Why do epic events happen on holidays?

(Evergreen, CO) — What do epic events and holidays have in common? They happen at the same time! Really, have you ever been to the emergency room when it wasn’t a Sunday or the 4th of July? Well, Labor Day weekend is no different. Sometimes it’s worse when the plan starts off so well.

Relying on the dog car, our rusty minivan that never fails, I was heading to our Arizona home from our Minnesota place, where my son, Miles, just graduated in hockey from Shattuck-St. Mary’s. 

Our dogs, Eddy the Bernese, and Shooter, the coyote crossed with a python, were rescued as older pups eight years ago in Flagstaff. Now each dog has a solid sense of self, each choosing what he will eat, what weather is tolerable, and who drives the car. They are the only mountain dogs who prefer winters inside. But then, who wouldn’t during that 10-month span in Minnesota?

The car was packed with gear to drop off in Des Moines for a Venture Up team building event, and some game show stash for a team program in Salt Lake City just days away. The dogs had lots of leg room, but they favor the coiled cobra position, unless pouncing for a snack thrown from the driver they allowed to sit behind the wheel.

There are two seasons in the midwest: winter and road work. Clogged traffic, fatigue and hunger signal our time for a detour. The ride was seamless until hitting a snag in Nebraska. Yippee! An exit. We landed on the cobblestone streets of the Omaha’s Old Market. Since Warren couldn’t do lunch, I settled for carrot cake, my vegetable, at this cool tea shop, below. Does anyone know it? My dog ate the receipt.

Does anyone know the name of this tea shop in Old Market Omaha? My dog ate the receipt.

The visitors center here is already my favorite. Where else would anyone hand over a free pad of street maps in order for a herd of corporate teams to trammel through their town? Venture Up runs a series of Amazing Race events in Omaha as well as other cities. Travel offices everywhere can be stingy with maps, even when mentioning the magic word$$$, “corporate meeting”.

By chance, Venture Up is hosting an Amazing Race in Omaha in a few weeks and we were planning to update the program with new sites in this historic area, so I ended up saving somebody a little leg work. Serendipity!

Public dog parks along the route kept the boys from getting too fussy. Back on the road, the sun lay low as we headed to a hotel in Hastings. When a sign on a Nebraska highway indicates, “Hastings, next exit,” remember that it’s actually 15 miles further away.

Lucky me! I spent the night in the land of Kool Aid. Yup, Kool Aid was invented in Hastings and a museum will tell you all about it.

It was cool and windy the next morning as we took I70, a straight shot to Denver. I thought we’d blitz through the corn fields and head for the hills, but who couldn’t stop at the Pony Express station in Gothenburg, Nebraska? 

The original station, a log cabin now set in a park, no longer processes U.S. mail, although some of us may prefer it over the debt-ridden bureaucracy pawning off the junk mail that clutters our kitchen tables. On the bright side, most post office officials have cheerful personalities.

Denver is more than 300 miles away from here, and rush hour is no party. There’s something about crossing the Colorado state line that sets one at ease. It was fun living in Minnesota‘s hockey culture, but snowy roads can be a daily event in winter, even a week after a storm. Do snowplows even visit the smaller neighborhoods?

Fair weather, mountains and canyons lie ahead and we were ready for our mini vacation in Evergreen, the anticipated highlight of the trip. What better time for car trouble than 4 p.m. on a Friday of a holiday weekend? And what better place than a mountain town with major services 30 miles away? What’s the worst kind of car problem? Have you ever had nightmares of driving downhill on a highway and the brakes let go? The stuff of movies became my reality, and I had two other lives in the car.

Wearing sandals, I thought my foot was in the wrong place when the car wasn’t stopping for the light. Rather than smash into the car before me I was able to get on the shoulder and slow down to level ground. I tested the car again and the brakes seemed to be working again, though slippery. I took a chance (I know, dumb) and drove across the way to an auto shop and nicely parked the once-runaway van at a small auto repair shop.

Proud to have survived the risk, the manager informs me the garage would be closing shortly for Labor Day and would not open until Tuesday. Ever so slowly, I drove a few doors down to Evan’s Auto Care, whose manager didn’t scoot me away, not that I could scoot anyway. As I parked the van, the brakes failed and the van kept creeping up on a 5-foot concrete cliff dropping into the next parking lot.

The wheels stopped when they were already half over the edge. I whisked the dogs out and headed to the office hoping for mercy and help. When I announced that my brakes went out, it was no big deal to this manager, until she rounded the bend and gasped at the precarious sight before her. Brave soul, she jumped in the car and reversed it into a safe position.

The good news is Evan’s Auto could fix the car. The bad news is they couldn’t get to it until Tuesday. Nearing 4 p.m., Evan was busy with late day stragglers and local cars ready for pick-up I stayed on the phone trying to find a dog-friendly hotel and a car to rent. No luck with either. Enterprise, the only car rental company servicing Evergreen, was fresh out of cars of any type. The only pet-friendly hotel in town was out of pet rooms. We were stranded.

My husband/problem solver, David, was running a team event for the University of Pittsburgh and no one was answering his cell phone. So, here I am in Evergreen with two dogs, a van with a kayak on top, with nowhere to go and no means to get there. A taxi would take an 1 1/2 hours, so I had no choice but to wait in the drizzle. I called the pet-friendly hotel again, and lucked out with a room, but only for one night. I called Mountain Taxi, and Melissa, who lives in nearby Conifer, arrived early and had no problem transporting dog passengers.

The pet-friendly hotel was so friendly that they permitted two yippie dogs next to my room to bark incessantly. It was 6 p.m.; quiet time was at 10 p.m., so I took the boys to Qdoba, tied them outside like good owners don’t do, and had my first meal of the day at a counter overlooking the two fluffy boys tied to a post. There was no shortage of people stopping to pet the furry ones, so I began to believe that Colorado was full of people who love dogs, especially the mountain types. That was until the next morning.

Arriving back at the hotel, the dogs are still yipping at 7:30 p.m. It was actually a whiney bark, like “woo woo, erf, erf,” so I began to wonder if the parents had left them alone. I called the front desk clerk, who was as close to the noisy room as I was, and asked if the dogs were left alone. Yes, the two chihuahuas were all alone in a strange room. The owners had gone to the Red Rocks, so I was in for a night of noise. 

The yippers were still crying after the 10 p.m. quiet hour. My dogs were silent, but not relaxed enough to sleep. No other pet rooms were available and the hotel wouldn’t allow us in a people room.

Meantime, there was another problem to solve. David rang me and he decided to call AAA, though we had not renewed our membership this year. They came through for us, processed the renewal, guaranteeing service for this call. AAA agreed to have a tow truck driver pick up the three (as in two dogs and moi) of us, take us to the van, and over to Just Brakes in Lakewood, 20-plus miles away. 

David chose to fly into Denver, instead of Phoenix, to help drive back to Arizona. It was a kind gesture, considering he’s the one who decided I take the van vs. the new Ford Explorer so I could fit more stuff in it. We’re selling our Minnesota house and some of the clutter needs to make its way back to Flagstaff. Do you need a place in Faribault? It’s the birthplace of the Tilt-a-Whirl and that Shattuck hockey cult school. We also have a warthog head if you need one, pictured below:

See Pumba near the Bruins logo? He was a gift, purchased at auction in Phoenix. That’s no sloth on the sofa, but a new hockey graduate of Shattuck St. Marys at our place in Minnesota.

David, the lifelong expert at arranging anything, set up the AAA experience to be hassle free. The driver was to call 15 minutes ahead and we were to leave at 7:30 a.m.. He arrived at 8:45, after I called the main office twice wondering his whereabouts. 

I had to make sure the details of the situation conveyed, including that the dogs would be with me, lest I be faced with a dog hater who doesn’t want hair in his cab, not that my boys would shed after their $200 designer mohawks, their summer hair event.

No call came, just a knock on the door from the front desk clerk notifying me that the tow truck arrived. I walked toward the truck with the dogs and reviewed the service request. He said the dogs were not allowed in his truck. He also had the service directions wrong, and got snippy when I set him straight. He called the dispatcher.

This is the part when I think of those customer surveys businesses nag us to fill out. If a company put effort into empathy training, they wouldn’t need a survey.

He handed me the phone and I let the dispatcher know about the plan and the resistance from the driver they sent. When I set thing straight, I handed back the phone and the tow driver sweetened up, perhaps because he knew about a survey looming in his future.

Why does it take a snarl for a customer to get what she ordered? Lack of communication is so often the problem when service falls short. Details matter. So what if AAA has new staff? New people can read directions, or do they fail to read their own fine print? Ultimately, the dogs ended up in the tow truck and we were off to get the van. A new AAA driver arrived to replace the short guy, and we drove to Just Brakes in Lakewood who saved the day.

Eddy and Shooter remained good sports and were happy to sit in the car for the diagnostics and repair, unlike lesser, smaller dogs. It would take 3 hours to fix the brakes, so I headed to Starbucks with what I thought was a bag with my computer, which I had set on a chair while ordering.

As I settled comfortably in the leather chair with my coffee, I reached for my laptop, but it wasn’t there. Really? Am I one of those coffee shop laptop theft victims? I left Starbucks early and walked back to the shop to check the van, where two perfect large dogs who would never bark in hotel rooms sat patiently. Eddy was sitting on the bag where I absent-mindedly placed the computer.

More good news ahead as David arrived at the airport from a Pittsburgh to Denver flight, via Tampa. There’s no need to rent a car at the airport, as I’ll be heading there to pick him up soon. I now wait 30 more minutes for a $900 brake fix, cheaper than the emergency room.


By Teresa Shaw Lengyel, Lifer at Venture Up, 888.305.1065 / info@gmail.com