Fifty pounds of marbles in a five pound bag

This is what an eleven year old Prius cannot do: 65 mph uphill in the rain with about four times the load it can reasonably be expected to bear. All three vehicles had about four times the load they can reasonably be expected to bear. Except the other two vehicles are workhorses that can generally be beaten into submission with no greater price than a reduction in miles per gallon.  Something like a 75% reduction in miles per gallon. But still, they persisted.

The screenshot was for Mike so he could turn the hell around and come back for us.

You can't see the arrival estimate in this, just time and distance. At 7:01, Waze still believed we were exiting the Taconic onto 90 and eventually 87 North. It changed its mind before we pulled out of the rest area and sent us east. Last exit before the toll onto NY 295 to 22 to 7a to 7 to 4 to 100 - NOT 100 A or B, 100 scenic, to VT 17 to German Flats Road to a door with a lock that really didn't want to let us in. That was at 11:30, more or less. Mike and I were up until 2 AM, shaking it off. Elizabeth passed out within fifteen minutes of entry.

It's good that Waze reroutes. I'd take 185 miles of back roads over what was in front of us and Memorial Day weekend in the night in the rain with crazy people. Also, the Prius wasn't going to do more than 50 mph under any circumstances. In the end, we put her between us and dog help the driver thinking they can pass that Prius without passing all of us. They tried. This was the plan:

I lead and if she's falling too far behind, I come off the gas. Mike brings up the rear and NOBODY is getting between him and his sister. In the event that somebody gets between me and my daughter, I come off the gas until they give up and go away. For the first time in my life I was that car. You know, the one that can't get within five miles of the actual speed limit trailing a line of cars so long you can't see the end. I'd have stopped looking but I had to keep looking at Elizabeth in the side mirror because every cubic inch of all three cars were packed.

Fifty pounds of marbles in a five pound bag. Apparently I didn't do quite enough purging. Today we unpack all three cars, identify what goes to storage and what I take home. We do this because we do not want to be doing it in the parking lot of the storage facility with seventeen steps to the second floor... not a single other option within fifty miles. Everyone is moving to Vermont, have you heard?

So what happens when you ask an eleven year old Prius to do the unthinkable? Every idiot light on the dash starts flashing. It looks like a scene from an alien invasion movie and you think your car has died. I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but I never have been particularly reasonable.