4/17/2010 NO One Should Have a Day Like THIS

Ok, we’ve had it with the rain. Woke again this morning to thunder and pouring rain.

Around noon the rain stopped, the sky had patches of blue, small patches, but blue all the same. We said, “Great, let’s go, we have to get out of this house!” We’re off to see THE ALAMO!

As I mentioned before this Army base is going through an enormous renovation/building phase and roads are closed everywhere.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times we drove through an ID station thinking we were getting off post and the next thing we know we’re going through another one and we’re back on post! If we were even OFF to begin with. At this point we just don’t know.

So we finally get OFF POST and make our way to I-35. We got on the Interstate…. going the wrong way. This was NOT our fault! The signs were turned the wrong way, switched, I don’t know but we both read it the same way and the next thing we hear is, RECALCULATING! That’s our GPS’s way of saying “Wrong way, dummy!”

So we get turned around, heading in the right direction and we get to downtown San Antonio. This is where it sinks in that Fiesta San Antonio is really going on. Three million people will attend this 10 day long festival and we are certain they are all here today and they all drove their own cars because we can’t find a parking place! There are lots all over the place and every one is filled. Every single one. Ok, plan B. We’ll go out a few blocks and if we have to walk a ways, well, it will be worth it, after all we’re going to see THE ALAMO!

We find a parking spot! If you remember we drive a Ford 550 Super Cab pickup truck, dually. A good sized truck to say the least.

The parking spot we found was designed for this.

We managed to get into the space. I stood in the back and waved him back until he was one hundredth of an inch away from the fence. We were over the line width-wise but we were on an end space so it didn’t interfere with anyone on that side. We extended past the lines for length but there was plenty of room for other drivers to get past us. We were in and we were going to see THE ALAMO!

We get up to the machine where we thought we were going to put in our space number and get logged in for payment when we returned. Uh-uh. Nope, it wanted payment now. It wanted $10.00. It wanted a ten dollar bill. We didn’t have one between us. We had fives and we had ones, but no ten. Not one single lousy ten and there was no way we were going to put a twenty in! No where did it say “Give us a twenty and we’ll give you change”.

What do we do now? I decided that I would go in search of a place to exchange our bills for a ten. We look around at not the greatest of neighborhoods. I don’t know about you, but bars on windows just don’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

By now we are frustrated. I’ll be honest, tempers were flaring a bit, we had been cooped up for two days, we wanted out and so far it was a comedy of errors, although neither one of us was feeling the humor.

And then……..it happened. We were so concerned about finding a parking place, fitting in found parking place, paying for said parking place that neither one of us had taken in what was happening in the sky. The blackest of clouds had moved in and while we were standing 20 feet from the truck the heaven’s opened and vats, not buckets, VATS of rain came pouring down. THE HELL WITH THE ALAMO!

Ok, back to the base. Oh. My. God. We didn’t have our map of the base to show what route to take to get to the FamCamp. Of course we didn’t have it, that’s why we spent nearly an hour trying to get off post!

We drove on every road in Fort Sam Houston! Including some of the ones to get us to the RV. Remember I told you tempers were flaring a bit? Well, after the TWO HOURS it took us to find the FamCamp our tempers were in RAGE MODE! I think we were both mentally picking out our divorce lawyers. It was raining so hard that no one was out and if HE would have stopped for directions, yeah like THAT was going to happen, “I” would have been soaking wet by the time I got them and got back in the truck….yeah, like THAT was going to happen! The rain finally let up to a slow drizzle and we stopped at the fire house for directions. We were less than a mile from the FamCamp.

I've said it before and I'll say it again......THE HELL WITH THE ALAMO!

So we get home, we watch TV, do the computer thing, read, and have dinner. We're back on speaking terms by now and then the thunder started....again. I figured the storm was centered sixteen feet, seven inches over our RV. The thunder is so loud that our windows rattle, it CRACKS! Know what I mean? The lightning was so bad, how bad you ask? So bad that it hits a transformer and we lose electricity. No TV, no computer....I hate this day!