Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous but today we have a steady drizzle. Too bad we’re not parked somewhere because we love the sound of rain on the roof of the RV.

We had the same problem with the tow vehicle as last time (the little transmission knobby gizmo sticking) but Richard got busy with the WD40 and it’s working fine now. We bought a new bike rack and I’m not thrilled with it. It’s on the back of our tow vehicle and the bikes are bouncing all over the place. I’m certain the car is going to get scratched and I’m not certain if the bikes will still be there when we arrive. Unfortunately, the rear-view camera on the RV only gives us a view of the tow vehicle, not the bikes on the back of it.

The boys are watching movies in the iPad and I have to work all day. Richard gets to do all the driving. We’re heading to Danbury, Connecticut, which is quite a drive but the boys are usually pretty relaxed, and happy to ride for several hours on the first day of a trip. They are VERY excited about seeing their cousins Ben and Emma!

Join us right here for the next 3 1/2 weeks. We’ll be making stops in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois and we’ll be staying in different places on the way there and back. We’ll even be visiting a Renaissance Fair on this trip. Smoked turkey legs! Yea!!

That afternoon, we rode with Ali to her new apartment with a load of her stuff. She was going to spend the evening packing up our room and Max and Mason’s rooms. Our rooms were going to be painted and refloored while we were away on our trip. Richard wanted to watch a movie but I talked him into helping me help Ali get those rooms packed up. I’m still feeling guilty about that…

A few hours later, Richard was coming down the attic steps, taking out the trash, and his foot slipped on one step near the bottom. His body twisted around and I’m not sure really what happened after that but we all heard a large THUMP, and then Richard yelling, “I BROKE MY LEG! I BROKE MY LEG!!”

There were about 12 people in the house right then and we all went running. Richard was sitting near the bottom of the stairs, already sweating profusely, and not moving his leg. He has on his work boots but the broken bone was clearly visible just under the skin. His foot was also sitting at a very odd angle.

I called 9-1-1 while Zach watched Richard to make sure he didn’t pass out (he didn’t). Long, long ago, Richard was an x-ray tech and he knew what he’d done. If he moved, his bone might come through the skin and the severe break would turn into a very, very bad situation requiring emergency surgery. He was still sweating and grimacing and he was incredibly brave. He said, “Tell them to hurry. It’s going to break through if I move. Please tell them to hurry. Oh, and somebody get my iPad.”

No, I’m not kidding. He really said that and we all laughed about it…the next day.

Anyway, the older kids had quickly moved all the cars out of the driveway, and were outside, ready to flag down the ambulance. They arrived very quickly and walked upstairs to assess the situation. They had to wrap his foot and shoe in a large pillow and tape it all up. Richard pretty much had to shuffle down the last flight of stairs while one paramedic held his foot and, let me tell you, it was agony for him.

He was in so much pain and I wanted to cry listening to him groan. Max and Mason were there and Frank’s girlfriend, Kate (God bless her), came up to them and said, “Hey, guys. Let’s go play a game!” She whisked them away to protect them from witnessing their father in so much pain.

Once they got him to the bottom, they strapped him to one of those cool little chairs, got him to the ambulance, on the gurney, and whisked him away. I rode with him, of course.

At the hospital, it was quite busy and Richard was dumped on a gurney in a hallway with a red number on the wall. It took 45 minutes for them to triage him and Richard was getting more and more worried because he said if any veins or arteries were affected, he could lose some function in his foot if they didn’t move quickly. He said, “They’re either going to set it or do surgery. I hope they can just set it.”

A nurse finally came along and had to take his shoe off. I thought it needed to be cut off but she said it would be just fine. After she got the shoe off, while torturing Richard during the process (he’d had NO pain killers at all), she clucked her tongue and said, “This is a bad one.” I was starting to get very angry but I bit my tongue so as not to stress Richard anymore.

