A Series of Unfortunate Events

Well, here I am on vacation. "What," you say, "could happen unfortunate on a vacation?" Well, well, well, let me tell you!!!

First Unfortunate Event:
This one didn't involve any of us exactly, but it was unfortunate nevertheless. Mama, Bria, and the rest of the boys where in the Rialta, and Cara and I were following in the Mazda 626. (Daddy is coming tonight or tomorrow with a boat) As we were zipping along the highway at 65 mph, we -- and all the rest of the cars around us -- zipped around a corner and found ourselves confronted with a traffic jam of massive proportions. Of course, we SLAMMED on the brakes to avoid a collision of equally massive proportions. We succeeded. The end.

Just kidding! I mean, WE succeeded in avoiding a collision, but the four SUVs next to the car I was driving (who were more than "zipping") did not. Cara and Ryan watched from our different vehicles in dismay and awe as the cars crashed into each other one by one. I got a glimpse of the cars crashing, but I was still able to here the loud "thunk.....thunk....thunk." As far as I know, nobody suffered any serious complications (the cars couldn't have been going much faster than each other when they crashed), but Nancy Brown was coming about twenty minutes behind us and she said she heard on the radio that that crash had caused a traffic jam itself.

All right. Now for the second unforunate event. "What," you say (or maybe you don't, but who cares?) "could be more disastrous than witnessing a devastating crash that blocked traffic for three miles (random guess)?" I can tell you in one word: Breakdown. We had barely crossed the Sagamore Bridge onto Cape Cod. We had not yet finished rejoicing in completing the second-to-last leg of our journey when Bria called Cara and me from the car ahead via walkie-talkie.

"Hey, you guys, is the Rialta smoking?"

We replied that it was not.

"Well, then, the Mazda is."

Sigh.

There is absolutely no place to pull to the side of the road on Rte. 6, the road that runs the length of the Cape. So we drove about three miles, took the next exit, and pulled to the side of the road on the highway that we were brought to. By then the Mazda was practically billowing smoke. I called Daddy and tried to describe the problem to him, but we could not figure it out. All we could determine was that the car was leaking some sort of liquid fast whenever the car was off. The engine was not overheating, and the oil level was fine. We were baffled.

After about twenty minutes, the Browns pulled up behind us. To make a long story short, after about half an hour of calling AAA and various garages, we finally got someone to tow us the approx. 35 miles to Eastham, which is where we are vacationing. We passed the forty-five minutes after that playing with Alex's camera and eating chips, which grew old after a while. We're here now safe and sound, but the total time we were stuck there was over two hours.

Unfortunate event number three: I got a new kite for Christmas and I was flying it for the first time today. I was supposed to watch Ian at the cottage, so I was flying it from the deck. Bria came to relieve me, so I started toward the beach -- a little too quickly. The kite dived and landed in a tree on the other side of the house. Using my more clever side, I pulled hard on the string, hoping it wouldn't break, and the kite came out of the tree. Now it was stuck on the roof. I am tired of writing, and you are probably tired of reading, so I'll just give the end away. I got the kite off the roof with a broom.

The rest of our vacation so far has been AWESOME!!!! It has been sunny, if not hot for the entire time. We had a really fun time on the beach with Karen and Alex this evening. The house is really nice, and we have had lots of fun. So it hasn't been all unfortunate; that just made a good title.