When I was a teen, my mom, sister and I went on a trip from Northern California to see the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately for my family, I had just broken up with my first boyfriend and was in the mood for Air Supply. The Greatest Hits for a week straight. And sighs. And sniffs. And then when we got to the Grand Canyon, that awe-inspiring sight, it was chilly. So my sister and I got out of the car wandered over the railing, glanced at the gorgeous wonder, and went back into the car to read. It was too cold. What in the world was mom thinking standing out there? It’s cold. Sure it’s pretty. Big whoop.

It’s a wonder she didn’t throw out and make us walk home.

My favorite vacation mishap happened before there were six kids and before we had a van. I think there were four kids and it was a Volvo wagon. Anyway, we loaded up and set off down the freeway, and before we’d gone an hour a terrible rattling noise started coming from the vicinity of one of the rear wheels, its volume increasing with our speed. Oh, no, my dad said, I think it might be the U-joint. We took the next exit and went to the nearest service station. The mechanic crawled under the car a, wiggled a few things, and said, yup, I think your U-joint’s about to go. We got back on the freeway headed toward home, limping along in the slow lane with our horribly rattling U-joint (or so we thought). We kids were all heartbroken at having our vacation aborted.

After less than two miles on the freeway, there was a sudden horrid lurch. I turned around (I was riding in the back back, curled up on the sleeping bags and luggage) in time to see sparks fly up behind the car, and then our wheel rolling past us, through the ditch and up against the fence. My dad managed to get us to the shoulder on three wheels (good thing we’d been driving slowly in the right lane), ran ahead to retrieve the wheel, and put it back on the car. We turned around at the next exit, then went back to the same service station we’d visited before. They tightened the lugnuts (amazingly, they’d all stayed inside the hubcap and didn’t fall out in the long grass in the ditch), bent back the wheelwell where it was in danger of scraping against the tire, and the vacation was back on!

Moral of the this story: if you hear a terrible rattling noise from one of your wheels, always check to make sure all the lugnuts are in place and properly tightened. Unbelievably, many years later I had a guy in the lane next to me on the freeway on-ramp tell me I had a noise coming from my rear wheel. I went to the nearest service station and told them I thought I needed my lugnuts replaced and tightened, and they acted like I was crazy–why would I ever think that could be the problem? But it was, and once they were all screwed on right I went on my merry way.

Say it ain’t so, Joe. That’s the saddest news of the day.

With six kids and being a Utah expat in Washington State, I honestly cannot remember the number of times we have made that drive from Seattle to Utah, and are about to do it again in five weeks or so.

Our most memorable came with a summer trip, four of our six kids in our VW Eurovan, when my wife notices that at speeds over 75 there is a knocking noise, aggravated at speeds over 80. It’s about 10 at night, we’ve been on the road for 12 hours already, and we are just outside of Snowville. I found that if I slowed down to about 50, the noise wasn’t so prominent, so we limped the last 100 miles or so in just over 2 hours, and then took the car in to our old VW mechanic in Bountiful, German accent and all. We were about to throw a rod, and I still had about a year to pay on the beast, so we agreed to leave it for an engine replacement/rebuild. It would take about six weeks, but I didn’t think I should try and drive it back to Seattle.

We rented a car for the balance of our trip around Utah, and then my brother-in-law loaned us his Dodge Dakota Club Cab pickup until our van could get fixed, and then he’d drive up and we’d swap the cars at one of his family events in Spokane.

So we loaded all our luggage in the back, and then tried to cram my wife, and basically three adult children, plus our youngest in this two door small pickup. Three of the boys, like me, are over six feet tall, but they were all in the tiny back seat with no legroom, my wife is in the passenger seat, and my youngest is crammed into the middle straddling the gear shift, looking at 800 miles. I could not position myself directly behind the wheel, so I am driving with my arms extended to the right, my right leg on the gas all the way straightened out, and no one has any room to stretch, scratch, or even fall asleep. Every time we stopped on the way back, we’d all dump out, moaning and groaning, for 800 miles and 14 hours.

When my brother-in-law and my wife’s sister drove up with our rebuilt van, they discovered that if you had the air conditioning on, and tried to put on the brakes going down a hill, it would kill the engine, so no power brakes or steering in this huge van. They were ready to kill us when they got the van to us, and were more than glad to take their pickup back.

250,000 miles, two engines, three transmissions, and more hose blowouts and melted plastic hose couplings than Abraham has seed, we finally paid someone to haul away the Eurovan. We figure with repairs, interest, towing charges, and the initial price, that monster cost us about two and a half times what we paid for it one year old.

And yes, he was wearing all the gold chains.

I worked as a bagboy at a grocery store when I was a teenager, and the store next door was going out of business. I went over there after work, and there was this portable red eight-track player on sale for some cheap price, so I bought it. I didn’t have any eight-tracks, but I also bought two at the sale–both Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas albums. When I got it home, I learned that it would cycle through the same four songs unless you pressed some button at the right time for it to continue through to the next four.

So I can relate to your eight-track experience, although mine was not imposed on me but was a product of my own stupidity.

We planned on driving down to San Diego from Salt Lake since it would be cheaper for the two of us to do that than to fly. Perhaps not the most comfortable arrangement when six-ish months pregnant, but we’re both students so we try to be pretty frugal. Anyway. soon enough we were driving down with my Dad, and then with my Grandparents as well, which was convenient since my Grandparents have a Pacifica. My Grandpa decided he didn’t feel good enough to drive down within a few days, which was a good decision as it all turned out. Another uncle decided to schedule his carpal tunnel surgery just before the wedding so he could go too, and then about a week before the wedding one of my Aunts decided to come along as well.

If you’re not paying attention, that’s six people in a minivan, one of whom (me) was six months pregnant. So, we decided to leave early (like 7 am) Saturday for the Monday wedding. My husband and I were running a bit late, so we called to let everyone know and learned that our lateness didn’t matter–as my Aunt was driving to meet everyone else at my Dad’s house her muffler fell partially off and she was at a shop getting it in to be fixed. Then, when my Grandma and the Uncle of the carpal tunnel surgery got to my Dad’s house they discovered that one of the tires on the Pacifica had a screw in it, and other had a bent rim and an aneurysm in the sidewall. Just what everyone wanted to drive 15 hours across mostly desert in.

We tried to find replacement tires and rims, but only managed to spend lots of gas and a couple of hours in the pursuit. The Uncle getting married watched the whole thing happening, and I’m sure was thinking we weren’t going to go. I think most of us were thinking we weren’t going to go, too, but we’d put so much effort into going up to that point we just couldn’t abandon the trip. We decided to rent another minivan, which my husband and uncle upgraded to a Pathfinder (my husband hates minivans). We packed the six of us and all our stuff into the Pathfinder and drove a whole two miles before deciding it was way too crowded, especially with my belly. So we went back to the rental place and got an Explorer, which we drove down to San Diego with few incidents of any note. Nobody was left behind (though I think my uncle was really tempted to drive off when my grandma and aunt, at 4:30 in the morning on our all-night marathon drive back to Salt lake spent 20 minutes looking through shiny glass pendants in a gas station in Beaver), and I think everyone even had a pretty good time. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a trip where it was so difficult just to get out of town.

On the way to San Diego my Dad also pointed out the part of I-15 near Nipton Rd. where the brakes on our station wagon went out during a family vacation when I was about 12 and he almost rammed some car that wouldn’t get out of the way. Maybe I should just never travel to CA with my family.

Sue, I’m falling off my chair laughing and crying. Not crying from laughing, but laughing and crying. oh, sigh…