This is Deputy Digby Pancake. Someone once said, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I don’t know who said that. But I say, if it ain’t broke, it will be broke by the end of the day around here. And there won’t be any way to fix it. Someone also said “let the music play”.  And around here, a broken record is on the radio.

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Sheriff Peanut Butter Brickle already provided the traffic report yesterday from our drive through Los Angeles.  What he neglected to tell you was the whole story. And as Deputy, it is part of my job to fill in the blanks with pancakes or more details.  And today, I will be doing both I suppose.  Because after I fill in the details, I will need some pancakes.

So. You see, we had been stuck in traffic so long on Wednesday that there was nowhere to pull over, not for Boy Person to get up and stretch, and not for us to use the bathroom!  We had went five hours in the car without stopping.  Girl Person tried to keep us all entertained and distracted with treats, but there is even a limit for me on how many cookies I can eat.  Brickle at this point was worn out, he was pacing, panting, trying to jump in Boy Person’s lap to take over the driving, and it was getting to the point in the Big Blue Treat Wagon RV of no return.  We were all about to freak out. So as we sat there in more traffic, Girl Person said she was going to flip the heck out and Boy Person looked around for anywhere.  Anywhere at all to pull over and let the crazy out…aka Girl Person.  He saw a parking lot off the road and made his way there as fast as he could in a 37 foot motorhome towing a car.  He pulled in, Brickle tried to push Girl Person out the door, I tried to push Brickle out of the way, and in the process, Girl Person fell out the door, Boy Person’s sunglasses fell off, and you guessed it.  I stepped on them.  And you guessed it.  I ain’t no lightweight.  And his only pair of sunglasses he had saved for over ten years in a box in the closet were crushed.  Crushed like pineapple, y’all.

So when you crush sunglasses, and you haven’t been outside to use the bathroom in over six hours, you don’t care about aforementioned sunglasses.  And as Girl Person tried to breathe in deep and looked around to make sure there were no monsters in the bushes, Boy Person gathered up his sadness, Sheriff Brickle tried to destress, and I just went to the bathroom.  Um, wasn’t that why were were out here?

So, after all this time, our dinner was already late, but we didn’t know where we were. We didn’t know how long it would take to get to camp, so Girl Person decided that she better give us a light snack and wait to fix dinner till we got to camp, because she didn’t want any further accidents in the RV.  Well, I was not happy at all about that, and a snack is not dinner.  Girl Person felt so bad about the whole thing, and in the commotion, she forgot that her brand new flip-flops were outside the RV.  Wherever we were, which we didn’t know.  And as we pulled away, those flip-flops were left outside the door.

About an hour later, Girl Person jumped up and told Boy Person that she in fact had lost her flip-flops.  Boy Person asked how you could just lose flip-flops. She said she forgot they were outside the door when we stopped,  and as Boy Person sighed a very big, tired sigh, it filled the RV with all of our tiredness and frustration.  And we still weren’t even close to camp yet.

Sometimes, you get to the point of not knowing what to do or how to handle something. At least the persons do.  And as we pulled up to the campground, which we finally found, we saw it. A locked gate.  Oh, we were late alright.  And we had no sunglasses.  And we had no flip flops.  And we had no energy.  But as we tried to check our reservations and had no cell service to check them, Girl Person remembered that when she had had flip-flops and when Boy Person had had sunglasses earlier that morning, that she had wrote down the gate code just in case.  And we were in!  But Girl Person’s feet were dirty.

We got into camp, and as you can imagine, it was dark.  It was very dark.  It was very, very dark.  And it was very, very, very dark.  And more dark. And if you would have had sunglasses, you would have thought that you were wearing them at night, but we didn’t have sunglasses. At night. We had no sunglasses anymore or flip-flops to go buy any.

But, we decided to just let it go, find our campsite and forget about this whole day and night of torture.  So as we finally got the RV backed in, and didn’t hit any trees which was a plus, Girl Person got us out and put us in the Jeep so that she could get our dinner and set up our house for us.  We were waiting for her, and about this time, it was about 9 p.m. And about that time, we heard it.

If you have ever been waiting for your dinner in a car with no sunglasses or flip-flops and you hear those sounds, you wonder if you should worry about anything other than that sound.  You think to yourself that maybe you should be more concerned with staying away from those sounds.  But what was more important to me? Dinner or coyotes? I will let you guess, but not for long, because it was definitely dinner.  At first.  Once my belly was full, and I saw the Sheriff’s concern, I realized that maybe a walk wasn’t that important. Even after being cooped up for all day and night.  So that’s when I freaked out like Girl Person had freaked out earlier in the day.  Coyotes in the dark will kind of do that to you.  The nearest place I could find to try and get into was the campground prison showers because I couldn’t find the RV.  Because it was dark.  Very dark.  Very, very dark. And as Girl Person chased me into the bathroom, Sheriff Brickle freaked out about the tile floors and it was mayhem I tell you.  Mayhem.  Chaos like you have never seen before with Girl Person’s dirty feet, no flip-slops, no sunglasses, but.  Coyotes.  Coyotes everywhere.

That is when Girl Person fell on her butt, with me trying to get in the shower, and Brickle trying to get out, and she was in the middle and she was laughing.  Laughing so hard that you couldn’t hear the coyotes anymore.  And that anxiety monster that had been with us all day got ate by the howls of the coyotes and we got carried back to the RV with Boy Person standing there looking at his crushed sunglasses.  Yeah, he was still mad about that.

Will we remember this day for awhile? We probably will.  And to think that we have a long way to go back to that Florida place where we will need sunglasses and flip-flops is a bit overwhelming.  Maybe we can find some before we get there.  If we get there.

So this weekend, we will be here in Temecula, California! Where are we going next week? The persons had planned for San Diego, but this traffic threw us for a loop.  So stay tuned to our Facebook page for updates thru the weekend.

-Deputy Digby Pancake

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