The Cheap Office Chair Saga (Cont.)

Ok, so you may or may not know, but we were able to get out to Utah with all our luggage and our dog carrier using this fancy schmancy contraption on top of our Rav4:

We put all our stuff in some sweet cargo bags that are designed to fit in the basket and get tied down. Anyway, we were quite comfortable in the car and the stuff rode just great. It was awesome.

However, I wasn't expecting the addition of a chair to our return trip packing. I finally fit everything by tossing the double stroller on the roof by one of the bags and putting the rain cover over it to keep the bugs out/increase the aerodynamics. All was set and the chair was riding comfortably in the back of the car. Nice.

It all went great until somewhere between Battle Mountain and Winnemucca, NV at about 12:30am. I heard a strap hitting the roof and pulled over in the pitch dark night. We were litterally in the middle of nowhere. I got out and found the little ball thingy that keeps the straps together on the drawstring had somehow exploded and the slack in the string had allowed the whole bag to fly up in the air like a giant parachute on its strap! I tied things down again as best as I could but about 10 miles down the road it happened again.

This time, I pulled over and when I got out, I noticed the worst swarm of mosquitoes I've EVER been in! Now, Nevada isn't exactly swamp land but the mosquitoes they usually *do* have are pretty hardy. This year happens to be the wettest Nevada has seen in many decades which put that hardy little mosquito population up to new levels of prosperity. In addition to that, there aren't a whole lot of host animals wandering around out there so these little buggers were acting like an icecream truck had just driven into a Jenny Craig convention. I should also mention that none of these bugs were around when I first stopped the car. At least, I didn't notice any.

I had decided before we stopped that I was going to give up on the rain cover altogether and just use this net we bought a while ago:
So there I was, hopping around trying to tear off the rain cover and getting attacked by blood-sucking female mosquitoes. I yelled for Rachel to get out of the car and give me a hand putting the net over everything. Luckily we had some Deep Woods OFF in the car and sprayed down at that point. Of course, they were still attacking relentlessly and we hurried as fast as we could. The problem with doing all that roof stuff was that you had to open the doors to reach the top of the car in some places. So, you guessed it, the car filled with mosquitoes too. When we got back in, they were swarming the front dash and all around us. We got the car up to about 50 and opened my window just a crack and started herding them out through the vacuum suction. We finally got all of them out and the ordeal was finally over. Thank goodness the hotel in Winnemucca was comfortable, cheap, and friendly. We all slept like itchy rocks that night.