Only Fools Use a Map . . .

(ryan with my parents . . . I didn't realize until now that I don't have very many pictures of Ryan and really none lately of me and him)

My brother Ryan's birthday was 2 days after Ansen's. We got him a "special medical school pen" . . . it shocks you when you try to click the pen down. I know, hilarious on m'y part. Anyway, in honor of Ryan's birthday I'm sharing my favorite story (as of late anyway) with Ryan.

Last April Ryan and I drove to Oregon to visit my grandparents. It worked out perfect since Ryan and I were both smart enough to marry someone who can provide for us while we're off vacationing. Anyway, we took my dad's suburban, the 4-wheeler trailer because I bought my grandparents' sofa set and we were bringing it home and we had the girls. We planned to leave at 10 a.m. or something like that, but it 3:45 as we were finally driving out past Tooele. Everyone was worried about us making it safely, but we figured it couldn't be that hard to find a whole state.

On the way there (yes, there's a 2 part idiot story) we filled up with gas in the last town that was going to have an open gas station for the night and kept on trucking. Somewhere after that and a little before no where we realized we missed a pretty major turn off. We had to stop and calculate if we thought we could make it back to the town with the gas to re-fill and go the right way, or if we should just spend the night in the car (no hotels) and wait for a station to open. We had no cell phone coverage whatsoever, but that didn't matter since our phones were both out of batteries. We figured we'd be within 35 miles and we decided to take the chance. We made it and only wasted a little over 2 hours. We were pretty proud, but it was no surprise really, after all I had a Master's and he had his 4 year degree and had been accepted to Medical School. This chapter of the trip has remained our secret until now.

Chapter 2 begins on the way home . . . Ryan decided to direct us a different way than the carefully color copied and highlighted map our mom gave us before we left suggested. My grandma said that it was full of curves and we'd be going slow and be sick. But hey, we were feeling adventurous. Within the first 5 minutes I got sick, so I became the driver. This is where we assume we lost our map. We probably tacked on about a hour and about $80 in gas to trip with our detour there. Later during the drive we noticed that we were driving on the edge of a lake, however neither of us could remember seeing the lake on the way there. We drove a little further until I finally got one bar of cell phone coverage and we frantically (as Ansen described it) called Ansen looking for some help. He gave us some directions and then we suddenly lost cell phone coverage. You can't even imagine the panic we caused Ansen for that one. We re-bounded and barely rolled into town looking for gas. Only 1 station out of 11 was opened, so it was close. My family has ran out of gas in the middle of Nevada, Lovelock area to be precise, and all worked out in the end . . .

Ryan and I had a great time together listening to his high school CD's, debating issues, and re-assuring each other that only fools use a map . . . .