Six Inches

It is Saturday night. I am sitting in a weekend rental house in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Elaine is a vendor at the MAVWA Fiber Arts Show, formally the Taos Fiber Festival, or something like that. We haven't been to this festival since 2013, and as our crazy lives would have it, we almost missed this one.

In all fairness, we are not prepared to attend festivals this far from home. The first issue is our vehicle. Our SUV is capable of driving that distance with no problem. The problem is that our SUV is too small to carry all our displays, the booth, and Elaine's wearable art. We were able to remedy that issue by renting the largest SUV the budget would allow. Elaine was able to rent a large SUV manufactured in Asia. I took one look at the SUV and said to Elaine, "This one is smaller than the American-made model we rented last time. ' She then said the person at the rental desk said they were the same size.

As we loaded the SUV it was becoming very apparent I was right and the rental person was wrong. With careful planning and loading, we were able to close every door on the SUV but we could not have put so much as a feather in the vehicle.

"New" cars have features that like them or not, are not on cars from the "old" days. This SUV is/was no exception. It had all the stuff that makes charging the phones easy. Kinda liked that. The thing I should have liked but didn't is the SUV stops itself when you are about to back into something.. That should be a good feature, right? Well, let me tell you a story.

It's an eight-hour drive from our house to Santa Fe. There was a time I could have made that trip driving in reverse holding a burrito in my left hand. Well, I'm older now. I enjoy frequent stops.

I found a convenience store/gas station somewhere along the drive. I didn't need gas, so I parked in the parking spaces in front of the building. Pay attention now, that parking space is the most important part of this story.

Leaving the store (and the space) I started backing away from the building. Parked directly behind me filling gas at the pumps was a large construction truck and trailer. Directly behind me. The SUV's TV screen showed it back there. I seemed to have enough room. If you think you know what happened next, you don't.

As I got closer and closer to the trailer, the automatic braking system activated, hard and fast. Unbeknownst to me, my foot has slipped off the brake pedal and my sandal is STUCK between the gas pedal and brake pedal. I I put the SUV in a forward gear to pull away from the trailer. This active all eight cylinders of the V-8 engine with my foot stuck between the pedals. The SUV, Elaine, and I are headed for the building. I would like to tell you this was happening in slow-motion, but that was not the case.

I was able to dislodge my sandal but sadly the SUV was now on the sidewalk heading for the glass windows of the convenience store. I hit the brakes, HARD! Six inches! The SUV stopped six inches from the window of the store. Imagine the looks on the other customers' faces. Elaine used (construction language). Me? I got the (construction language) out of there. What did you think I did?

I'll talk about yarn next week after I stop shaking. Don't let this story prevent you from buying yarn. God bless!

Our crazy lives!

Monner