It’s very good to be home and getting caught up in the office after one crazy, long journey home. What should have been a five + hour ride home from Clarksville, TN turned into a 10.5 hour ride home with a bit of excitement and plenty of laughs along the way. My dear friend/business partner Ramona and I were on a mission to meet new prospective clients for REDataCenter. The drive up was beautiful and quite uneventful. Once there, we met with our vendor partner (who made our visit possible), then returned back to the room to get a little work done and watch what would become the Braves final game of the season and “last hurrah” for Bobby Cox. The next morning, everyone is up, out and on the way to what would be a wonderful meeting with some really great people. It was a pleasure to spend the morning with them, and we truly hope to gain their future business.
Next began the interesting part of our journey. Feeling really great and energized, we zipped off to I-24 East with visions of stopping in Nashville for some great BBQ on the way home. As I searched Google (no worries, I was the passenger) for great BBQ restaurants, we experienced a very disturbing and incredibly loud banging, thud type noise as if we’ve just hit something in the road. Not sure what this could have been, as we had seen nothing ahead and since the car seemed fine we kept going. Within a couple of minutes, things changed. The ride became rough and assuming that we had blown a tire, Ramona pulled from the far left to the far right and well off the road. Once safely off the road, we got out to see not one, but two blown tires and her front bumper hanging off the car! Well now, isn’t this special?!? It looks like the BBQ will have to wait a bit longer.
After assessing the situation and knowing that more than a quick tire change was necessary, Ramona began calling for roadside assistance, and I called our fellow vendor friend as he had not yet left for Atlanta. In case I haven’t mentioned, we’re attempting to call for roadside assistance from the side of I-24 which is incredibly busy and noisy, even in the car with windows rolled up. I would like to offer a piece of customer service advice to those providing roadside assistance services. It is a VERY BAD IDEA to use Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems for people to request roadside assistance!! WHY do you think this is a good idea?? In the best of circumstances these systems are horribly annoying; add to this being on a cell phone, on the side of a very busy interstate and well… good luck getting this thing to understand what you need. However, we are persistent and defeated the evil IVR system, successfully reaching a human, who began the chain of transfers which eventually resulted in the promise of a tow truck. About an hour later, the tow truck operator called stating that he was nearby and would be there soon. Much to our delight, he arrived shortly after the call.
Lucky for us, our very dear friend/vendor partner called as he was getting ready to leave Clarksville. Feeling confident that the tow truck would whisk us away to safety, we waved him on; literally as he passed by – we waved “see you later”. He was to check on us after his meeting in Nashville, and if the car could not be repaired would give us a ride back to Atlanta. Moments after “the wave” things began to unravel. Our rescue tow truck was turned off and would not restart. It appeared that our rescuer would now need to be rescued. We called our friend who immediately pulled over, waited for further instruction and came back to our rescue. After determining that our tow truck friend had someone coming to help him, we were on our way to safety, once again. Let me tell you this… If you are ever in need of assistance, you want Mike Doll in your corner. We will be forever grateful for his concern, assistance and friendship! And with that… off we went to Nashville.
We grabbed a little food, waited for Mike during his last appointment and learned that the car had finally made it to the shop (after the poor tow truck guy ran out of gas and broke down at the dealership). We also learned that they couldn’t look at the car until the next day, and for a number of reasons repairs would be about a week. So, off we go with our knight in a shiny red truck. At this point, we were finally resuming the long trip home when we should have been pulling into our driveways.
Although this was certainly NOT in the plan, and I’m sorry that Ramona has to deal with the car issues, the trip was fun and hopefully fruitful. Things could have been so much worse. It wasn’t freezing cold, blistering hot or raining, and we weren’t the poor tow truck guy! Again, thanks to Mike for the prompt rescue as a nasty thunderstorm rolled in quickly thereafter! When all was done, nobody was hurt, and we all made it home safe and sound. We had great conversation and LOTS of laughs and dinner along the way. Despite all our attempts, we still never got that BBQ. I hope the tow truck guy is having a better day!
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