Walk the Plank

Adventures in the Barowski household are never lacking. Last night, Miguel and I decided to make a late night trip to Lowes to buy materials for our new deck. Our old deck, is well, old. If you stand in the far right corner and barely shift your weight, the entire deck sways from left to right and then back to left. Very scary. Needless to say, the new deck is a want but also a need! We headed out last night around 9:15, knowing we'd have 45 minutes to buy the boards, load them into Eric's full-size pickup, and get home. After choosing our boards (there is a fine art to board choosing), Miguel and the Lowes' employee decided it would be fine to load all 30 planks into the back of the truck, with the gate down. The planks were 18 feet. That meant 10 feet would be in the bed, 2 feet would be on the gate and 6 FEET would be hanging over the edge. No problem. We had one tie-down, that should do the trick. We only had 1/2 mile to drive, anyway. On the drive home, I trailed behind the truck, just in case. We turned onto Tolgate, no problems; we made it up the hill, no problems; we made it halfway through the roundabout, BIG problems. All 30 planks slowly began to spill out of the back of the truck and all over Westover. I began frantically blaring my horn, knowing full well that Miguel understood my honks. I stopped in the middle of the round about, slammed on my emergency flashers, slammed my door shut and give a little, "I told you so!" (Because in my mind, I had seen this happening before it even did!) Out of the darkness came a woman's voice asking if we needed help. Did we ever!! One man was kind enough to stop his truck and help. The four of us quickly got the planks reloaded into the truck and off we all went. Me silently praying that the planks would stay put for another 2 minutes. They made it. Thank God!

After all was said and done, I laughed. Chuckled was more like it. Lifting 30 planks a total of 3 times is no easy chore! Next time, I say we have the boards delivered!