Murphy's Law vs. Homeschool Outing

Normally, I wouldn’t be giving a report on the happenings of the day in my personal life but today was just so special it required commentary. Today, my daughter and I were headed to a homeschool outing in a city an hour’s drive away. The social event (see social is factored in) was to join other students and parents in a hayride through and apple orchard field then pick out some pumpkins at the end. That was the goal in mind. To facilitate my getting there without a wrong turn, I mapped out the most direct route to avoid the big city lunch hour traffic. So all plans were a green light and the event was going to be fun. That is when Murphy’s Law stepped in. (photo credits: magazineusa.com)

To start the trip, I tried to print off the directions from my computer but for whatever reason (Murphy) my printer opted to disagree. After a number of attempts, I just wrote down the directions I needed in hopes it would be sufficient. **Minor detail about me (& my wife) we never get to a new destination without getting turned around at least once or asking for directions a few times.** So we loaded up and out we went seemingly without further issue.

Until we got ½ a mile from our home and got clogged into slow moving traffic. Eventually, I made my first turn and seemingly had some smooth sailing then turned off to the next stage of the directions. So I landed smack into the first detour due to construction. Hoping and praying the gas station attendant could give us directions to route around it, I stopped the first time and found we were in a bit of luck. Yippee!! I followed his directions to perfection and found the route he said and clear sailing...right? Wrong!!

With the time on the clock ticking away, I ended up behind a semi-truck going 15 under the speed limit. I finally got past him only for him to be replaced by a pick-up truck towing some stuff and going 5 under, then another, then another semi, so on and on and on. Finally, I freed myself of the slow moving traffic only to get caught in another detour.

That finally gave way until I found a bottleneck caused by utility work. More slow traffic and the time was getting very tight so what do I find? We find more utility work that clogged our 3 lanes down to 1 with a slow traffic light. 12 minutes to go before the hayride leaves and 19 miles left – maybe they’ll hold it for us as we scheduled ahead.

So now my daughter has to go to the bathroom really bad and we need to pull off to the nearest restaurant. Result was we were 11 miles out and 11 minutes late already. We opted to give it a go but the 20 or so turkeys that needed to cross the road was the final straw. We surrendered and opted to turn back.

On the way back we got lost and blocked by more utility work. So how did the day end?

Getting in the car one last time split the rear of my pants right on the seam for a good 8 inches to show the world my underwear and I managed to have a 12 fl oz soda explode in my hands on my lap.

Murphy wins the day. He kicked my butt. I’m going to bed.