Friday, February 8, 2013

Adventures With Sis

Getting Sis to AZ last year was pretty much a piece of cake compared to getting her back to Arkansas this year. 

After spending several months in the delicious sunny warmth of Arizona and the arthritis relief the climate offered she was ready to take the plunge and put her house on the market. As usual for Sis 2 she took a bit of "persuasion" in the form of a tentative offer from a prospective buyer. 

I was willing to fly west and accompany her on the journey but unfortunately Sis 1 was busy in the Great White (and getting more snow by the minute) Northeast. Sis 1 doesn't doesn't "do" cold very well but by the time this adventure draws to a close, she might be happy to need the snow boots she had to buy. 

The flight west was uneventful and a few days later Sis had moved out of her temporary home in an apartment then we loaded into her 2002 Toyota Corolla (275,000 miles on it) and headed east. Our first night out we stopped in Tucumcari, New Mexico where we met a world champion bad front desk clerk. 

You know how some people are just not meant to work with the public? Well, Tucumcari's Red Roof Inn has one working the desk. Her way-too-long sparkly pink nails were her main focus. People were standing line to check in and she kept saying she "needs to finish this" before checking in customers. Was she playing Farmville? Updating her FaceBook status to "Avoiding work"? Chatting with a potential mate on e-Harmony? Bidding on fake nails on e-Bay? We will never know but finally we were checked in to a room with 2 beds after 25 minutes. Went to our room and it only had 1 bed. We decided to get a refund and go to another motel because anyplace that employs Sparkle Pink Nails I Can't Read A Room Chart might not need our business anyway. 

We got a refund and went to Day's Inn. By now we were so tired the Taco Bell in the next building looked mighty attractive. After checking in and buying a Bag o' Food we looked over the map and decided to go for Gallup, New Mexico the next day.

Sis and I are not out to set any fast travel records.

The next morning dawned and we both discovered our arthritic bodies were not happy about the change in climate. We were awake but couldn't move. Literally could not move. I finally managed to kind of roll to the edge of my bed and land on my feet so Sis 2 managed to use the same technique and after moving around for a bit we could finally move enough to check out, make our way across the icy parking lot to the car without mishap and once again hit I-40 for our day of travel. 

Gallup, NM was not a bad goal for the day and we reached it without a problem, after checking in, we again looked over out map and decided we would try to reach someplace east of Oklahoma City for the next day of travel.

 

No comments: