Poor Whoppie :(

Hi Friends,
Question. Do you have a name for your car? Most people do. If you haven't given your wonderful automobile a name then you should. Your car gets you safely from destination A to destination B and I think the best way to "thank" your car for not breaking down on Wards Road, infront of Wal-Mart, during Christmas Eve (totally hypothetical here ha!) is by giving it a name. It has to fit the car though, you can't just name it something dumb. My Grand Pre at home is called Rosalie. OH I MISS HER!

Loretta and I have named our little red truck (Ford F150) Whoopie. The reason for that is because one day while Loretta was talking to her Dad, he asked how Whoopie was? Loretta confusingly asked who Whoopie was to which he answered "The truck.". We thought that was funny so it just kind of stuck. Whoopie has been real good to Loretta and I. She drove us all over from Montana to Texas, all over Washington and Colorado. We even had her decked out in some awesome decorations. These decorations are a combination of items we've recieved from kids and souvenirs from places we've been. Also while on the road, some of our tour actor friends have run into some issues with their trucks getting broke into. Not us. Whoopie is a tank. We loved her.

Did you catch that? Loved as in the PAST tense.

Loretta and I had just had an interesting week in Moscow, Idaho and were headed to our next location in Augusta, Mt. I was driving and Loretta and I were having a bit of a heart to heart. Something about Loretta and I is that we like to compare ourselves to other tour teams on the road. Admit it TADs, you do it too. We've come to the conclusion that I'm tour actor Nicole, Loretta is tour actor Kelly for example. They're both really cool and fun. However, Loretta and I always hear about TAD drama/horror stories about other teams on the road and we always end our heart to hearts with "I'm SO glad that you're not like SO and SO." Thats terrible sounding but when you hear about how other teams work or don't work, you start to appreciate your tour partner so much more because they're awesome. Thanks Loretta for not being SO and SO. haha 

Anyway, Loretta and I we're making good time that day. We were meeting our contact in an hour for dinner but we were only about 20 minutes away so I was just taking my time. Loretta is my witness, I was driving 10 miles under the speed limit when we hit a pot hole. This pot hole came out of nowhere! Seriously. When I see a pot hole I try to swerve around it but this one was hidden because of the bridge that connected into it. This was a monster pot hole. Even going as slow as I was, Whoopie took a big hit. After yelling our "HOLY COWS!" and our hear rates/laughter started to subside, Loretta screamed, "THE POLES!!!". I thought, "Huh?" I look out the window and I see that the poles on the passenger side were being dragged down the road. I quickly pulled over and sure enough, the pot hole had knocked our rack on top of the truck loose. Great. Thankfully it was a warm sunny day outside so we didn't have to mess in the rain or snow. However, it had rained and snowed all that week so the ground was really muddy. Oh well.

The weight poles were hanging on by the hinge of a very bent bungee cord. These are the poles that hold the set in place and weigh a lot. Okkkk.... so as we use our womenly strength to get the poles on top of the rack again and out of the mud, the bungee SNAPS and the poles come tumbling down. I have never run so fast in my life! Haha! With my luck the poles would've hit me in the head, made me go into a coma and Loretta would be stuck with poles as well as my almost lifeless body in the mudd. haha! We had a good chuckle and then Loretta goes, "OH MY GOSH! Look at the window!!!!". On the way down the poles took out two of the hinges for the side window and this made the entire window shatter.

Crap.

We were in shock. We looked at the window, then each other, then the window and after several more of these we then we just started laughing. WHAT DO WE DO?!?!? We are in the middle of nowhere, no cell service, no internet, no cars driving by, the town we're going to has barely a population of 200. Laughter seemed to be the best solution at the time. Thank goodness we don't hjave to pay for this! We then took lots of photos to send to the home office for Gordon (the truck guy) and then we moved the poles and truck so we weren't on the shoulder of the road. By this time, the sheriff came out of nowehere and helped us fix the rack on the truck, rebungee the poles and helped with our shattered window. When I say help I mean we had to push all the glass inside the truck and all over our sets, costumes, luggage, and groceries. No fun. :(

We then were back on the raod headed to Augusta. When we got there and explained what happend to our Contact. Her husband was nice enough to tape up the window with cardboard for us before we all sat down to dinner which was very nice of him. :) Later that week we got a visit from Steven Thomas, a tour actor who spent his unbooked week helping the home office in Missoula. Since Missoula was only two hours away, he drove out to Augusta and we swapped trucks. This meant we had to say "Goodbye" to Whoopie.

As we were putting up our decorations in our new truck we found a name tag behind one of the seats. It said "Ranger Rooney". Well since this truck came with a name tag, I guess we HAVE to call it that.
Hello Ranger Rooney.
Watch out for Grand Canyon sized pot holes please.

-Jen