The pointless ramblings and obscure humor of an over-worked, off-beat, performer-writer-teacher.

 

Road Trip (Part 2) - There and Home Again

I decided we’d drive ten hours the first day. That way, we could still reach Mom’s and the hair appointment by 2:00. Before leaving I told her to cancel my appointment, if we weren’t there by 1:00. I figured it was no big deal whether I made it or not; she was going to “get her hair done” anyway. Mom’s favorite luxury in life has always been her weekly appointment to “get her hair done” – whatever that means. When we were younger it meant getting out of the house and away from the kids for two hours to touch up any visible roots or change the color completely while gossiping (excuse me, “discussing current events”).

The ten hours were not that bad. The four-year old seems to have outgrown his need to puke up his guts every fifteen minutes while on long car trips, but then he had enough Dramine (just in case) to put him to sleep. The two-year old, on the other hand, insisted on screaming the whole way – her favorite riding in the car and any other time pastime.

We reached our destination, Provo Utah, at about 11:00, much relieved, and got off the highway to find a motel. Now if I truly was my father I would have stayed at the hole-in-the-wall motel run by the couple who barely speak English, but I’d rather stay at Best Western. The problem was, unbeknownst to us, every place in town (including the Little India Motel) was booked solid. Between youth conferences, exhibition games, and summer activities at the local university every place had been filled. And, we were told, because the same kind of activities were going on in Salt Lake as well (an hour up the road) we probably wouldn’t find a place to stay until we passed Salt Lake.

After three hours of driving and searching we finally found a place. That was after driving about 90 miles in about three hours, looking for a place to stay in our now-realized woefully inaccurate hotel guide, getting lost (because said guide had inaccurate freeway exit numbers), finding what we thought was the freeway again, only to realize it wasn’t, but stopping at motel we found anyway, not even knowing where we really were.

The good news was that we were now only three hours from Mom’s. Part of me thought we should have just driven the remaining miles and rung her doorbell at 6:00am. But I needed to stop.

The excitement didn’t start again until we arrived at Mom’s. We arrived to find an unlocked and empty house. Logically, we assumed that Mom had already left to “get her hair done” even though it was an hour early. We assume panic had set in by 12:55, and my mother who is compulsively early had already left. My cousin’s shop is about a fifteen-minute drive away, so we figured we’d just drive there. We got there to discover the shop was closed and no one was there. Now the panic started to set in.

My wife and I are a matched pair, I try to be logical and optimistic about things; she enjoys dwelling on the worst-case pessimistic option. She was certain that something had happened and Mom had to be rushed to the hospital. Of course that didn’t make sense to me, because her car was gone. My cousin Nikki often drives my mother to appointments and anywhere she has to go and Mom always insists and using her own car. But I couldn’t imagine my mother insisting on her own car if she had to be rushed to the hospital. On the other hand, now that I think about it, I can hear my gentile Jewish mother say, “Don’t waste your own gas for my emergency, but we’d better hurry.” (sidetrack: one of these days I’m going to write a biography called, “My Gentile Jewish Mother.” The premise is that four generations ago the family converted to Christianity, but to witness any of our family get-togethers, gatherings that often sound like Neil Simon’s latest play, you’d think they’d forgotten about the conversion.)

Turns out that Mom had just gone to lunch with another niece after canceling the appointment the day before. She was sure we wouldn’t make it on time. . . mainly because we never do.

I’d recount the week we spent with Mom and the days around the Fourth we all spent together, but considering the majority of my audience already experienced it, they can just pause now and remember whatever they want. Besides, if I don’t write it, they can’t contradict it.

The trip home was less eventful. Only one time did I throw my keys into the back seat and yell, “If you think it’s easier to drive from back there, be my guest.”

posted by: WebPulp at 23:29 | link | comments (1) |

Road Trip (Part 1) - Not Even Out of Town Yet

Not to be completely outdone by my “little” brother who has already posted his vacation blog – late, but not as late as mine – I now present my annual road-trip blog. We (the three brothers) decided this year we’d all converge on Mom for the Fourth of July.

My family makes the Fourth of July trek every year – Albuquerque Fourth of July is no more than the Fifth of May. But this year we were going to fill the house – seven adults (counting Mom) and seven children ranging in age from two to twelve. You’d think one-to-one odds would work in the adults favor, wouldn’t you. Unfortunately, the one in the terrible-two’s belongs to me. And she has a brother (four) that can’t leave her alone. He also has only two working speeds: too slow and too fast, (not the best for long road trips) and the only regulator seems to be attached to his butt.