Things moved very quickly after that. He was given two Vicadin and sent to x-ray. A few minutes later, he was moved quickly to a room. The anesthesiologist came in and said, “Your bones are in many tiny pieces. You should have been taken immediately to trauma.” She then turned and mumbled to herself, “We are going to have a meeting about this one.”

She pulled out the x-rays and showed us what had happened. His tibia and fibula were both broken and both were dislocated from the ankle.

Richard said, “Are you going to set it or operate?”

He looked pretty crestfallen when she said, “Both.”

I got instantly nauseated and was embarrassed when I blurted out, “I’m going to be sick.” That seemed odd to me. I saw the foot hanging at an odd angle and that didn’t bother me. I later saw the bone under the skin a and that didn’t bother me at all, either. Heck, I even took a picture of it. Hearing about it and knowing he faced two immediate procedures sent my worry meter through the roof and I almost got physically ill but I managed to push it back down. He is my best friend and my rock. I love him so much!

They needed to immediately set it to fix the dislocation because his arteries were stretched and risked breaking. He was also at risk of nerve damage if the blood supply was cut off. They just had to wait for the doctor to arrive.

They whisked him off to trauma. As soon as the doctor arrived, they brought in two huge, burly guys to help. I thought, “Oh my gosh! They’re going to sit on him, just like in the movies!!”

No, they didn’t do that. They sedated him (with the same stuff Michael Jackson overdosed on) and pulled on his leg. He yelled out so they stopped and gave him more. They waited a moment and pulled again. He yelled out again. They gave him the rest of the syringe and said they couldn’t give him anymore. He was out cold and didn’t budge when the doctor grabbed his foot and popped it all back into place. The burly guys were there to hold him down if they needed to (they didn’t) but also to hold his entire leg completely stationary while they put a splint on. Just after the doctor set the leg, Richard’s oxygen level dropped and the anesthesiologist and nurse anesthetist grabbed his head, cocked it back, and dug their fingertips up under his jaw. One of them then started massaging his chest and talking to him. Seeing them set his leg didn’t bother me at all. Seeing them trying to get him to breathe just about did me in. I was not expecting that and, well, I can’t even find the words to describe how shocked and terrified I was that my husband had stopped breathing. Shaking, I said, “Aren’t you going to give him something to wake him quickly?”

She responded, “This is very fast acting. He’ll wake up any moment.”

Right then, his eyelids fluttered and opened, and he said, “Wow! I could hear voices far, far away! That was weird!”

No, he’d never been sedated before (never broken anything or had surgery, either), and didn’t know what to expect.

They’d said he would feel much better after they set it and they were right. The painkillers didn’t hurt, either. He’s previously been grinding his teeth and very agitated. I noticed a complete change in his mood after he woke up, as you can see here:

Pain meds. Aaahhh…

A few hours later, we were in his room and it was then 5:00 a.m. His surgery was scheduled for late that afternoon. At 7:00 a.m., Zach came to sit with Richard while I went home to try to get some sleep.

I slept for two hours before Zach sent me a message telling me they were going to come get him in 45 minutes. I was dressed and in his hospital room within 17 minutes.

Four hours later, he finally got wheeled away to surgery (sigh…). He came through just fine and…let’s just say airport metal detectors will take on an entirely new meaning for him now. He has 3 screws on the inside of his leg/ankle and seven screws and a metal plate on the outside. There was a small piece also broken off the back but they “didn’t bother with that.”

They said they’d had a hard time waking him up in recovery, which is why it took two hours for him to get out of recovery instead of one. I asked his nurse that night if anything had happened during surgery. She said, “Now that you mention it, yes. The nurses said they had a hard time keeping his SATS up (oxygen levels).”

Turns out the exact same thing had happened during surgery that had happened the night before. I said, “Oh no! Just like last night!”

She replied, “What do you mean?”

I told her what had happened in trauma. She got very upset and said, “Nobody told me about that!”

