And now, for the REST of the story…
Hi everyone, this is Jan and I want to share our recent journey and the associated blessings Shep and I have experienced. When you read our posts, it will become obvious that we are people of great faith and know that God has a plan for each of His children. Sometimes it is rather obvious and sometimes pretty obscure, requiring faith and patience.
As Shep has mentioned, our plan to purchase our new home on wheels was to do so AFTER the closing of our home sale in August of this year. But…..we were given the opportunity to purchase the beautiful fifth wheel of our dreams at an amazing price. To me, this was the first miracle of our RV journey. And, it brought with it, the meeting of four really great people-the seller, the certified RV inspector and the couple who transported the “Taj Mahal” aka Taj to our friends’ home in Wisconsin.
So, fasten your seat belts and hang on as I share my fast, crazy, and a bit tiring experience. 🙂 As soon as we decided to purchase the Taj, Shep and I decided that I would fly to Chicago and rent a car, driving up to the Grand Rapids, Michigan area where the trailer was located, and purchase a used pick up, then drive it out to Washington state, surprising my family with my arrival, and parking the rig at my brother’s home. I grabbed an airline ticket and flew from Kona to San Francisco to Los Angeles to (finally) Chicago. Oh yes, we had an unplanned stop in Kansas City because of a faulty fuel indicator, landing in pea soup fog which cleared rather rapidly and, along with a corrected fuel indicator, we were able to continue on to Chicago-which interestingly enough had been closed because of severe fog and reopened just in time for us to land.
When I boarded in Kona I was informed that I had to check my carry on and then pick it up in San Francisco. Rats…I only had 45 minutes between flights. Everything seemed fine…until my inbound flight arrived late and the carry on did not show up on the luggage carousel in San Francisco. With less than 10 minutes before my connecting flight was closed for boarding, I learned that it had actually been checked all the way through to Chicago. Oh, that was a suprise, but also one thing less to have to deal with.
By this time, my LA flight boarding was closing in 5 minutes. I leaped up the escalator two steps at a time and arrived at…..the TSA security check with a long line in front of me. Begging to go to the front of the line, my fellow travelers were more than generous, I tossed my backpack (which contained my purse) on the conveyor belt and placed my driver’s license and cell phone in a dog food bowl to be scanned, I quickly zipped through the metal detector with just 4 minutes to get to my gate. Then I was informed that my cell phone had been randomly selected to be tested. I reached for the bowl to grab my drivers license to be told to STEP BACK. My cell phone was screened and returned to me. I asked to get my drivers license out of the bowl and the agent informed me that there was NO drivers license there. The conveyor was stopped and searched and no drivers license was found. GOOD HEAVENS!!!! How could it have disappeared???
I called Shep, explaining the situation and he advised me to continue on. Something would work out. I boarded the flight and removed my purse from my backpack, then, to to (I believe) utter amazement of the passengers I was next to, I unloaded everything from my purse, including everything from my wallet, and, examining one item at a time, replaced them in my wallet and purse. I covertly checked the top portion and underarm area of my left chest to see if the license had magically appeared in my favorite brassiere hiding place (learned about this when living in Italy), but no. A great big ZERO on finding the license. We took off for LA and I started praying.
When my flight arrived in LA, I raced to the connecting flight and found it was delayed, so I took my purse and my back pack apart again. Nope, no drivers license. I kept praying and flew on to Chicago.
The saga continues in my next post.