Father and Son Time

Gabe and I had quite the adventure this week. On Wednesday Michelle (my step-sister) was married. It was a great wedding. Following the wedding some of us went to dinner at a local pizza buffet. The kids love pizza buffets. Gabe and I left separately from the rest of the family as he had his first night of eleven year old scouts and I had to be at a combined Young Womens- Young Mens activity for the ward.

I was driving my father-in-laws Mazda Pick up as our van was getting repaired and Tammy was driving my car. I had driven the pick up to work and met them at the wedding in the afternoon. When Gabe and I lef the restaurant we headed back to Nampa from Boise. It was a windy evening.

About three-quarters of the way to Nampa Gabe notices a guy waving his arm out his window to get our attention. He does this for about a mile when I finally see him and open the window. The man informs us that we had lost our bed liner. A minute later another motorist tells us the same thing. We look in the bed of the pick up and sure enough, the bed liner is gone. Then I remembered seeing something fly out of the pick up while we were driving and I thought it was just a grocery bag or something else.

Gabe and I take the next exit off the interstate and get right back on heading in the direction we had just came from. As we drove we searched for the missing bed liner. We found it six or so miles back on the south side of the freeway (we had been driving on the north side when it blew out). We pull over, traffic zooming past and I put the bed liner back in the pick up. We head out and take the next exit and head back to Nampa. As we drive I have Gabe be the lookout for the bed liner. Just in case.

Good thing Gabe was my lookout, I needed him. Because just as we passed the spot where we picked up the bed liner after it blew out before, it blew out again. This time we both saw it fly out like a bird on the wing. Attach straps and we could hang glide. We stop on the right shoulder of the interstate. The bed liner was on the other side of our lanes so the only thing to do was cross four lanes of traffic, then drive in reverse on the left shoulder of the interstate for a quarter mile until we reached the escaping bed liner. 

Again, I load it back into the pick up. This time I ask Gabe if he wants to ride in the back, up against the cab acting as weight to hold it down. By this time is it dark and traffic is still flying by. Gabe was not interested in doing that at all. In fact that is probably the most concerned about doing something that I had asked him to do; that I had ever seen. So I did not make him get in the back of the pick up. I turned on the hazard lights and we drove the final ten miles on the interstate at forty miles an hour. 

We did make it home with enough time to change our clothes and head to the church. Gabe was only five minutes late for his first time at Boy Scouts. (I made it on time, too)