I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the small, teeny-tiny, almost-inconsequential snafu in our Nascar plans. No big deal, really….
The flight out of our rural airport near LA was a little hurried. In the space of an hour, the sky had darkened significantly, and the wind was picking up. If it got much windier, we wouldn’t be able to take off, so we hurried to get everything in order for flight. We (or rather, Chris, I can’t really take credit) made a smooth takeoff and were on our way to Phoenix. We had a decent tail wind so the flight was going to be about 2 hours.
An hour passes.
Chris looks at me and asks in an offhand way, “You grabbed the Nascar tickets, right?”
The immediate look of complete and utter horror on my face was answer enough.
“YOU. FORGOT. THE. NASCAR. TICKETS?!!!”
I kept waiting for him to crack a smile, say, hey just kidding, I grabbed them on the way out but HAHA wasn’t that a funny joke?
Unfortunately, he was not joking. And neither was I. The tickets were in California… and we were halfway to Arizona. We couldn’t exactly turn around, either, because the weather back in California was only supposed to get worse, so making it in and out of that airport a second time would be a difficult feat.
“Well,” Chris said (he was surprisingly calm after his initial outburst), “YOU are responsible for figuring out how we are getting in to Nascar.”
You see the thing is, it wasn’t just our tickets I forgot. It was all the tickets for our entire group of 8. And yes, I could have pointed out the fact that Chris, also, forgot to grab the tickets off the kitchen counter. However since the tickets were originally mailed to Arizona and it was my brilliant self who decided to take them back to California (despite Chris’s advice otherwise), it therefore became my responsibility to bring the tickets back to Arizona. Also, it’s never a good idea to aggravate the pilot who’s keeping you aloft at 10,000 feet.
To be honest, I completely forgot about the tickets. I may have mentioned this in my previous post, but I’m not really going to Nascar to watch the race. The tickets are rather inconsequential if you think about it that way. You know, one of those minor details.
I picked up my phone and began texting furiously.
For the most part, everyone’s reaction was, OMG DID YOU TELL CHRIS YET?!
Luckily, roommate Payson was also going to Arizona that weekend. He couldn’t get the Friday off, so he was driving back instead of flying with us. After several minutes of nail-biting, I got a hold of Payson. He would bring the tickets when he left the next day.
We picked up Chris’s Iowa friends and family from the airport Friday morning, then drove around completing various errands… getting firewood, grocery shopping, filling the RV propane and water tanks… etc. Then we headed out to the racetrack, about an hour’s drive from our side of town.
And what do you know, Payson had PERFECT timing. And by perfect, I mean he left California and drove east until he reached the racetrack exit, and we left Phoenix and drove west until we reached the racetrack exit AT THE EXACT SAME TIME. Literally, we pulled off onto the exit and he pulled off, coming from the other direction, right behind us.
Sweeeet. Saved by the bell. Or rather, a very, very, nice roommate.
