A couple days later, it was time to go. We loaded up the car with all our suitcases, duffle-bags, Kwedges’s barrel, and anything else that would be needed. Even with the “car’s” eight-Mook capacity, the seven of us were still cramped with all the bags and stuff. I think we must have loaded it with 200 pounds of those guys’ junk and my bags.
Using my expert driving skills (expert compared to Maxwell, the terror of H-42), we navigated our way to the open road, waving to our parents, grandparents, and relatives who immediately began divvying up our stuff amongst themselves.
“So how do I operate the toaster?” Maxwell
asked Zippy, who was trying to dig the card table out of the luggage.
“Put in the toast and pull back the slider.
Wait. And BOOM! Fresh hot toast in your
car.”
Maxwell did as he was told and
pulled back the slider, instead of beginning to toast, the radio came on to my
favorite free-from jazz station.
“Hey! This isn’t toasting,” Maxwell whined.
“Try the other slider.”
Maxwell tried that and the radio’ volume went to the max. We all went nearly deaf from the noise. We tried to turn it down, but all that did was start toasting the bread. We eventually realized that somehow the volume knob controlled the toaster, the toaster slider controlled the radio, and the radio slider controlled the volume knob. Zippy never was good at wiring.
Two
hours and 100 miles later, I was driving up a hill while Maxwell was fiddling
with the radio. Fred and Smokey were discussing whether I had to get the “car”
registered, and Zippy, Marty, and Kwedge were playing some sort of card game
where you try to play sets of cards that have the same number while taking from
other people’s hands.
It started snowing so I pulled over at the top
and decided to put on the sorry excuse for snow chains we found in the back. We
all wanted to stretch our legs and got out when we stopped. As I was putting the
chains on the back tires, Maxwell said:
“Uhh, you’re doing it wrong.”
“No, I’m doing it exactly as these instructions
I found say,” I replied, rather peeved.
“These are for a different model, garsnoozle,”
Kwedge pointed out.
“I know, but snow chains, are snow chains!” I
reminded him.
“These are clasp, those are latch,” Marty chimed
in, referring to how the chains link so that they stay on the tire.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter how they’re
connected, so long as they stay on the tires, AND WE DON’T DIE!” Fred stressed.
“Thank you, Fred. See, it doesn’t matter,” I
replied. “They go on the same, just connect differently.”
What followed next was can only
be described as the stupidest argument I have ever been in. We spent at least twenty
minutes arguing over snow chains, how they go on tires, and whether you can use
instructions for one set of chains, with a different set of chains. As this was
going on, the “car” began to slowly slide down the hill. No one noticed, so
when someone who will not be named (most definitely not me) leaned against the “car”
he (not me) pushed it further. It slid down the steep side of the hill, building
speed at an alarming rate before hitting a rock on the shoulder of the road and
tumbling into a field by the road.
We chased after the car, but Marty slipped and knocked us all over on the way down.
Since all our baggage was in the car nothing fell out, but the car had flipped and now lay upside down in a field. After much straining we managed to flip the “car”, but as we were busy working on it we didn’t notice a sign that the car had knocked over. Zippy saw it and fixed it up with duct tape, then ran up to the “car” just as I was opening the door.
“What now?” I asked curtly.
“VELOCIDUCKS!” he yelled, pointing at the sign.
Zippy thinks for some reason, that
Velociducks hate him and that they are going to attack him mercilessly.
The sign said we were in a
velociduck flock’s territory. They’re extremely territorial, so going into a
flock’s territory is risky.
“Well, I don’t see any around here,” Marty
remarked confidently. “Let’s just get in
the car and go. What’s the worst that
could happen?”
As you all know, saying that always causes the worst to happen. We got in and I tried to start the “car” but all we got was a loud bang, a puff of smoke, and a lit up indicator light for a dead battery. I got the emergency battery I brought in case this happened and the jumper cables and went to start it again. No sooner had I opened the trunk and began to attach the cables, before I heard some muffled shouting in the car, and ominous quacking.
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