The car adventure

Friday, Dec 2nd:

I get a call from our English-is-not-my-first-language driver at 1:37p saying he will be here is 10 minutes.  I patiently ask if he needs directions and he says "No, I have it on my GPS."  I attempt to explain that the GPS is not going to get him to our house, but the language barrier is not helping.

2:10p: Call from driver.  "I cannot find your address."   I try to navigate him here with the language barrier and the screaming baby who I am attempting to feed a bottle and put down for a nap.  The roads are icy, snow packed and it is still hilly and covered with round-a-bouts.  I try to suggest he just unload our vehicles where he is and I will come meet him.... but at the moment he just says he is going to go ask someone for directions and hangs up on me (in his defense I think he was also trying to turn a corner in his giant semi and there are cars parked on both sides of the street, it is icy, and the streets are very narrow).

2:18p: Call from driver: "I am just going to unload your vehicles here.  I cannot make it to your house.  Can you come meet me here?" Yes.  I load up the kids and we drive about 1/2 mile to meet English-is-not-my-first-language driver (who, by the way, is actually SUPER nice and not anywhere near as grumpy as the driver the day before).

So, we drive to meet the driver and drive him back and forth to get both the cars parked out in front of our house.  Gavin waited in the rental car while Elijah and I watched him unload Marty's truck.

The driver said the drive here was pretty horrendous - at least 2 foot of snow most of the way. And my car was on the lower level and has quite the mud/ice cover. It is really pretty impressive.

Marty's truck about to get unloaded.

The "clean" side of my car

This morning (after a couple inches of snow overnight) - Marty starting on the de-icing of my car (the not-so-clean-side).

It needed gas, so he had to chop off the ice to get to the gas cap.

This is the ice chunk from the side view mirror - impressive, huh?

When Marty went to put gas in the car he forgot about the silly Oregon law that says you can't pump your own gas.  So, he just gets out and pumps his gas and wonders why the 5 other patrons at the gas station are just sitting in their cars looking at him funny.  Then the employee walks up to M and he remembers!  Marty apologizes and says he just moved here and forgot, so "is there anything I need to do now?".  The employee says "Nope, as long as you did it right."

That statement cracked me up.  I've been pumping my own gas for 17 years..... I think I can manage to do it right.  But it is against the law here.  Funny.