Fievel Plays Country, Part 2

Update: We're leaving the Hansen household today, and the blog will be brought up to date as soon as possible. We needed some time off, and you'll see why.]

Due to potential non-happiness, the Hank/Reba saga will remain undisclosed. Suffice it to say that Mike was postponed a day because he cares about his friends. 

Anyway, Mike finally left home on Friday, but couldn't make it all the way out to us, so he stayed with a cousin in Spokane, where he also picked up his brand spankin' new fourteen-foot Saturday morning he set out for the greater Portland area, cruising along on reasonable roads, connecting with Interstate 84 and ran parallel to the cool Columbia River. 

The Dalles comes from French for "flagstone," but I don't get it either. I do know it was the endpoint of the land segment of the Oregon Trail. [Childhood memory warning. Remember playing Oregon Trail on the good ol' Apple IIe in elementary school? When you get to The Dalles you can choose to raft down the river--watch out for those rocks!--or continue on land to your destination. Just remember, if you choose to take the water, make sure you've done all your hunting and trading, because once you hit the river there's no more chance to pick up a spare wagon tongue for extra points at the end. Now that I think about it, we're sort of traveling the Oregon Trail in reverse. Except, you know, we're going through the Dakotas. And we have no oxen. And I'm pretty sure local government agencies will frown upon me shooting squirrels for food. Check out this shirt. Trust me.]

So Mike hit The Dalles at mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, he also hit some ice. A dramatic scene unfolded, probably in slow motion and from four camera angles. The short version is that the Dodge and the trailer ended up facing the wrong way, with some nasty bumps. And though duct tape and a crowbar are usually enough for a resourceful guy from Montana to get a truck moving again, insurance agents prefer to be informed of such accidents before moving along. 

Mike called us shortly after the accident, and we jumped in Fievel (that's the name Anna's given to our car, in case you haven't figured it out yet. And yes, the first one was better. Did you know that two more films starring that little Jewish mouse were released direct to video? Sad, isn't it? But at least it wasn't as overdone as this monstrosity. I was sort of hoping the writers would stay on strike just so awful things like that wouldn't happen. And maybe so I could get in on a few gigs as a scab. Ah well.

I just realized I forgot to close that parenthetical. Try and keep up.) and headed up I-205 to fetch him from the confines of a no-doubt very posh Shilo Inn. Unfortunately about eight miles outside of Portland on I-84 we learned that ODOT had closed the interstate, so we were forced to turn back and wait through the night. Sunday morning I took the car and some tools (yes, I actually took duct tape and a crowbar, as well as a new brake line) and put on my work boots to help repair the Dodge as best we could. Six hours and a quarter pounder with cheese meal later we'd managed to pull the bumper out of the radiator and install the brake line. Sadly, the $50 line we replaced was not the issue; rather, we needed to replace the upper line, the metal one coming down from the master cylinder. No problem, figured The Men, we'll just go down to Napa and pick up the part. 

Napa didn't have it. Why? Well, it seems that most brake lines have the same fitting on each end. Makes sense, right? Apparently not to the geniuses at Daimler-Chrysler (though at the time of the pickup's manufacture Daimler AG hadn't yet merged with Chrysler, so I ought to leave the Germans out of it), who put differently sized fittings on each end. So we gave up for the day, since darkness was falling and it was a three-hour trip between The Dalles and Portland because of road conditions. Being Sunday, of course, there was little in the way of resources available anyway. The insurance company would tow the truck to a local body shop on Monday, and the trailer would stay parked on the side of the interstate. 

You'd think that would be enough trouble for one day, but no. Anna works Sunday afternoons, and normally if I had the car as I did that day she would just ride our scooter to work. However, some dingbat decided it would be a good idea to hit our scooter with his/her car, knocking it to the ground and cracking plastics and breaking off a mirror, and then simply drive off. So the scooter had been in the shop for over a week. Now, we'd told the motorcycle shop to order the appropriate parts as soon as our insurance company okayed our claim. Three days later the primary mechanic called us asking if we wanted to order the parts or not. This made us put on our not-happy face. This is the Tuesday before Mike was supposed to leave, by the way, meaning it probably wasn't going to get fixed in time for Mike to take it with him, and we sure as heck weren't going to drive it 500 miles to Montana in winter at 53 mph. No way no how. So we called them every day that week to tell them we were about to move and had to have it done by Friday, just absolutely had to have it by Friday. So Thursday they call and say okay, fine, it'll be done in the morning. We were awfully embarrassed when we called them Friday after Mike's crash to tell them that we actually didn't need it that day. Oy.

Anyway, the point of that tangent is that we didn't have the scooter for Anna to ride to work. No problem, she figured, she'd just take the bus and get to work a little early. But the bus route past our apartment doesn't run on Sundays, naturally, throwing yet another monkey wrench into our plans. She ended up calling her store and an extremely kind and gracious young man who works there named Tim left work, picked up Anna, drove back to work and finished his shift. What a guy. He also spins flaming balls on strings. Sweet. 

Is that all that happened on Sunday? Probably not, but it's too stressful to remember more. Just know that we were already two full days behind schedule, and our adventures in Portland weren't over yet.