She ran out to get a monitor so she could keep an eye on his oxygen levels and I stood next to him, watching him sleep. And, yes, he did stop breathing after each snore. I’d thump him and he’d start breathing again. They say he has sleep apnea, which doesn’t mesh well with anesthesia. I spent the next hour obsessing over that monitor and the nurse said later she was watching it closely in the nurse’s area, too. It never went below 93 but they wanted it around 99/100. He was on oxygen the whole time.

The next day, they took him off oxygen but kept monitoring him and the alarm started sounding when it dipped down to 88. I wasn’t there at the time as Zach had relieved me again. It’s a good thing I wasn’t because I’m pretty sure they’d have needed to sedate me!

Anyway, his levels kept dropping so low that the alarm would sound and wake him up. He’d go back to sleep, the alarm would sound again, and he’d wake up again. They finally just turned off the alarm so he could sleep but they kept monitoring him. First thing Monday morning, I called our doctor to get a referral for a sleep study.

On Monday, he was doing very well, making phone calls, eating and in good spirits. The doctor came in and said if he mastered crutches and a walker he could go home! Yea!!!

He didn’t have any trouble with either one and he was home by mid-afternoon. Ali is moving out anyway so she turned her room into his recovery room since it’s downstairs. He can’t put any weight at all on his foot for six to eight weeks and he won’t be “good as new” for about four months. I’m now paranoid about blood clots so I’m making him move frequently. His biggest enemy for the next two months will be boredom so we’re all trying to be as entertaining as we can. I can tell you…there is no shortage of walker jokes in this house!

On a serious note, we’re now absolutely positive that we were not supposed to take that trip. We should have gotten a clue with the car problem. After the broken leg incident, well, let’s just say – we can take a hint!

What sane person would leave Maine on a day like today? We would! We are on our way to Scott and Kelly’s wedding in Wisconsin. Whoop whoop!!! Scott is Richard’s childhood friend. Kelly is his beautiful and funny sweetheart. They met while working at the same library. Scott asked Kelly to be his bride here in Maine, on Cadillac Mountain, last October 17th. We were with them on that day. We’d taken the boys to the bathroom. When we came out, we went to the top of the mountain so we could see where they’d wandered off to. I looked to my left and, in the distance, I spotted them. At that moment, Kelly jumped into Scott’s arms and kissed him. I said, “Oh, isn’t that sweet?! They’re kissing!!”

Richard said, “He just asked her to be his wife.”

I then loudly told everyone around us what was going on and a collective sigh and several “Awwweee!!”‘s arose from the crowd. I grabbed my camera and took this picture:

Below is the wedding present we sent to Scott and Kelly. Max helped with the rocks and one rock in the lower, right-hand corner has the date of their engagement on it.

A few minutes later, they joined us again and I took this one:

Below is the painting I did for Kelly’s Bachelorette Dinner, based on the photo above. Yes, it’s flipped on purpose.

Richard made all our reservations at campgrounds for this trip weeks ago. We are supposed to arrive in Wisconsin on Wednesday. Friday night will be the bachelor’s party. (I’ve been assured there will NOT be any strippers!) The following Wednesday will be a bridal dinner. The wedding will be the Friday after that. In between all that, we will be visiting with Richard’s family and friends in his hometown and staying at the campground where Mason was conceived back in 2005. (I couldn’t resist dropping that in. Heh…)

The RV is all packed and we’re ready to go. We actually did leave about an hour ago but we didn’t get far. We always stop at a nearby park to hook up our tow vehicle. Richard couldn’t get the driveshaft engage knobby thingymabob to engage.

We looked it up online and it’s a frozen cable – apparently very common and easily fixed…if you’re a mechanic. We aren’t. So, we’re in a holding pattern until Monday morning and we’re praying the RV place will see us early so we can get on the road then. Since the RV is completely packed, and since I detest packing and refuse to do it twice in two days, we are going to camp out in the RV until Monday morning.

Ali is glad our trip is delayed. We are having our room and Max and Mason’s room painted and refloored while we’re gone. Ali’s weekend job was to move everything out of both rooms. Now, she’ll have some extra help with that.

