Haste Makes Waste!

My Mom always told me that haste makes waste and she sure was right.  The last time we were camping, I decided to get ahead of packing up to leave on Sunday, by putting up the awning. I had a flight to North Carolina on Sunday afternoon for business, so I was somewhat out of my routine of packing up Sunday morning, which didn't help the situation.

So, I had dinner on the BBQ and knew that I only had a few minutes to put up the awning.  So I went through the process and realized that I had forgotten to drop the upper arms of the awning to the closed position and I had already started the process of retracting the awning.  Needless to say, the arms were stuck in the up position and I couldn't get them down.  That was haste makes waste error number 1.

Haste makes waste error number 2, which I know better than to do, was to grab my hammer and attempt to force the arms down.  Well as many of you already know, that doesn't work.  So at that very moment, I had visions of not being able to get the awning up, having to drive the rig home with the awning partially out and ultimately missing my afternoon flight to North Carolina.

At that high point of frustration, I looked down and realized that I could detach the outside arms of the awning and possibly retract the upper arms once the pressure was off of them.  I enlisted the help of my wife Tracy and my daughter Sarah to help hold the arms as I released them.  Once released, the pressure was off, the upper arms slid right into place (not quite as smoothly now because of my use of the hammer) and I was able to completely retract the awning. All was well once again.  

As I stood back and took a sip from my glass of wine, I felt really stupid and could hear my Mom's voice saying, remember, haste makes waste.  She was always right!

Just then I realized that I had dinner on the BBQ, luckily it was only partially overdone.  

I hope your week doesn't include any haste or waste, thanks for stopping by, get out and vote if you haven't already done so and please join me in keeping those people in the storm affected areas in your thoughts and prayers!

All's Well That Ends Well!