TheBanyanTree: Our Trip

[Sally Larwood]

Pam!!!!  What a wonderful account of your road trip!  I felt I was there with you!!!(liked the !!!!s?). Thanks for sharing!!!

Sal 

Sent from my iPad 

On 16/04/2012, at 1:11 AM, Pam Lawley <pamj.lawley at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was excited to get the invitation to a great friend’s surprise birthday
> party in Ohio, and I determined that even though it was a few states away,
> I wanted to be there!!  But when I asked my husband if he wanted to go with
> me, his response was less than thrilled… it had momentarily slipped my
> mind, that the 12-hour travel day would be HIS birthday, and that’s not
> really how he wanted to spend it.  Nor did he want to spend that weekend
> away from the golf course.  But he didn’t want me to have to go alone
> either.  So I turned to my son who just happened to be sitting on the couch
> (he’s usually holed up in his room!) and asked him how he felt about a road
> trip – and he said he’d go!!
> 
> 
> 
> My son isn’t much for ‘road trips’.  They usually involve long hours in a
> vehicle that he has to fold up in, and this trip would be no different!
> He’s tall but mostly torso, and sitting up in my car causes his head to hit
> the roof, and even with the seat pushed all the way back his knees are
> still folded to his chest!  But – he’s been working two jobs without a
> single 24-hour period off for months and months, and he was just desperate
> enough for ANY excuse to get away – on mom’s dime!
> 
> 
> 
> Besides hating to ride in my car, he’s really not much of a ‘people
> person’, and there he was agreeing to go to a party for somebody he didn’t
> really know, surrounded by people he definitely didn’t know!   But it was
> working for me and I was looking forward to spending a weekend with him!
> 
> 
> 
> He of course, found his own agenda!  He was going, but he was going to milk
> it for all he could!  He told me the next day that, oh-by-the-way!, there
> was a MLB game within an hour of our party destination.  As a baseball fan
> myself, that one was easy to get suckered into, and for whatever the home
> team’s reasons, we were able to get 2nd row seating for cheap – so we were
> in!
> 
> 
> 
> Meanwhile, he told me he’d like to check out the ‘outlets’ on our way…
> 
> 
> 
> We left home about 6 o’clock that Friday  morning, a little later than I’d
> hoped, but after I’d given  my husband his birthday presents and wished him
> a good golf game!  J
> 
> 
> 
> Before we were even in the car, my son informed me that he was *hungry*!
> His second job is ‘bouncing’ at a local bar on the weekends, and he’d
> worked the night before, getting home around 3, ‘accidentally’ falling
> asleep for a couple of hours, waking me, and then climbing into the car to
> go back to sleep!  But he wanted me to stop for food.  “Where?”  Well, he’d
> think about it.  Which he did with his eyes closed for a couple of hours!
> 
> 
> 
> When I came across some outlets about three hours into our trip, he was
> ready to wake up, shop  and eat!  He’d climbed into the car without
> showering, so when we stopped he asked me if we had any ‘hand sanitizer’.
> I had a small bottle so I passed it to him, in the back where he’d been
> laying down.  He started rubbing it all over himself, including in his
> hair!  Since I had ‘wet wipes’ also, I passed those back as well.  He was
> pulling clothes and toiletries out of his bag as he climbed out to change
> pants and wet his hair (with a bottle of water I found under the seat) and
> dry it with a dirty t-shirt.  Then he used the bottle of water to brush his
> teeth…  I watched in amazement as he got himself ready for shopping, and
> then in horror when I realized that the back of my car looked like his
> bedroom!!
> 
> 
> 
> We stopped in the Coach outlet, and then we were onto Nike and Oakley…
> Turns out that the neat stack of socks he’d made to pack were still sitting
> on his bed and Nike was the only place we knew we’d be able to get more in
> his size!  The shades were just so he’d look ‘cool’!  We only shopped in a
> few places, and then it was onto Denny’s for breakfast, and then back on
> the road.
> 
> 
> 
> The day continued on with stops to shop and eat, and that was why the trip
> that the GPS calculated would take us about ten and a half hours ended up
> taking us about sixteen!!    We didn’t hesitate to stop if some store
> sounded inviting, and we ate well and coffee’d up at most gas stops!!
> 
> 
> 
> Our final stop that night was to a mall, and then dinner.  I called the
> hotel to ensure them that we would be arriving eventually, and we piled
> back into the car for the final leg.  It was late, it was dark, and I was
> just a tad tired.  I love a good road trip, and I love driving, but I’m
> finding nowadays that I’d just as soon drive in daylight!
