| Road Trip to Springfield December 8-10, 2005 Pg. 2 |
| OK, so we have a plan... But wait... This is supposed to be a surprise for Doug, so we can't let him suspect anything... We must get the F-150 away from him with a good cover story. Remember, he wanted to get the truck to his brother in Illinois but can't go due to illness. Well, since Tim is going, we concocted a story that Tim is retired and his wife was out of town, and he had nothing better to do, and he would like to go see the St. Louis arch at someone else's expense, so he agreed to drive the truck up there and then Lori was going to pay for him to fly home. Doug fell for it! I think he was a bit concerned to let a stranger take the truck as he made Lori MAIL the title up there instead of giving it to Tim... |
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| As best laid plans go, this trip was planned out down to the hour. I had to get Doug's F-150, drive it to work, pick up the car trailer, then get the neighbor's truck and hook it all together and head out. Every step was planned. We would arrive in Springfield about 5:00 PM on Friday and load the Mustang and head out. Then the ICE STORM HIT DALLAS. Another friend of Doug and mine, Vern Blair, was to take me to Denton to Doug's house to get the truck the night before we were to leave. But we could not even get to the freeway because of too much ice. Even if we had, the freeway was packed solid and not moving. It would have taken us 4 or 5 hours to get the truck, so we decided to scrap that idea. The only thing left to do was get the F-150 the next day after the ice melted, and then drive it to Illinois and drive the Mustang home. Since Tim was going along, we figured the two of us could fix anything that could possibly come up with the old car. |
| So, we go to Denton the next day after lunch, give Doug the cover story, and take off for Illinois in the F-150. For an old truck (98, I think) with over 150,000 miles, it sure ran like a new one. Plus, the heater worked great! Handy since it was below zero when we went across Missouri. We drove from Denton, TX to St Louis, MO that day, arriving a little before midnight. Snow and ice was everywhere, but the roads were crystal clear. We managed to talk to the seller of the car by cell phone and he informed us that they had just gotten six inches of fresh snow. Lovely! I have never been this far north before, nor this freaking cold. |
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| Here I am standing outside or motel in St Louis as we arrived Thursday night. What the heck is all this white stuff? I have NEVER seen snow like this before! |
| So, we settled in for the night, with plans to meet the seller at 1:00PM on Friday. We got up Friday morning, went for breakfast and then headed on up to Springfield. Picture below is of the snow covering everythng in Springfield. That is the red F-150 in the McDonald's parking lot. |
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