Day 120

Life Aboard the S.S. Minnow

As I recall, a three hour tour didn't work out so f_ _ _ing well for Gilligan and it didn't do me any favors either.  The plan for Friday afternoon seemed simple enough.  Load the youngest in the car . . . Check.  Pick up the eldest at the International School at 4 . . . Check.  Meet wife in the village where she works for an open house at the boys new school . . . SHIT.  I should have taken the darkening skies and sudden downpour of rain as an omen.  I turned my trusty 206 onto the Blvd, not a block from the International School, and WHAM . . . gridlock.  I would spend the next hour or so making my way to the Rocade (read as Freeway).  Once on the Rocade, things didn't improve much.  Traffic was at an absolute crawl, and suddenly I started to feel very sorry for my wife.  Dealing with this as a daily commute would be enough for me to want to put a bullet in my skull.  With a broken spirit and a cramping left calf from the never ending clutch work required to keep this snails pace, I almost decided to turn back.  Wish I had.  Very much wanting the kids to get an opportunity to see their new school, I pushed on.  Finally traffic broke loose and I let the little 206 stretch her legs a bit.  Pedal down and ears back, she sailed down the road doing her best to catch us up to our very tight schedule.  The open house was scheduled between 5 and 6 pm.  We had already burned an hour just trying to get out of town.  If my little "Tray" (The word I use for the 206's color . . . somewhere between Tan and Gray) Rocket could get us the rest of the way inside of 30 minutes we would be golden.

Try as she might, she simply couldn't close the deficit and we hit town at a quarter till 6.  My wife, having decided that she needed two GPS systems in the Renault, stripped my 206 from the only electronic equipment she has and I was without navigational aid.  I was pissed and now hopelessly lost.  Needed to call the wife and tell her to go on without us if she hadn't already.  Bad luck that, picked up the phone . . . dead of course.  Nearly sent the thing out the window for abandoning me when I needed it the most.  With it raining once more and my attention on other electronic matters, I failed to notice the line of cars stopping in front of me.  Fortunately, my good ole 206 is born from Rally bloodlines and when I demanded the breaks she broke into a dead sideward slide like she was winding her way up the Matterhorn.  With an inspired downshift and liberal application of throttle, I sent her drifting back in the other direction.  Finally running true, she skided to a dramatic stop with smoking breaks and a growling "umph" from the hunkered suspension.  Not even enough drama to awaken the now slumbering children in her back seat.  Assuming my wife had surely realized by this hour that I was going to be pulling a no show, I turned the 206 westward and headed back for the ranch.  I wish that I could say that traffic had eased by the time I rolled back into town.  Unfortunately that was not the case.  Another hour with my foot buried in the clutch had me roll back in front of Madame Chabou's over three hours after my original departure.

To add insult to injury, my wife managed to attend the open house, tour the school and get back on the road with enough efficiency to arrive home only 9 minutes behind me.  I opened the door to greet her with a "don't talk to me stare" and she knew not to ask.  Finally I quelled my frustration and carried on with our evening.  We spent the remainder of the day in relative familial peace and bid day 120 a goodnight.