Everything Takes Longer Than You Think It Will

Oh, such profound words of wisdom they are! Where to start, where to start, where to start. First, we did not drive to Fort Worth. No, no, gentle reader, we drove to BFE! We ended up in a small town called Brad at the intersection of TX16 and Hwy180. What is Brad close to? Palo Pinto. Yes, that is correct. It is also close to Possum Kingdom Lake State Park. It's between Mineral Wells and Breckenridge. Let me begin the comedy of errors for you.

We left at 7:00 a.m. after putting Miss A on her bus. Oddly enough, T-man (also known to some as Wilderness Man) starts driving in the opposite direction of that which we need to take! I ask "where are you going?" He tells me he doesn't want to drive behind the bus and its many stops. So, we took the LONG way back up to the new shopping center with its new Whataburger and Starbucks. Yes, Kyle now has a Starbucks!! All is right with the world. T-man still can't explain our ciruitous route. He hasn't had his OJ yet, so maybe he's a bit discombobulated, which is why we headed toward Buda before turning around and going back to Kyle. We get our food, then walk over to get the coffee, then we take off. I ask him where we are going and he shows me the map. So I look and I tell him that this is NOT a four hour trip, and besides that, going through Fort Worth to get there is taking the VERY LONG WAY. So we map out our new route. Now, get this, he does not have a delivery address. So when we get to Goldthwaite he calls the number he was provided. The guy who answers gives him directions from our new route, telling T-man that he believes the road we need to turn right onto is "Davis or something like that" and that it is "very close to the intersection at TX16". Okie dokie!

As we leave Goldthwaite, we notice that phone reception is rather spotty at best, and suddenly these guys are calling wanting to know when we will be there. Evidently they have neither any idea where Goldthwaite is nor how far from them it is. At this point in the drive, we have to find a really high rise in the terrain to talk on the phone. After wasting 30 minutes doing this, we give up and keep driving. It's a beautiful drive, mind you. But there are long stretches of nothing but hills and dales, goats, sheep, cattle and a small herd of antelope.

We finally get to the intersection of TX16 and Hwy 180, turn left and start looking. THERE ARE NO ROADS TO TURN RIGHT ONTO and THERE IS NO CELL SERVICE OF ANY TYPE. Yes folks, welcome to BFE. So we keep driving. We drive 10 miles and come to the intersection of Hwy 180 and TX16 CONTINUING NORTH. This happens to be the intersection the guy was referring to -- it never occurred to him that where we would be hitting Hwy 180 from TX16 was 10 miles away. Just after this intersection is a road called "Brad Road". Now I want to describe for you Brad, Texas. It consists of the highway intersection, a tiny little store, a sign indicating Possum Kingdom Lake State Park is 17 miles north, a road called Brad Road and a road called Upper Brad Road (Lower Brad road is way back the other direction and it was a left-hand turn). There is no "Davis" or anything else, because we drove a ways up Hwy 180 to check and had to turn around. So we go back to Brad Road, which is little more than a jeep rut. We are loaded down with a collapsible water tank that weighs 750 pounds, on a single axle flat bed trailer pulled by a two-ton diesel pickup. It was a fun ride. Little did we know that the fun was just beginning. We get to two gates, both of which are locked. Behind gate number two is a guy with a gimme cap, sitting in a truck. He gets out, asks if T-man if he is who he is, and tells T-man he doesn't know what happened to his note pad with the combination to the lock. Kids, there are no less than seven locks, all clipped together, on this gate! But we are informed that the dude who went to get the sand should be back soon.

I must mention here that I have needed to pee for the past 30 minutes. So now we must wait for the sand dude. Oh look, here comes sand dude. He has a small pickup pulling a small dump trailer loaded with sand. He introduces himself and unlocks one of the several locks, then he tells T-man that there will be a bit of an incline on the "road" and is that going to be a problem? No? Okay, follow the sand dude.

