Our Adventure TO San Francisco

I had to blog about our adventure getting TO San Francisco because, my oh my, was it just that... a bigger adventure than we had expected! Howie and I decided we wanted to have our car while we were in San Francisco. We packed it so full every nook and cranny was filled! We finished our training at Del Sol in Utah on Friday and had to be in San Francisco by Monday. Howie's grandparents had their 50th wedding anniversary that Saturday so we decided we would leave Sunday and drive the whole way in a day. So we left Sunday around 2PM (which we were planning to leave around 8 AM) and according to google maps, it was going to take us about 11 1/2 hours. We got to the, lovely, Wendover, Nevada, grabbed some lunch, filled up and were on the road again... another 9 1/2 hours to go. We got about an hour out of Wendover when all of a sudden Howie sees smoke in the rear view mirror! He immediately pulled over and sure enough, we were smokin'! We first thought our tires were rubbing considering how loaded our car was but Howie looked under the car and saw a puddle of red fluid. So I pulled out my handy dandy blackberry and googled what the red fluid would be. Yep, of course, our transmission! By this time it was 4:30 and we weren't sure what to do. We called to get some advice from my dad and grandpapa and decided we needed to call a tow truck. We called every towing company (a whole 2) in Wendover and they wanted to charge a ridiculous amount to tow us to the next town. So, we got online, signed up for AAA and called them! =o) When the tow truck arrived (2 hours later) he told us our chances of finding someone that would have parts for a Lexus in the surrounding cities would be slim to none. So we hopped in the tow truck and had a 2 1/2 hour drive BACK to Salt Lake City (which thanks to AAA cost us the amount it would have cost us to go 20 miles had we not had it!) We got to Salt Lake a little after midnight. Grandpapa, so generously, had hooked up his trailer in the meantime and left it along with his car at the Lexus dealership for us to unload our car into. Wow I'm exhausted just going back and thinking about it! We loaded all of our stuff into the trailer and headed to Highland to drop our stuff off at Howie's mom and dad's house. We had talked to the Del Sol intern director earlier and she told us we needed to be there as soon as possible Monday so they booked us a flight. Which meant we had to go through all of our stuff and pack just a few bags of what we would need just for the next week or two. Our flight was leaving at 6AM which meant we needed to be at the airport by 5AM! We got back up to Grandpapa and Grammy's around 4 which meant we had just enough time to get the trailer unhooked, showered, and a 15 minute NAP before Grandpapa took us to the airport!
This is us at 5AM leaving for San Fran!

Needless to say when we arrived in San Francisco at 9AM I didn't think I was going to be able to even walk off the plane!
This was in the Taxi on the way to our apartment... I'm pretty sure I really was asleep!

Luckily we got to our new apartment and the manager met us and told us to get some rest and meet her in the store at 4PM to work. The owner of the store was in town (the owners are actually from Texas) and was at Del Sol but was flying out around 3 so we walked over to the store to meet her and I'm sure she was quite impressed with her new, scraggly, puffy-red eyed, interns! Then back we went to get a nap in! Boy was it an experience we will never forget! We had to laugh because in training they talked about "seeing the good in every situation". You determine how you react to any situation!! It is so true... there are so many people that ALWAYS see the bad... even in a positive situation! So we couldn't help but laugh! We called Jeff (Howie's uncle, President & CEO of Del Sol, and the one who gave us that lecture in the training) and told him we were stuck, broken down, in the middle of no where but it was ok!! We were LOVING it!! =o) It made for a great start to our San Francisco experience and we have loved every moment since!

Oh and as a side note, Howie flew home that next Sunday to get his car. He got to Salt Lake around 8PM repacked the car and started driving that night! He got half way before he needed to stop and call it a night. So I booked a flight that next morning to Reno (considering we had the day off) to drive the rest of the way with him. When I got to the Reno airport Howie was still about an hour or 2 from Reno so I laid down in a corner in the airport and slept!! Ha ha ha! We got back to San Francisco safe and sound and were grateful to be here, with our car!! The End! =o)