Get On The Move-itis

Those of you familiar with aviation may have heard of “get home-itis”. Usually it’s associated with poor decision-making in an attempt to get home when normally that attempt would not be made if you weren’t trying to get home. Something is overlooked or normal procedures are rushed and before you know it, something unplanned happens. But by being aware of “get home-itis”, it’s highly preventable and keeps you out of trouble.

We have a flat tire and our air pump is in the other car.

Fortunately, we’re only 3 miles outside Bonesteel, SD and we’ve had threefour five different people stop by to ask if they could assist, including Deputy Renken of the Gregory County Sheriff’s Department. But Tim, the first person to stop was headed into Bonesteel to surprise his wife, Julie, for dinner and took the time to run one of us into town with the entire wheel, where a new tube and tire was installed and inflated before running us back out to the car. In the meantime, the other of us inspected the other tires, looked over other fluids and components of the car, and listened to the wind and birds and occasional car drive by.

The first lesson is we didn’t clearly communicate with each other which essential tools and supplies we should have taken from the other car. We grabbed a lot of stuff, including extra tire tubes, blocks of wood and tire irons to change tires with, but the air pump got left behind. We felt a little hurried as we didn’t want to hold up our hosts whose garage we’re keeping the ’11 in so we hurriedly grabbed stuff and transferred it over to the ’10.

The second lesson is that people like Tim and Julie, who own Peppel Farm and Seed in St. Charles, have shown us once more how incredibly helpful, caring, kind and unselfish Americans are in the heartland. Tim and Julie missed their dinner because of us (the grill closed by the time we were done) and instead of being upset they gave us both a nice set of leather work gloves to remember them by. Truly remarkable people.

We’ve still got daylight to make it to O’Neill, NE where we had just called a hotel to make reservations before the flat occurred, but once again we expect to be rolling in at dusk.