Wow! It rains here! This is so weird!

LOL. I AM HOME!!!! Home, home, home, home for three months!!!

Three months... Ugh. In three months I'm going to have to repack an entire ROOM. Let's hope it goes better then!

Let me tell you the story of our trip down. It is QUITE interesting!

Aah... I keep trying to roll the little thing in the center of the mouse that lets you go up and down the page. I keep forgetting we don't have that kind of mouse!

So! On with the insane story of my trip down. I hope I can make this short; my grandparents are waiting to say hi to me.

You have heard of my little blue car that is as old as I am, and how it's died and been resurrected many, many times by my wonderful grandpa. My mom drove it successfully down to me in February. We intended to drive it all the way back home, too. Mom drove down Friday morning in our Jeep Cherokee, and we crammed both vehicles with all my junk--I mean stuff. ;) We went to Commencement (CONGRATS, GRADS!!!), went to eat, and then finally hit the freeway.

I was super nervous for a while, but once the traffic thinned out I got more used to it and told Mom on our walkie-talkies (we are smart!), "This is actually kind of fun once you get used to it." She was relieved to hear that. :D

We had been driving for about 2 hours when we hit a steep hill. I saw my speedometer was dropping to 45 mph, and so I pressed on the gas a little harder to make it shift up. That always terrifies me; I'm afraid something will happen to my poor little car! Well, it revved up loudly, which scared me (it usually does) and so I let off just a bit, enough to shift it back down, and then realized that wouldn't work to get up the hill; I'd be going 25 mph in about 2 minutes. So I gathered up my courage and pressed the gas down again. Once more it revved up, and then... something happened.

I still don't know what. Basically it went kaput. It scared me to death and I pulled off as fast as possible. Mom drove on, but soon I heard over the walkie-talkie, "What happened?"

"I don't know!" I said, shaking. "My car did something and it scared me so I got off as fast as I could."

"Okay," Mom's voice answered. "I'll turn around and be there in a sec."

When Mom came back, we tried to start the car up again. It was the strangest thing. It turned on, but nothing happened when we hit the gas. We puzzled over it, "let it rest" for a while, tried again, and still nothing. Eventually we decided to go back to a town near us and get a tow rope. To our great fortune, there was one tow strap left in the grocery store that was still open (it was about 8:30 or 9:00 by then), so we bought it and tied up my car. I sat in the little blue car with its hazard lights on and steered it as Mom drove, at most, 35 mph on the freeway.

I should mention that Friday morning (Thursday night, to me) I stayed up until 3:00 watching Phantom of the Opera with Jenny and Lacey in our wing hallway. So I was SUPER tired as we drove home. My eyes were already tired an hour after we started driving; so close to Mom's headlights when we tied up my car and towed it didn't help.

Going downhill was terrifying enough to keep me awake. I don't know if I can explain it to those who wouldn't know... Imagine two toy cars tied together rolling down a hill. The back one, if no brake or anything is put on it, will speed up too much and start sliding towards the one in front. Eventually, if you don't stop it, it will run into the front car.

Now imagine two real cars, each over 2000 pounds, in the same situation. Going downhill, if I didn't brake enough, my car got dangerously close to my mom's. If I braked too much, the tow rope went taut and my car jerked and Mom felt it.

Well, on our first or second downhill, the rope went slack and I was trying to press the brake just lightly enough for the rope to be taut but not strained. I didn't get it braked enough, the rope got caught under a tire, there was a loud noise, and we were no longer connected. I pulled off quickly.

After this second hurdle to clear, Mom tied the two ends of the rope together in a big knot and once more we started out, still going a max of 35 mph, and by this time already an hour or more behind schedule.

I don't know how long we drove like that. I got better at braking going downhill; the rope didn't get chopped again. My eyes were getting really tired... My hazard lights switch had blown out or something, so Mom used her hazards whenever a car came up behind us. The flashing yellow lights so close to me really strained my eyes and I felt I could barely keep them open anymore. On top of that, my headlights were growing dimmer and dimmer as my battery juice dwindled away. All I could see of the time was 0:5. Mom knew this was happening, so finally she said to me over the walkie-talkies, "We're coming to *******. I think we're going to have to drop your car off at the Church of the Nazarene there, fit as much as we can into my rig, and go home in that."

This was certainly the lowest of the low points. Leave my little blue car and my stuff in a town still hours away from home? But I knew, of course, that that was the only thing that could be done.

It was a relief to get out of the car into the peaceful, warm night. Mom and I worked for probably a half hour in the Nazarene parking lot unpacking boxes to dump everything I owned into her car. Would you believe it? We got everything in! The only things we had to leave behind in my little blue car were a few baskets and a bunch of empty boxes.

We drove home the rest of the night in Mom's rig. I cried as I thought of my old car's probably final death. But we were both safe, and I even had all my stuff with me!

We got home safely at about 3:00 in the morning. I stumbled upstairs into bed and slept solidy till 11:00 this morning.

The end.

A demain, mes amis.

Stephanie

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