The day was going so well....

until my brand new tire went flat. We had had a lovely day of traveling I-80 through Ohio and most of Indiana headin to Chicago. We had just finished dinner and were leaving the travel plaza when Greg said I think something's wrong with the tire. (It should be mentioned here that right before we got off at the travel plaza the car was riding funny but we thought it was the road because it seemed to get better.) So we pulled off the side of the road, a mere 100 feet from the end of the travel plaza exit ramp we had just left, to check the tire. And sure enough it was FLAT. And I mean flat. So we put the doughnut on with the kids waiting not so patiently and we loaded the car back up and headed for the next exit on the turnpike. As we're paying the toll we ask the worker where we should go and he sent us to a Truck and Tire center just down the road. When we get there Greg opens the door and an alarm goes off but nobody came so he walked around and looked for another door. The delivery guy pointed him back to the orginal door, so he opened it again. Still no one came so he rang the doorbell, which he said was very quiet, and the guy showed up. The nice man, who only had one arm, said all his guys had gone home and he couldn't do it so he sent us to Walmart...of course! He made sure that Greg understood this was the country and negleted to tell us this Walmart was like 10 miles away and then sent us on our merry little way. After a lovely drive, we arrived at Walmart only to see the guy closing up. We look at the clock and it's a half an hour past closing time but we thought he might take pity on us. He told Greg it was actually an hour earlier than we thought and he'd be happy to take care of us, BUT....and this is where it gets really good.....they have NO power. All we could do was laugh. Turns out that half the town had no power so nothing else would be open to fix our tire. We are now at a nice Holiday Inn Express in LaPorte Indiana awaiting Walmart's opening tomorrow. At this moment the princess is asleep and Daddy has Toby at the pool to unwind, and Mommy....well I'm drinking a beer! Tomorrow will be a great day however cause we are going to meet up at Navy Pier with this terriffic familiy.


And seeing this was the highlight of my day. And as of now I'm going to take it's advice!