I’m sitting in the back of the van right now. Ali is moving into her first apartment and we’re driving down to Bar Harbor with her to pick up her key and drop off some of her things. She is SO excited!

I believe in fate and I believe all things work together for good. For some reason, we were not supposed to leave on our trip today. Knowing that, we’re okay with being stuck for a couple of days. Richard wasn’t happy about cancelling and changing our reservations for the next week but he’s already finished so we can enjoy the rest of the day.

We kept going straight and ended up in a grocery store parking lot. That was easy enough to get out of and we waited a moment for the GPS to give us an alternative route. We ended up in that neighbor again, albeit on a different street, a very narrow passage with endless cars lining both sides. I remember passing the freeway at one point, going right under it, and wondering why the GPS was sending us a different way. It was a Saturday and there were lots of people outside enjoying the weather. There were also lots of junk cars, tattoo parlors, liquor stores, and other unsavory things that made us start to feel a bit nervous. At one point, men got out of two cars right in front of us, blocking traffic. They each went to houses on different sides of the street. We had no choice but to stop and wait. I heard a woman yell outside, “Leon, move your (BLEEP!) car!”

Leon was nice and went back to his car, whistling for his friend, who also went back to his own car. They moved out of our way.

We kept driving and the GPS wasn’t leading us toward any highway or freeway that we could see on the screen. At one point, I think I remember Richard calling the GPS the same name the shouting lady had used with Leon.

People were standing outside and staring at us, obviously wondering what this huge RV was doing in their very crowded neighborhood. We breathed a sigh of relief when the GPS not only led us to a two-lane road, but a police car also pulled in front of us. A few seconds later, he turned and we were once again feeling quite a bit alone and vulnerable. The neighborhood got even more imposing and, I’ll admit it, I was scared.

A few blocks later, I saw a man dressed like the Statue of Liberty. I whipped out my camera and took his picture. When he saw my camera, he made a rather rude gesture to me with his fingers. I was more discreet with my camera after that and I triple checked that the RV door was locked.

I’ve pixelated the fingers…

All our worry was for naught, though. We somehow ended up on the expressway and on our way toward the George Washington Bridge.

George Washington Bridge

I worked for a few hours while Richard drove. We were going to see the boys’ Godfathers, Doug and Raul, and Max and Mason were so excited we had a hard time keeping them still and entertained. We arrived at the campground and the boys were happy to see grass and a playground.

Doug and Raul came to pick us up about an hour later and, much to our delight, had chosen Mystic Pizza II for dinner. It was DELICIOUS!!!

Mason’s Dessert at Mystic Pizza II

The next day, a Sunday, Raul and Richard took Max to the YMCA to go swimming and Doug and I stayed in the RV with Mason, talking shop. I LOVE to talk shop with Doug, who’s a New York Times bestselling author. He has amazing creative ideas for book marketing and he is SUCH a talented writer. I just finished his book, Neverland. I couldn’t put it down! Doug has an incredibly entertaining blog. You can subscribe HERE.

That night, we went to HUGE diner, Equinox, and had a really fun meal. After dinner, we returned to the RV and the boys enjoying spending more time with Doug and Raul. We’d planned to stay an extra day but Doug caught a cold/flu bug so we started for home the next morning, knowing we’d be back in May anyway. Mason was noticeably upset and Max cried.

On Monday morning, we packed up the RV for the last time on our “No More Snow!” trip and started the long drive back to Bangor. I’m sure God was laughing when Ali called to let us know it was 36 degrees in Bangor…and snowing. Forty-eight hours after we got home, it snowed again. Honestly, after the snow we had the first three days of the trip, and the 15 inches we had when we got to Virginia, and the additional four inches we got on the beach in South Carolina, we weren’t surprised.

