Before I begin, I would like to thank the Almighty God for bringing me thus far and in one piece. There were several opportunities for things to go seriously wrong this weekend as we completed the first leg of our journey from the lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas to Toronto Ontario. Right now we're safely in Houston for a couple weeks, but only by the grace of God. I guess it's easy just to ignore God when things are going smoothly, but when things happen and you know that there had to be some divine intervention for you to have lived to see another day, you just have to give thanks. HAVE TO. Coincidence and luck, sure, but in my heart I know there's more to it than that.

Anyway, the details...

So we packed up everything we owned that we couldn't give away or sell in the Valley into a U-Haul truck and attached our car to a tow-dolly at the back of the truck. 450 miles to Houston and we were off on our merry way. We passed the time by playing games like "Guess which movie role I am describing" and "Make up a story based on the names on the street signs we passed". Oddly enough, we kept making the stories all murder mysteries. I guess that says a lot about us. One story involved a woman named Mrs. Paison who was murdered and shoved down a well. Her ghost was found by Mr. Pastillo and Mr. Cheap Fireworks who fell down the well in the middle of the night. In order for her to stop haunting them, they had to solve her murder. In doing so, they suspected her son, Mango Peaches, and her daughter-in-law, Lemons FM 2234, were responsible. Turns out that it was her 7-year-old grandson, Country Road 1278, who committed the crime. Sheriff Free Puppies made the arrest.

We went on with our games until we decided to stop and get gas in Victoria, 120+ miles from Houston. As we pulled up the exit ramp and turned on the overpass to get to the McDonald's and gas station, my brother looked back in his sideview mirror in time to see THE CAR FALLING OFF THE TOW RAMP AND ROLLING BACK DOWN THE EXIT RAMP TOWARDS THE BUSY FREEWAY!!!!!!!!! God is good, because, the car stopped rolling back part-way down the exit ramp and no one at the time was exiting the freeway. Bud was able to park the U-Haul and run back and drive the car to the gas station. When we looked at the tow dolly to see what had happened, we saw that the chain-link holding the car chassey to the dolly had unbent itself and given way. There was no bending it back or putting the car back on the dolly. HELL NO!!! At this point, we gassed up both vehicles and decided that I would drive behind him the rest of the way to Houston.

Things were going fairly well an hour after we left Victoria, as I followed Bud closely behind. Suddenly the tail light on the tow dolly attached to the U-Haul truck started to fall off and bounce on the freeway in front of me. If that thing had fallen off and hit my windshield, that would surely have been an accident or, worse, a pile up on the freeway. Once again, we managed to avoid disaster. After that, we decided to drive really slowly for the rest of the way to Houston, just in case something else decided to fall off. This annoyed the heck out of many of the motorists behind us, but what could we do at this point, when the tow dolly we rented was in such poor shape?

I have decided never to rent from U-Haul again. Before we even left the Valley, we were delayed a whole day when the truck battery died and needed to be replaced. I guess it was a sign of things to come. Thank God no one was hurt. I would have been racked with guilt for the rest of my life if the car had rolled back onto the freeway and someone had been seriously injured.