It was just about then that the trailer brakes began to fail intermittantly. We'd had a problem with the brakes in heavy rain before and I thought I'd fixed it - apparently not. Fortunately we were in slow moving traffic and the truck can stop the trailer without the trailer brakes. In the tense 30 minutes I was looking for a place to pull off and inspect them when the rain let up and the brakes began to work again. That was a relief.
As we got south of Richmond the weather cleared quite nicely and it looked like we'd have a smooth trip to our favorite half-way point - Pedro's at South of the Border. In fact, the high winds I worried about never caught us.
However at, our first fuel break we pulled into a truck stop with wide lanes and the high volume hoses that can fill my little tank in a couple minutes. For private vehicles you need to go inside and leave them a credit card... no problem, I've done it many times. I dropped my card, went back and started the pump and before I'd washed half the windshield the tank was full. I trotted back in to sign my card and be on our way... The gal behind the counter did NOT look happy when she asked what kind of card and I said "Discover"... mostly because she only had a Mastercard there and it was not mine! She said, "oh no I gave your card to that guy who just pulled out". After a quick consult with the other cashier and a call for the manager the only concensus was that we had a problem.
Well, the kids had gotten free donuts and the manager had apologized several time as they tried to get the state police to find this guy - though they weren't sure if he was heading north or south. The counter girl who made the mistake just looked more and more miserable. After 10 minutes or so it dawned on me that Tammy had a copy of the card we just lost. I asked the manager to refund the wrong transaction and simply charge our fuel purchase to the second card (doh) at which point getting my card back was no longer a problem. Driving away we called Discover to cancel the missing card and they sent a new one to Orlando to be waiting for us when we got there.
So.. somewhere there is a Canadian named Serge who doesn't look at the credit card before he signs for it and puts it away. I'm pretty sure he has realized his mistake by now. For us it just became part of the story of this trip.