Have Duct Tape, Will Travel

Tom's vacation included an emergency stop at Lowes where he picked up materials needed to repair a window smashed when his car was broken into.

Before I’m just back from our family’s summer vacation; a road trip that included driving 1800 miles across 6 states in a mini-van (think: Chevy Chase/Vacation). This was especially true during our stop in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we’d planned to spend a day at the US National Whitewater Center (a very cool place, by the way) tackling Class 1-5 rapids on their man-made river. Little did I know that the action would start much sooner.

The night before we checked in at the Courtyard Marriott in center city Charlotte. Guests were directed to park at the hotel’s parking garage. Getting the kids to bed early, my wife and I drifted off ourselves – that is until the phone rang at 2:30am. It was the front desk calling to say that our car was broken into and that the police needed me to go down to the parking garage.

Once I arrived, I found our stuff strewn all over the garage floor and the passenger window smashed. It seems that some creeps had slipped into the garage and smashed the windows on 5 cars and then took off. I was relatively lucky, having lost only a GPS. Still, I knew I had another 900 miles to drive on my trip and a car without a right front window!

Not wanting to waste a whole day of our vacation trying to find a local repair shop, I decided I’d and make one myself and went online to find a local Lowes store and see when they opened. By 7:30 that morning, I had picked up plexi-glass, caulk, duct tape and a saw, and headed back to the Courtyard where my 16 year old son and I set up a “shop” in the lobby, cut the plexi to fix and then caulked and duct-taped it in place! It lasted the rest of the trip!

So, I guess that you never know when your home improvement skills will come in handy, even when you are not at home!