Frequently, my mom likes to buy new things and to make room for them (or to have an excuse to buy new stuff), she'll give her slightly-used stuff to either my brother or I. I always take her up on it, because this stuff is usually barely two years old, good as new -- she's just tired of it. On this trip, it was two barely used rocking chairs that are upholstered in a blue color quite complimentary to my couch. Matching chairs! Imagine that. So I threw them in the back of The Colorado, covered in plastic of course, since it was supposed to rain all the way home.
She also gave my brother and his wife an old Queen size bed, boxspring and frame. This would not fit in his Kia Sportage, but the chairs would. So we swapped cargo.
We figured the beds, wrapped in giant zipper-locked plastic bags, would get there just fine. They were too big to fit in and shut the tailgate, so we tied them in good and tight, and took off for Omaha, 170 miles away. I've never been so content to drive the speed limit for that long a stretch in my entire life.
Almost halfway, between Carroll and Denison on highway 30, I get a call from The Kia, who's following my truck to keep an eye on the cargo. Apparently, the bag has ripped, and pieces of it are shearing off, leaving the mattress exposed to the elements. Nice. When Janell calls, however, she neglects to tell me exactly how much of the mattress is exposed...
So I tell her we'll pull over in Denison. I do that, get out, and the sight is horrifying. Mortifying. Abysmal. Disgusting. All of these things.
The entire top half of the bag is...just, gone. All gone. The mattress is now a sponge, and its about twice as heavy as it was before -- meaning one thing. There's one hell of a lot of water in it. And there's a brown stain from the semi-truck who splashed me with water a few miles back. Hmm, a brown stain on a mattress. One word comes to mind. And this word is...Classy.
Under the overhang of the Sinclar Station, we flipped the mattress over, leaving the still-covered side up, bought some duct-tape from a gas station and taped it up best we could.
We made it to Interstate 29, about 10 miles from the Missouri River, and the higher speeds began to wreak havoc again on the remaining pieces of the bag. By the time we arrived in their driveway 20 minutes later, the bag was almost completely gone. Mattress was completely soaked. And my brother and I were completely pissed.
But we couldn't be too upset. After all, the third car in our caravan fared worse, if that's possible. They creamed a ginormous Buck and went into the ditch down by Lohrville. Their Blazer was damaged pretty good, but he was most upset over the irony of it all. See, he'd been hunting deer for three days and caught nothing. Now, he's killed a big Buck, but with his grill instead of his shotgun. Oh, sweet irony.
Moments later, on my way home from my brother's house, I too almost hit a deer. On 680, a buck had apparently crossed into the left lane and gotten smoked by a vehicle, and it couldn't have been too long ago, because the carcass was still sprawled out across the highway. I'm coming up in the right lane, and I actually had the thought that I should run over the carcass with The Colorado's big tires, just to teach the deer a lesson. You know the deer are too thick when you start cheering for the mountain lion. Cheering for the big guy instead of the underdog? Me? This is how thick the deer have become. All of these thoughts cross my mind. Then I decide a flat tire isn't worth the vengeance, so instead just stayed in my own lane and kept on driving home.
Sorry, with me and animals, that's just how it is. Unless you're going to slather it with condiments and make it into a tasty sandwich, I'm not an animal person.
You bet.
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