> 
> 
> 
> The boy of course, went right to sleep sitting beside me.  I’d gotten off
> the interstate and onto a two-lane road, and I swear I thought those last
> two hours would never go by!!  About an hour into this last painful leg,
> the boy woke up – not tired and cranky, not curious as to our location –
> looked over at me and said, “You’re such a trooper.”
> 
> 
> 
> My son has a dry sense of humor and a very straight face.  But he can be so
> friggin funny sometimes – and this was one of those times!   The very last
> thing I expected was a compliment on my ability to just keep driving, and I
> started laughing, and laughed until I was wiping away tears!!
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, I drove.  I *love* to drive, especially on an interstate where I
> can go faster!  (Sadly, I am so not a ‘scenic country roads’ kinda chick…)
> I’ve driven the (an?) autobahn in Italy and got it up to about 145
> ‘klicks’, but that was as fast as I could go… It just seemed TOO fast to be
> able to react!!  So, while I like to go fast, I don’t like to go TOO fast.
> If you want to go faster, go on with your bad self.  Just stay out of my
> way!  J  I guess I just want my own lane to go my own speed…
> 
> 
> 
> <sigh>  The problem – in my humble opinion! – seems to be that nowadays,
> nobody knows the rules of the road!!!  Slower traffic should be in the
> right lane (for those of us in the USA)!!!  If somebody comes up behind
> you, get over!!!   Yeah, they might be going too fast, but it’s THEIR
> ticket to get!  No, I’m not talking wildly reckless driving, weaving in and
> out of lanes, I’m just talking going faster.  And people get in the left
> lane and poke along at speeds UNDER the limit!!
> 
> 
> 
> It’s a control thing with me, I realize that.  Some jerk is controlling my
> speed by sitting in front of me crawling along (especially if I can’t go
> around the other way!!), and it just makes me nutz!!
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, it’s not like I like a road trip to speed really fast.  I want to
> set my cruise seven or eight miles over the limit, and I don’t want to have
> to brake.  Is that SO much to ask!?!?  ;)
> 
> 
> 
> But I couldn’t do it in the mountains of West Virginia…  The posted limit
> was 70 mph.  WT?!?!  Around those curves and up and down those hills –
> SEVENTY!?!?  I was askeered to go that fast, let alone a few miles
> over!!!!!!  Holy crap!!!  I was ‘white-knuckling’ it the whole way!  Going
> around some of those turns felt like I was pulling a few ‘Gs’ – it was
> crazy!!  I didn’t dare set the cruise, so I found my speed sometimes
> drifting way lower than the limit!  (But not to worry – I was in the right
> lane!!!!)
> 
> 
> 
> We finally got to our hotel about eleven that night, and I’m sure I’ve
> never been so happy to see a place in my life!  Okay, maybe I’m
> exaggerating – but I was *so* tired!  We got up to our rooms and started
> spreading out our ‘stuff’.  Alright, my son started ‘spreading out’!  I’ve
> travelled frequently for work through the years, and in my what I’ve
> analyzed of myself to be a ‘need to please’, I make sure to only use one
> towel and leave it hanging, and only one trashcan, and that everything that
> should be IN the trashcan, is!  I work hard to ensure that the staff have
> as little work as possible in my room so that when they leave they say,
> ‘Wow!  What a nice guest!’.  Yes, it’s a sickness!  My son’s reply to all
> this?  ‘That’s what they get paid for!’  Brat!
> 
> 
> 
> I’d suggested that we might be able to get up Saturday and do ‘something’
> before the party, but to my son’s disappointment, that didn’t happen.
> Once we’d gotten up, showered, dressed and eaten, there was only a little
> bit of time before my friend Julie was arriving!  *I* was antsy with
> excitement!  While we’d driven up from North Carolina, she was coming from
> Indiana, and we were meeting up to drive to the party location.
> 
> 
> 
> When she called to tell me she was in the garage waiting to take the
> elevator to the lobby, I was standing in the lobby right in front of the
> elevator!!!  She’s one of those friends I’ve met “on line”, and while we
> are drastically different in our lives and lifestyles, she is a hero of
> mine and someone I love dearly!!  I’m well aware that it was only through
> the magic of modern technology that our paths crossed –and heck!, the same
> is true of the friend whose birthday we were there to celebrate! – and it’s
> one of those things in life I am most grateful for!  She has taught me so
> much about this world, and myself!
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway – the doors opened and she was there, and I think we both
> squealed!!  It was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy!!  J
> 
> 
> 
> I dragged her to our room, reintroduced her to my son (it’d been about ten
> years since they’d last laid eyes on each other!), and we got her hair put
> up to her satisfaction (I’d seen pictures of her newest ‘do’ and loved it,
> her, not so much!), and then we were on the road.
