I was on-call during Easter weekend. Usually that’s not much of a problem because weekend support calls rarely get past our level one personnel.

Friday night, however, about 40 minutes after we left our house on our quest to reach my hometown in Arkansas, I got a call. As “luck” would have it, I had our department’s handy 3G wireless card for my laptop (Internet connection anywhere my mobile phone gets a signal), so Shannon pulled off on a side road and parked on the grassy shoulder next to a large field of bluebonnets. I connected to our company’s VPN and the customer’s system and did an hour of basic troubleshooting.

Then I said what users hate to hear — “let’s just reboot.” He rebooted his terminal server and then all the problems were gone. Thanks again, Windows.

In the meantime, Shannon managed to capture the scene with her camera and mine.

(click any pic to enlarge)

   

After that ridiculously long stop, our arrival time at my parents’ house was pushed back to at least midnight. About 145 miles short of that destination, Shannon’s leg with the blood clot had been still and inadvisably positioned for too long. She was hurting badly and needed to stop for the night.

Here’s where we stopped thinking clearly. We knew that Arkadelphia, a town with two Universities and surely at least one decent motel, was some reasonable distance ahead. (No, that is not the town where Arkansas and Philadelphia meet — that’s in the northeast corner of the state.) It was too late for us to phone a friend, and our mobile phone plans didn’t include the Internet. Instead of trudging on and putting Shannon through more pain, we took the next exit that featured a motel and checked in.

Not until just now, while typing this, did I remember that earlier in the trip I had used my laptop to connect to the Internet from the middle of nowhere.

That could have saved us from the Mistress of Motel Hell.

(to be continued)