Monday, July 14th - A Bad Day

Today was not a great day for movement, either by body or by machine. With my soreness, I just didn't complete the four-mile run as scheduled. I figured today is the day, knowing that I've got to stretch it out sometime, and soon. I had a run mapped out, the Itunes ready to go, and off I went before work on this sunny morning. I ended up shutting it down after about a mile. Man, my achilles heel on the left ankle was just killing me. So I finished a shorter course, walking an additional two miles on top of the mile I had run. It's a long way from four miles. I spent the rest of the day limping and figuring I'll have to heal up. The fact that the run is now less than two weeks away makes it really discouraging.



On the positive note, today was the beginning of a 3&1/2 day camping trip to Mt. Raininer. We had Sonja and Molly and Molly's husband of six months, Brad. We also had our new (to us) tent trailier, ready for its inagural run as a Tegeder vehicle. I was swamped at work, so the plan was for a Wendy, Brad and the daughters to head down on Monday and I would come Tuesday morning after a full day of work on Monday. A fun part was the plan for daughter-in-law Julie to bring her three children with her for their first Mt. Rainier experience.


I was getting work done, starting to think about not working for three days when the phone rang about 3:15 from Wendy. "We're on the side of the road, about 20 miles from the Park entrance, and I think the transmission is out." What a gloomy call. I spent the next 30-45 minutes back and forth with AAA, became an instant member of the "RV Plus" club...for a $30 price. (They proudly gave me a number based on the order in which I joined.)


Passengers posed a problem since the tow truck didn't have room for four passengers. The AAA operator put me on hold, made some inquiries and after a while came back on the line and said "We've checked the state law, and it is legal for y0ur family to ride in the van while it is on the back of the bed of the tow truck."...Yeah, right. I didn't consider this an option. So off I headed.


I got there to their stranded point, on a two-lane road somewhere between Elbe and Morton, WA about two hours later. A courteous Lewis County PUD worker put a tow-strap on the van and towed the whole works to a place in the road with a turn-out where it was much safer to be compared to place where the van broke down. It was really a bad spot with what Wendy estimated to be at least 30 logging trucks whizzing by. All of the women were in the van. In the vacation spirit, Brad was in a camping chair reading a book.


We waited an additional hour, and about four hours from the time Wendy called me at work, the tow truck arrived.

This is the only vacation photo from our Mr. Rainier vacation.

The vacationers drove the Saturn back home, and I rode with the truck driver back to Renton. We got the trailer towed back home, and then dropped the van off at the transmission shop where we get most of our general repairs done. But we were looking just for an assessment. I think this van is going to be put out of it's misery....and my achilles is still sore....