Yellow GMC Box Truck!

 So a little twist, this entry is about our sortie to Austin, TX to retrieve a few items and drive them back to FL.

We flew out  and Rented a Penske 12' Box Truck, loaded it to capacity and drove it back 1320 miles to our house.

First off, I'm a big dummy.   Somehow I thought I was booking a Saturday flight, but in fact booked it for Sunday afternoon.  Booo, one less day in TX.  On the upside I did get to go to a car show here in Delray Saturday which was fun.   Pic here is from the train as we are passing our exit on I-95 on the way to the airport.

Downside to weekends on the Tri-Rail is only runs once per hour vs. 20 min on weekdays, but we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare.   Made the mistage of going to the airport bar, where Lucy ordered an Expresso Martini which was $26 and my rum and coke was $16.   Auto 18% tip took us into the 50s for 2 drinks.   ouch.

Our flight went off withour a hitch (thank goodness as the last two were many many hours late). And Lucy's Dad collected us at the airport, bing bang, zoom off we went.

Monday was kind of a leisure dy/strategy planning kind of affair.   I did seet that the SpaceX starship 8 launch was scheduled for that afternoon and pondered driving 400 miles each way to try and see it.  I mentioned it to Lucy's Dad and he was all in, but said they would get a hotel.   We had to pick up the truck the following morning so made the adult decision and did not go.   As it turned out it did not launch, so instead of spening 16 hours in a car for no good reason, we had BBQ!\

We went to LeRoy and Lewis BBQ which is Michelan rated (1 star), as it was about the ONLY BBQ open on a Monday.   The food was on point.   We had the Pit Master Special and added Briskey (the barometer meat for TX BBQ) and their special Sweet Potato/Chorizo hash (damne good).   It was all really good, even the Kale Slaw!   There we leftovers and we gorged.

After lunch we walked it off on the boardwalk at Lady Bird Lake across from downtown.   Tristen my nephew was FULL of little kid energy..  Tommy was slacking on his photoshoots for his social media campaign.

Lots of turtles!  I think there are 11 in just this one pic.   Every stick and log had turtle on top of turtles.   A terrapan wonderland!

Tommy ready for a ride in the Vette.   I drove it for 3 days and never put the top down.  Not sure what was wrong with me,....

We finished out the day with a stop at an Asian plaza to get some things unavailable in FL and some cheaper cooking supplies as they have giant Asian grocery supermarkets out there vs. the boutiques we have here.

Day 2 is pretty boring   We went and got the trunck and drove it back and started getting ready to load.   

The backstory:   6ish years ago when my SIL was getting marriend, her soon to be hubby, offered me a Pinball Machine  1985 WIlliams table, The Comet.

It is an iconic tablie as it was the first one to offer a single shot 1,000,000 point shot.  Anyway, the caveat was I had to bring it back.   It was in full working order.   Last year when we visited for the eclipse, it wan't working.   Found out a battery leaked so I have some repair, but back to the story.

I looked at putting it on a pallet and haviing it shipped and that was going to ccost $1000+.  Cue up the kids were getting a house renovated and they bought 2500+ Sq/ft of Mohawk flooring.   THey got it on clearence then decided to go with a different clor and did we want it?     

We need new floors and our house is a lot smaller, so sure!   Cue the box truck!

What we didn't know was that the flooring was seconds and various diffterenet sizes and shades.....Ugh.   I figured I would just be grabbing a bunch of boxes but nope, had to open almost all of them and pick the best pieces.   

So on the back end took us 2 hours to unload byt 2 days on the front end.......