> 
> 
> 
> Because she was leaving earlier to make the (six hour!) drive back home
> that day, we decided we’d take both our vehicles, and she would follow me.
> We knew where we were (the hotel), and the birthday girl’s daughter had
> sent directions to her house – from some road.  We just didn’t know how to
> get from the hotel to that road.  I asked the chick at the desk for
> directions, and after some conferring with others on her part, she wrote
> down a few turns that would get us where we needed to be.
> 
> 
> 
> Not.  Looking for the second turn, we immediately knew we were in the wrong
> place, driving through a neighborhood.  We stopped and I went back to
> discuss it with her, and a nice man out with his boys came over and gave us
> new directions.   Meanwhile Julie plugged the party house address into her
> GPS.
> 
> 
> 
> Now, one might wonder why we didn’t just do this to begin with, but we were
> being directed to a neighboring park (to park!) that was close to the
> house, but NOT the house.  (It was a surprise and all…)  We figured then if
> we could find the house, perhaps we could work backwards and find the
> park.  Julie’s GPS took us to a different neighborhood, but we still
> weren’t there!  We stopped, conferred, and then decided to plug the address
> into my more-recently-updated GPS and see what happened!   Finally, the
> right address!!  And lo-and-behold – THERE was the park!  If we could only
> just drive down that hill and across the soccer field we’d be there!
> 
> 
> 
> Then my son thought to pull up some cool tracking app on his iPhone that
> would –hopefully! – show us where we were, and the roads to get us around,
> and then back to the park.  By the time it loaded up though, we were on
> roads and seeing markers that were written in the original directions and
> even though I saw the turn, he said, ‘no! not yet!’, and I drove on by
> while Julie turned in!  Haaaahahaa!!
> 
> 
> 
> We did a u-turn and finally managed to get to exactly where we needed to
> be… original directions, two people, two GPSs and a phone app later!  We
> parked, crossed the soccer field, walked up some steps and into the house
> to introduce ourselves to friends and family who had never met us in our
> lives!!  (Have I mentioned how much I love modern technology?!?!)
> 
> 
> 
> The party was a *huge* success, and the party girl who hates parties, LOVED
> the love and attention, and a great time was had by all!!  Great food,
> wonderful laughs, yummy cake, funny gifts, and a tearfully surprised
> birthday chick!!  Definitely worth the trip!!!
> 
> 
> 
> And I was so proud of my son.  He was sociable and chatted with folks and
> didn’t even once ask – ‘can we go now?!’.   Second nature to some us, hard
> work to others who are almost painfully shy!  We took photos, gave our
> hugs, and then we were on our way!
> 
> 
> 
> We tossed around the idea of visiting the Football Hall of Fame that was
> close by, but the internet-on-the-phone revealed that we would be too
> late.  So we decided to find a toy store!  Somewhere along the way, this
> trip for a birthday party morphed into an occasion to have fun and make
> memories for my son’s own upcoming 21st birthday!  (He has no desire to
> celebrate {as so many kids do} by going out and having his first “official”
> drink – he works as a bouncer at a bar thankyouverymuch, and he just has
> little desire to make himself silly with alcohol.  Whatever.)
> 
> 
> 
> So I was pretty much up for any fun thing he wanted to do, or any ‘toy’ he
> may have wanted.  And what he wanted was a giant Lego Star Wars set.  Okay,
> so I did have limits!  I agreed to a smaller set, but then he was torn
> between in and something else he really wanted that he’d found on line
> earlier.  He was ‘hemming’ and ‘hawing’ trying to make a decision, and I
> said something like, ‘you’ll never walk away from that’ and he took that as
> a challenge and put it down and we walked out!
> 
> 
> 
> He did really want it but he was torn, so we sat in the car making deals
> and laughing about it all!!  I have serious issues with the price of movie
> theatre tickets.  I always have!  In my fifty-some years of life, I have
> seen less than a dozen movies in a theatre.  I’ve always felt that I was
> getting ripped off somehow.  Yeah, I know, it’s another sickness of mine!
> I can blow money frivolously six ways to Sunday, but there’s just something
> about a theatre!!  Except if I’m on ‘vacation’, and this trip classified
> itself as just that.  I had told him we could go see a movie.