On the way home, we did what we always do, reminisced about the best parts of the trip while also making a list of all the stuff we broke in the RV…so we’d have that when we took it to the shop. We made it home in plenty of time for Easter, which was our goal, and on Easter Sunday in Bangor, Maine it was almost 80 degrees! It was the warmest Easter, by far, we’d ever experienced in Maine and it was absolutely perfect!

One funny thing happened on this trip that I forgot to mention in earlier posts. After we left home, I realized we hadn’t brought along the bathroom scale. It’s very important to weigh yourself daily when you are eating out so much because you might get home and realize you’ve gained far more weight than you knew. So, early on in the trip, we bought a new, very cheap bathroom scale for the RV.

We’d only been gone for a few days when we bought it so I was stunned when I stepped on it the first time in our little RV potty room and discovered I’d gained seven pounds. SEVEN POUNDS!!!! Why did my jeans still fit?! Richard said he’d gained weight, too (more than me), and so had Max (though less than we had). Hmm… Not good! A few days later, Max was in the potty room in the morning and I asked him to hand me the scale. I put it on the floor near the bathroom sink and was thrilled to discover I’d lost those seven pounds….in one day! Of course, I instantly knew what had happened. The RV was not quite level at that campground. In the potty room, the scale had been facing uphill. When I put it on the floor by the sink, it was facing downhill. I had a good laugh with Richard about it and, let me tell you, we was facing downhill for the rest of that trip!

I hope you’ve enjoyed coming along for the ride on our “2010 No More Snow!” trip.

Join us again in just two weeks when we head to Wisconsin!

I’ve posted many,  many more pictures of our trip HERE.

PREVIOUS POSTS FROM THIS TRIP:

We buckled up the boys and pulled out onto the highway. We can see the tow vehicle from the camera on the back of the RV and…something was definitely wrong. Instead of both sides of the tow bar gizmo being the same distance from the RV, one was shorter than the other. The car was more to the right than to the left. Worse, when we hit a bump, we could feel the pull as it clicked in and out of the gizmo. The car was sliding backward and forward. We pulled into a truck stop and Richard took a look. I looked in the rearview mirror and grimaced as I saw him pulling his trusty duct tape from the RV storage area. I panicked. Was he duct taping the tow gizmo to the tow vehicle!?!?

He climbed back on board. I really didn’t understand much of what he said but it sounded like a lever on the tow bar doohickey was a bit loose, which let the thingamabob slide in and out while the other whatchamacallit didn’t. He duct taped the level down and that did the trick. He was right! Being paranoid, I watched the tow vehicle without blinking for what seemed like several miles and everything was just fine. The windshield wipers, which were just replaced, were making an odd clicking sound, and we smelled something “funny” for a few miles but those things are par for the course. It wouldn’t be vacation if something didn’t break, click or smell funny every single day! Max worked on his school lessons and Mason watched a DVD. We were officially on vacation!

That’s when it started raining REALLY hard. We were under a flood watch and high wind warnings and we’d expected bad weather but this was worse than we thought it would be. I could tell Richard was white-knuckling it for several miles. We’d planned to drive all the way to Connecticut but we decided to exit in Freeport, Maine – only a few hundred miles short of our original destination. It was just too dangerous to drive an RV with winds that high.

I called and reserved a hotel room and we had to race through the parking lot in the deluge. Max stepped in a huge puddle and had to change his pants. We checked in and and Richard went back out in the rain to unhook the tow vehicle. He picked us up by the front door of the hotel and we drove to dinner at Flat Bread Pizza Company. We love that place! Only problem was, it as POURING and we had to run through the rain for about four blocks. When we were almost there, Mason decided he wanted to stay in the pouring rain and look at the Portland waterfront. “Look, Mommy! Boats!!!” I grabbed him, and kept on going. Dinner was DELICIOUS!!

When we got back to our hotel, the guy at the front desk held up a flashlight, informing us the electricity was out. The generator only lit the hallways, lobby and pool area, but not the rooms. Richard went back out into the rain to grab our emergency lamp (which I’d packed at the last moment…just in case) and I took the boys to the room. Between the flashlight and the lamp, it was pretty cozy. The boys watched movies on their iTouches. (Yes, they both have their own. You can’t put a price on peace in the RV.)

