the misadventures of the in-laws (hopefully part 1 of 1)

Ben's mom, Naomi, is here to visit for the week. We seem to have had some back luck this week, with a series of misadventures. Today's, at least, we got pictures of!

We read in the Paraglide that the 82nd was going to do a jump yesterday, and thought it'd be fun to see, seeing as how she has never been witness to one before. So we searched for directions, picked up a friend of mine, and headed out to the hills (or in this case, forest). An hour later, we arrived, only to find that this jump was private because of the presence of several congressmen. We were politely asked to vacate the premises, and to come to the Thursday jump instead. Bummed, we drove home and tried to decide whether to try again in the morning.

We decided it was worth a shot, so this morning we headed out, excited and a bit nervous that this jump would also have problems.

Problems, it had.

Today's jump site was located in an area surrounded by sand. This is not dirt, packed down and hard like yesterday's drop zone. No, this was beach-volleyball-worthy sand.




We maneuvered our way to the drop zone, only to be told by two officers in a humvee that we needed to move out of the way, as they were about to drop heavy artillery right where we were parked. We were asked to follow them back to the side of the main road. Well, we tried, but these soldiers forgot that humvees treat the sand like dirt, and my Ford, well, not so much.




Needless to say, we got stuck. Unfortunately, the guys didn't see the sticking and left without us. We both, being praying women, begged and pleaded that we wouldn't be crushed by whatever was being dropped by the helicopters that flew overhead.




After several minutes of trying to maneuver out of the sand trap, the soldiers realized we had not been able to follow them and came back to our rescue. With me driving and a mother-in-law and two soldiers pushing, we freed the car and carefully drove back to the road.

After this, we had the decision to make: do we stay or do we go? We decided to wait it out (as the jump had been postponed because of our...incident...) and we FINALLY got to witness it! Sadly, it was only two paratroopers and a few crates, but it was something!