Let me just say that the road to the locked gate was smooth as glass compared to what we now find ourselves on. And sand dude takes off and promptly loses us. We come to a turn in the road, but we cannot tell which way sand dude went, so we continue on. Did I mention that this is also one of those roads in a pasture without fences? In Texas that means loose livestock, and we pass a small group of lovely black Angus bovines taking a rest, joined by a big chestnut horse. We drive on and come to a little house, go past the house on an even more rutted, rough road and come to another locked gate. Yes, it is locked. T-man BACKS THE TRAILER DOWN THE RUTTED ROAD because there is no place to turn. We come to another open gate, but no one has driven on that road in a while (T-man got out and used his tracking skills here). But there is a place to turn around, so he does. As we come around the curve, we see that road is now blocked by a big black Angus bull and his harem of about eight lovely ladies, and they are not inclined to Moooooove. So, I stick my head out of the truck and yell at them to git, go on now, moooove. They do, but one has the audacity to moo back at me!

So off we go, back down over the road from rutted hell, to the fork we passed up. We take the fork, and now we see what he meant by a short incline! Short incline my ass! I've climbed rocks with less incline than this (back when I was trim and slim). We bounce our way into a clearing containing two small trailer houses (nope, not manufactured houses -- these are true trailer houses), and new metal house in the process of being built, stupid sand dude, six latino guys who speak no English and are doing all the work, the homeowner who is filming everything, one other guy who seems to be a foreman, and the leader of the pack, whom we will refer to as college-educated-dude-from-Fort-Worth-who-knows-nothing-of-the-real-world (CEDFFWWKNOTRW). When I ask if there is a restroom I could use, he suggested the cedar trees! Mmm, what class! This gets better. When T-man asks if they have a tractor or some such equipment with which to offload the tank, the foreman says "we can probably just pick up and take it off. It shouldn't be hard with six of them." He calls the latino workers to come do this!! That's when I got out of the truck to watch. Fortunately, T-man declines that offer and suggests that they just take it off one piece at a time. I get back in the truck.

Okay, the tank gets taken off, and we start to head back down the rutted road that makes for nightmares, but first we have to get the combination to the lock. We are given the magic number and off we go, bumping and jostling all the way. We get to the gate (I'm not quite crossing my legs quite yet), and I get out to unlock the gate. Crikey!! Which friggin' lock is it? So T-man gets out and we divvy up the locks. The combination does not work on any of them! We try again, and a third time because that's supposed to be a charm. Well, it isn't. I'm pretty close to leg-crossing time now. But wait! Here comes a truck! It's gimme hat guy!! And yippee, he has the notepad with the combination, which turns out to be totally different from what CEDFFWWKNOTRW has given us! How ignorant are these guys and how did they manage to sell this tank to that homeowner??? Hallelujah, I can now find a bathroom!

We head off in the direction of Breckenridge, where we will pick up Hwy 183 back to Lampasas, then we will pick up Hwy 290 into Dripping Springs, go past my granparents' old house and my mom's road in Driftwood, on into Kyle and home. We find a gas station/convenience store that sells diesel and I go in for the potty. What relief! Now, to find food, because it is 2:15 and we are starving. Yes, we started out at 7:00 a.m. for what was supposed to be a four hour drive but it is 2:15. So, I inquire as to the whereabouts of a Dairy Queen (all the small towns in Texas have them) or other fast food. Well, they are on the other side of town, far past our turn onto Hwy 183. So we buy a snack and REAL Dr. Pepper, the ones still made with Imperial Pure Cane Sugar!Yum!

After lunch at the Sonic in the bustling metropolis of Cisco, we get back into the truck and head back home. We have decided that this part of Texas will not be considered for our retirement, for many, many reasons. We got home at 7:45 last night. The considerable drive caused my sciatic nerve to be pinched again. Ouch. But as my sweet husband pointed out to me, I got to spend the day with him. Yes, yes I did. Oh, the things we do for love.