> 
> 
> 
> We just had to agree on one…  *I* wanted to see Titanic in 3D, he
> absolutely hated the movie and did NOT want to see that one.  So I started
> with deals and bribes, trying to get him to agree with me.  We finally
> settled on something that I would buy him if he would go.  I can’t tell you
> what it was because I’ve forgotten and he has never come back and reminded
> me!!!  I just know that we laughed and laughed and I wiped away tears
> before it was all settled!!  Then we went to the movies, I paid something
> obscene for tickets, we donned our 3D glasses, and I was entertained again
> with Rose and Jack!
> 
> 
> 
> And then it was back to the hotel, and sleep!  The baseball game was an
> hour more north, and it started at one.  The park opened at eleven and he
> wanted to be there then to watch batting practice.  I told him we’d need to
> be checked out and on the road by about 9:30.  But when we got up the next
> morning, he again suggested the Hall of Fame.  He said it probably wouldn’t
> take more than an hour to tour, and if we were there when they opened at
> nine, an hour looking wouldn’t put us that much farther behind and he could
> still see some batting practice.
> 
> 
> 
> I hate to sound rude, but we were not very impressed with the Hall of
> Fame.  They are actually under construction to enlarge the joint, and I
> think they’re overdue!  Football in the USA of HUGE – millions and millions
> of dollars flying around the sport.  But he HOF was so… outdated?  In this
> fast-paced world of technology, it’s just so… so… 70’s!  Cardboard photos
> that are peeling around the edges… ‘Push-the-button’ displays that are out
> of order… I guess one could say that we were kind of bored with it…  The
> busts themselves were cool to see – but really nothing worth the
> twenty-plus dollars each to get in!!  Not sure where the NFL is spending
> all that money, but it wasn’t there!
> 
> 
> 
> Oh well – we went and have the magnet to prove it!  J
> 
> 
> 
> And then we were off to the baseball game!!!  Ya-hoo!!  Major League
> Baseball in the flesh!!  Two teams we didn’t really care a lick about – but
> real live baseball!!!  It was cold and windy and dreary and overcast.  We
> had jackets, but once we’d entered the park, we realized that we were going
> to freeze to death sitting there!!
> 
> 
> 
> So, these two huge baseball fans with THREE different sized blankets in the
> car, went into a gift shop and frivolously blew a wad on another one –
> decorated with a team that wasn’t our favorite!  THAT is how I like to blow
> money!!  :D
> 
> 
> 
> We enjoyed the game…  We sat under our over-priced blanket eating WAY
> over-priced ballpark food and watched strike outs and home runs with the
> home team fans!!  Well worth the trip!
> 
> 
> 
> According to the GSP, because we’d added another hour north to the trip, it
> would take us about eleven and a half hours to get home.  Because I was
> *SO* nervous about the mountains in the dark, I told him that we *really*
> needed to be on the road by four.  Surely they could play a game in three
> hours?!!?  (Noting that just the night before we left home this same team
> played a game that went SIXTEEN innings!!!!)  But at the top of the 9th,
> with the home team ahead and only three outs to go, we decided it was a
> done deal and we could leave.
> 
> 
> 
> We stopped at the restrooms on our way out and saw on the overhead TVs that
> the home team had made an awful error and the game might just drag on, but
> as we walked toward the car we heard a loud roar and figured that they’d
> just won.  (We checked on line later – they had!!)
> 
> 
> 
> And so we hit the road at about 3:30.  We got gas and I got coffee, and
> then the stops were few!  I figured I could stop when it was dark!!  Didn’t
> want to waste daylight if I didn’t have to!  I kept up with the traffic on
> the straightaways going a little faster than I would have on cruise, but it
> got it got us to the mountains with more daylight in front of us.  Not a
> lot, but enough!
> 
> 
> 
> And, after all my angst, I found that the mountains weren’t nearly as
> treacherous the second time!  I still didn’t use the cruise, but I found it
> a little easier to at least do the speed limit!!  And while I also feared
> being tired around midnight, I had no problems staying awake or seeing, and
> we pulled up in our driveway right at 3 o’clock the next morning!
> Easy-peasy!!
> 
> 
> 
> I got a few hours sleep and went into work late – and a new week started
> and our trip was done.  I’d found myself ‘writing’ in my head during the
> drive.  I didn’t have the radio on much so I wouldn’t have to hassle with
> finding new stations, and I was perfectly content to entertain my brain
> while the boy slept!  I wrote colorfully and smoothly during the drive!  My
> words came alive and reader could feel the pull of the Gs!!
> 
> 
> 
> But then, back home in front of my laptop – nothing!  It was such a fun few
> days and we had so many laughs, I just wanted to put it on paper!!  I
> wanted to recreate every minute and every laugh and every memory.  Alas -
> this is what I got!!  (I really should carry a portable recorder around
> with me!)
> 
> 
> Pam
>