How long does it take to get to Rhode Island??

The first question most people ask when they found out I was going to Rhode Island was "How long does it take to get there?" My response was, "About 12 hours." Well, after this trip my response will be , "Who knows!!"

Here's the story:
Melissa and I left Holt Michigan around 12:30am Sunday morning. After stopping at QD and stopping for gas we hit the road. We had a nice drive past Flint, but we soon stared to notice that the lights were dimming and then coming back to full power. We discussed why this might be occuring (maybe a fuse), but we kept driving. About 30 minutes later the lights went completly out. Both in and outside of the car. Hmm..that's a problem. It's 2:30am and it is dark-probobly shuldn't continue driving with no lights. We pulled of at the next exit (the small town of Imlay and we slept in the parking lot of a Super 8. We'll just wait till it is light out and continue driving. From 2:45-5:30 we tried to sleep in the car. I maybe got a total of 1hr of sleep.

We began again at 5:30 am with a beautiful sunrise. Fifteen minutes later the lights went out agian-and everything on the dash-and the whole car wa lossing power. Okay, it's probobly not a fuse. We slowed down and took Exit 184 which had a marathon sign in the distance. We made it to the gas station and sat in the car for a few minutes. We wern't sure what to do. "Call Kyle"-no answer. "Call Chaz"-no answer. "Call mom and Dad"-no answer. !*$@ (remember this is 6am)
We headed in to the gas station and found out we were in the town of Emmit-which consisted of this gas station. We brainstormed all the different options we had: Try and drive back home, get car to mechanic, get to airpot nad fly to RI, rent a car and drive there. We tried to start the car and found that it was completly dead. We called AAA. They were sending Jim. We then remembered (7:30 now) that we had a brother and he was obligated to come to our rescue. We called him and he was on his way-it would only take 1hr and 45 minutes. Jim arrived with his tow truck made of rust. We were worried if the tow truck would make it. He said he could fix the alternator (which we thought was the problem), but he didn't have the part. He towed the car to his house/garage, we waited for Rick (our brother) and we called around to auto parts stores. We sat in the marathon station and got to know the clerks, drank coffee, lughed at everything (because we only had 1 hour of sleep, and waited. (by the way--we had my cat through this whole experience) Rick arrived at 9:20 and we had a family reuniun. We drove the drove to the auto part store 13 miles south, then drove to Jim's, 23 miles north east. He fixed the car and we were on our way by 11:30am
This was a miracle to us. It was a Sunday-and a Holiday weekend and this guy was willing to fix the car. Thank God for people who work on Sundays!
We got back on the rode and the rest of the trip went smoothly-despite the fact that we had very little sleep. We rolled into RI around 12:30am Monday morning-exactly 24 hours from when we left. THe whole thing was funny to us-and memorable.
So how long does it take to get to RI? In this case it took 24hours!