I tried to get some work done but I only had 43 minutes of battery left on my laptop. The wifi was running…but it died a few minutes later. I shut down my computer. The “flashlight” application on my iPhone gave me plenty of light to take a shower. At 8:00 p.m., we decided to go to bed so we could get up early. Got everybody’s teeth brushed and got them tucked in. I climbed under the covers…and then the lights came back on. I got up and turned them off and told the boys we were staying in bed. No point in going through the bedtime routine all over again later! Max couldn’t sleep, and kept me up until about midnight. Then, Mason woke up around 4:00 a.m. Needless to say, my brain is a bit fuzzy today.

We just hit the road this morning and, guess what? IT’S SNOWING! AARRRGHHH!!!

We’re going to try to make it to Lancaster, Pennsylvania today. I hope we do because I LOVE Amish restaurants with all those yummy homemade goodies!

~~~~~

FUNNY LETTER FROM ONE OF OUR AUTHORS

Richard has the right idea. The modern handyman’s toolbox has two essentials: duct tape and WD-40.

If it moves and it shouldn’t, use the duct tape.

If it doesn’t move and it should, use the WD-40.

Charles Orton

Buckhorn Bob’s Big Book of Clean Jokes

Buckhorn Bob’s Big Book of Not-So-Clean Jokes

Graveyard Tales: Stories Not to Be Read at Bedtime

(NOTE: That last one’s great for scaring your kids on camping trips! Heh… – Angela)

PREVIOUS POSTS FROM THIS TRIP:

We are all packed and ready to go. We were worried that we wouldn’t get to leave today because we were still waiting for the title number for the new tow vehicle so we could register it. We learned when we bought it that the dealer didn’t have the title from the previous owner yet. Then, there was a delay getting that because he (the previous owner) said he lost it. We spent a few days thinking the car might be stolen…so we, of course, named her Hottie (as in hot / stolen). The good news is, the title number came in on Saturday! Things were starting to look good! We registered it early this morning at City Hall (where I slipped on ice – but did not fall) so we are now legal! The car’s name will remain Hottie, however. She likes her name.

Richard picked up the RV on Friday, where it had been in for minor repairs, and to get it road-ready. We won’t be able to de-winterize it until we get much farther South. In fact, we’ll need to stay in a hotel tonight instead of a campground. When Richard brought it home, it got stuck in the ice on the driveway. It was sitting half in the driveway, half in the road, and the wheels were just going round and round. Richard finally got it pulled forward (after many backwards and forwards) but not before a line of traffic piled up as far as the eye could see. Heh…

We’re going to try to get as far South as Connecticut today. Unfortunately, in Maine, we’re under a flood watch and high wind warning. After noon, the rains are supposed to be torrential. We’re waiting for the RV place to call and gives us the thumb-up for heading there so they can put the new tow vehicle on, and make the height adjustment. We’ll leave straight from there for the highway. Whoo hoo!

This is the list of cities we plan to visit (subject to change due to circumstances beyond our control, of course!):

Burlington, VT
Malone, NY
Lake George, NY
Bath, NY
Geneva on the Lake, OH
Dearborn, MI
Frankenmuth, MI
Newberry, MI
Racine, WI
Oregon, IL
Charles City, IA
Monroe City, MO
Lake Ozark, MO
Branson, MO
Mountain Home, AR
Hodgen, OK
Fort Worth, TX
Austin, TX
Port Aransas, TX
Conroe, TX
Robert, LA
Navarre Beach, FL
Gadsden, AL
Pigeon Forge, TN
Verona, VA
Narvon, PA
E. Stroudsburg, PA
Oakham, MA

Oh, and why is this the “Nostalgia Trip?” We’ll be visiting several friends on this trip that we haven’t seen in years. If they let us, we’ll post photos of them right here.