Now, not to say that I had it worse traveling south to north (New Mexico to Idaho) for sixteen hours (usually) than he had it going north to south (Washington to Idaho) for twelve hours, but I think I won. I’d say that I won over my older brother as well, but I don’t now how far he had to travel southwest to northeast (Northern California to Idaho), and since he’s too “cool” to blog, he doesn’t get to compete. (And I always have to be right and be the most victimized all the time anyway.)

We went up to Mom’s a week earlier than the others went down or across, so by the time the others had arrived the preliminary road-trip bout with the wife had already been waged and we were into the last round of the vacation.

The trip started with a fourteen hour drive. The drive wasn’t that bad, but after the fourteen hours, I’d had more, “quit touching me!” “quit looking at me!” and “are we there yet?” than I could take. (My wife and kids were whining almost as bad.) Usually we do about eight to nine hours the first day and seven to eight the second. We decided to go a bit longer the first day this year. Well I decided.

You see, my family teases me about cutting my hair only once a year (whether I need it or not) because my cousin in Idaho is the only person I trust to cut it. We’d planned on arriving Friday night, and she was going to cut it Saturday afternoon. But then, after a myriad of Monday-like events on Thursday, we didn’t leave Albuquerque until Friday. Now I don’t know if there are any ancient evil curses tied to Friday the 24th, but I had a few of my own curses before we got out of town.

We synchronized watches (too bad neither my wife or I ever wear a watch) to leave at 10:00am. Too bad no one told Fate about the plan. The only stop out of town was to be Wal-Mart for ice and breakfast. Last year we didn’t stop for ice because we had a fancy plug-in cooler with a year warrantee. This year we all we had was an expired warrantee. But we still needed a cooler to separate the kids. So we loaded the car, only to discover, I’d run the battery down messing with the automatic windows the night before. (Right now, reading this, my bothers have just rubber stamped another “Like Dad” label on my forehead.) Fortunately there was still enough power that all it took was a quick charge. It was a half hour later, but we were still going to make it. The lines at Wal-Mart, unbelievable for a Friday morning, were short, as was the drive there (insert foreboding music here), but the shopping was long.

By the time we were done shopping, lunch was a better idea than breakfast. But we weren’t going to stop, we’d just eat our donuts and drink our chocolate milk on the way out of town. By the way, this would be a good time to mention that Wal-Mart blueberry-iced mini donuts are not a good idea. Only when we got back to the car (remember the drive was too short) the battery hadn’t been charged enough. So amid the cussing and little discussing, we went back into Wal-Mart (all hail the mighty Wal-Mart McDonalds) for lunch while I attempted to call my mother-in-law for a jump start. But the pay phone near McDonalds (Fie on the evil Qwest) wouldn’t work.

It’s LCD instruction screen (what ever happened to those industrial-strength, all-steel, would-survive-a-nuclear-war pay phones) read, “card use only,” so I swiped my Visa while thinking, “Wouldn’t it be easier to use a number tattooed on my forehead.” The LCD screen replied, “Lift receiver before inserting card.” So I lifted the receiver and inserted the card. It’s response was, “Remove card before dialing.” Which I did and was promptly told, “Insert card fully.” So I inserted the card, even though it had told me to remove it and was politely told to replace the receiver and insert the card before dialing. By now I was looking for the hidden cameras and using every “colorful” word my parents/grandparents/older brother had ever taught me as I told the phone what it could insert where. I finally walked to the other end of Wal-Mart and called from that pay phone with two quarters (when did that happen?)

Of course getting my mother-in-law there was another story. She was willing to come, even knew how to get to the Wal-Mart, but wanted to know what side we were on. Now, I wouldn’t now north from south from east from west even at the North Pole, so I tell her what is perfectly logical to me, we ate at the entrance by McDonalds. She still wants to know what side that’s on. I want to tell her, “The side with the big ‘M’ on the wall. I don’t, but convince her she’ll know when she gets there.

So, by 1:00pm, we finally get out of Albuquerque.

To be continued. . .

posted by: WebPulp at 01:16 | link | comments (1) |