Trip Preparations Begin in Earnest

Here you see Olive just before a test tow. We wanted to make sure she was up to the task.  Olive is my car, a 2007 Toyota Yaris. We started calling her that because the name of her color is "Olive Mist." We started out calling her "the uterus" because we thought the name Yaris kind of sounded like uterus. Fortunately, it didn't stick. The Motorcycle is a BMW named Gretchen.

My previous car was known as "The Oatmeal." It was a Saturn SL1 that I bought when the transmission went on my "Welfare Mother Car." For the record, I was never a welfare mother. When my first husband left (at my request) he let me keep our only car, which was a 198o-something Thunderbird. It was not a cool car by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, it looked like a typical welfare mother car. We had bought it used, very cheap. He went out and bought a Miata for himself! (If you know the Miata, you know that it is a sports car with only 2 seats. He had one ass, and his  2 children each had an ass, that means 3 asses but only 2 seats. That could be a post by itself.) When the transmission went on the welfare mother car, I had to find something else and bought the Oatmeal used for $7500. It was a very basic car, roll down windows, standard shift, no power steering and the color of oatmeal. What a great car it was. So reliable. After a while, we had shortened the name to "The Meal." I drove it into the ground. That's when I bought my first new car ever, Olive. 

Check this, Olive gets 40 miles per gallon in mixed driving conditions. She gets 42 on the highway. Olive is also able to pull about 700 pounds of motorcycle and trailer with no problem. We took her out on the highway, and up a notorious hill named Jugtown Mountain. It is notorious because when it snows, trucks can't make it up that hill and traffic snarls. We figured if Olive could do that, we'd be OK for the trip. I'm starting to get very excited! I've washed and ironed all of the clothes I want to take. I've paid all of the bills for the month. I need to buy some travel-size items. Make sure Kate"s prescriptions are filled. Write down all of the info my parents might need and I think that's it!