Dear James 364 days from now,
Excellent job listening to your advice from last year regarding driving to Phoenix for Thanksgiving. This time you didn't leave at 1:30, and therefore didn't get stuck in gridlock for four hours with the G35's the hack-your-leg-off clutch (although part of that's easy given the lack of said G35).
Unfortunately, leaving at 7 a.m. and successfully beating traffic doesn't matter a damn bit when you forget your wallet at home! Recall how you pulled into your normal Palm Springs gas station to discover you brought everything but the one thing you actually, truly, really need! The Caravan's DTE display said 144 miles to empty and there was 140 miles back home. It was 231 to you destination of Goodyear, Ariz. This was going to add at least 4 hours to your journey, but you knew it would be longer since traffic was getting worse with every passing minute. As you turned the van around and headed back toward Los Angeles, it was like being handed down a jail sentence. If it wasn't for the Coldplay tickets you had that night in Phoenix, you would have said "screw it" and tried again Thanksgiving morning.
But remember to be as thankful for your father on this Thanksgiving and everyone thereafter as you were last Thanksgiving when he came through as he always has. Remember how he called his company's office branch located in Ontario, Calif., and asked a colleague there to lend his idiot son $50 for gas? That still added three hours to your journey, but it was better than the five to six hours it was certainly going to take with the traffic that had indeed gotten worse.
Of course, had you filled the car up before leaving (as you usually do), you would've realized earlier you didn't have your wallet, or the Caravan's 400-plus-mile range would've easily got you there on one tank.
So you got there in about 7.5 hours, or the exact time it took the previous year when you left at 1:30. At least you weren't in the G35 (although the Caravan is hardly princely transportation). I could say, "Make sure to bring your effing wallet this year, moron!" but instead I'll just repeat the advice I should've followed this year: "Please James, avoid a similar predicament and just celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving."
I'll now go back to waiting for my licence and gas card to arrive via Fed Ex. See you next year.
Sincerely,
James Riswick, Automotive Editor @ 21,185 miles
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That sucks dude. I guess you weren't traveling with anyone who could have helped out eh?
Ugh, I did this once on my way back from college. But I had to drive back. Gotta love an extra 300 miles. Nothing incites road rage more than a stupid mistake like that one.
nice! I think you and I have more in common than I would have guessed. I've left my wallet behind so often my wife now has a name for it -- she calls it The Sliperoo as it generally means she has to pay for everything.
See now i thought catastrophic trips like that happen only to me...
Nice to see you spelled licence with two c's, just like a good Canadian should, lol
This is why I have my ritual pocket check every time I walk out the door. If I don't have my cell phone, keys, and wallet in their respective pockets I feel very strange.
^ Haha, yeah, I do the exact same thing. Every morning when I walk out the door, I slap my butt (wallet), thigh (keys), knee (phone in the carpenter pocket), and I shake my wrist (watch).
Sounds like something I'd do. Fortunately I've never gone real far from home without my wallet, but I did make the whole family miss a movie show time this summer, and I go to work without it occasionally.
One time I turned south instead of north and drove 90 miles the wrong direction before I realized my mistake. "Hey, we're in San Antonio instead of Waco... what the ****?..." Talk about feeling really stupid.
Of course my wife gets to share some of the blame. She forgot her purse that day at the movies, and also didn't notice I was going the wrong way as she was jabbering away in the passenger seat. So we're a good match.