The Knobel curse and Alfred

Well if you have ever heard about our family vacations you know that we have "The Knobel Curse" the kind of curse where everything that can go wrong will go wrong / the most random you only think they happen in the movies type things go wrong. Sunday morning at 4 my brother T, my frien M, Aflred (the flamingo) Mydas (my car)and I began our road trip back to Texas. Alfred and M were sleeping in the back, T was driving and I was enjoying listening to the music and talking to T. Things were going good, not a problem I told T to pull over in Fillmore (almost 3 hours out of SLC) so that we could get gas, I then kind of dozed on and off for a bit, we pulled into the gas station and T went to buy drinks while I filled Mydas up, T got in the car and turned the key and nothing... Mydas wasn't starting, I knew it wasn't the battery because all the lights and the radio and everything was turing on but still Mydas wouldn't start. I decided I would have someone jump us anyways on the off chance it was her battery but no surprise nothing happened. So I called my dad; this is like 6:30 in the morning. I tell him what is going on, he says to have someone else try to jump me but that he was on his way to help. Well T, M, Alfred and I had almost 3 hours to hang out in a gas station parking lot in the middle of no where bright and early in the morning. Well since our hopes and dreams of taking pictures of Alfred everywhere we stopped along the way was no longer a possibility we decided we might as well get out of the car and take pictures of him where we were. We entertained ourselves with a four foot tall metal bird, windows, pushing a dead car around and eachother until my parentals arrived. Well the uhaul where we were at was closed until Monday morning at 6 so the closest one we could find was in Provo, which is 45 minutes out of SLC so we headed up there to pick up a tow dolly to bring Mydas back to my parents house. Well after a long day Mydas returned home around 5. At this point I was a little stressed trying to figure out how to get M and back to Texas since we would no longer be driving. Our options were flying out that night, flying the next day or renting a car and driving. All of which were not cheap. After alot of looking around M came up with the idea to fly to Dallas and then take the greyhound to Beaumont (only a 5 hour drive). Our flight left Monday at 2, we would get in at 10:30 take the city bus to the greyhound station get on our bus at 3:15 am and get home around 10:15 Tuesday morning. Things were gonna work out great and it was by far our cheapest route. Monday: we are sitting at our gate hanging out when they announce "we are going to randomly pick people who have bottles and check them before you get on the plane", we laugh and look at eachother and say it's gonna be one of us! ( we had just each bought a dr pepper) Well as we are boarding our plane they pull me aside and check mine, we laughed. Our ride into Denver had alot of turbulance we landed and M went to get her phone out of her purse and it is not there, we each check it a few times, we check the floor around us... not there... after a few minutes a guy a few rows back asked if anyone lost a phone, it was hers and had come out of her purse during the turbulence. We find our gate, eat lunch and just hang out til our next flight. We finally board our plane and we are just sitting there for a long time, not taking off, nothing is happening. Our pilot comes on and announces that they were fixing something on the plane (always comforting knowing they are fixing something on the plane when you are about to leave :)..) after waiting for quite sometime they finish it and all the paper and we are off, after another flight full of Turbulence we land in Dallas again we wait for along time because they couldn't get the door part of the ramp to hook to our plane, no joke it took like 30 tries. We get off and are relieved all we have to do is get on the city bus and get to the bus station.. Well little did we know the internet lies to you at times and the city bus doesn't come to the airport. We didn't want to take a taxi because it was so expensive so we were trying to figure out the safest cheapest way to get there. Well all our ideas failed and we ended up paying another arm and a leg for our taxi. We pull up to Greyhound and as we are unloading our driver says "whatever you do, stay inside, don't leave for anything, stay inside." We go in and not to judge or sound rude but it was a bit of a sketchy place. We find seats and decide to sit it out and both stay awake til we get on the bus. They call us to line up at like 2:45 and there are no buses, 3 different lines of people and no buses to go. Eventually two buses come and thinking since we are the second line we will get to get on at least one of the buses right? WRONG.. So we continue to wait and finally our bus comes and they load us on, we all get in our seats and settled and then 2 police/security guys get on and have everyone open all thier stuff so they can check for drugs, alcohol, weapons, etc. We drive off and contary to the rest of our trip everything goes just fine and M and I arrive home safely. Moral of the story is don't travel with a Knobel because apparently the curse will rub off on you as well!

Here are some of our pictures we took of Alfred