The long and winding road, part 3

In which your humble author returns to a familiar road. Catch up if necessary with parts one and two.

Day 5, no driving

Sunday, the day in the past that marked our collective return to our homes (before we realized that spending most of the weekend on the road was no fun), the day that now represents the relaxing wrap-up after the locals have gone home. We clean up, put most things back in order, eat more food, watch the races, eat more food, and then eat.

No, really. One of the "problems" in the past was that apparently there were too many leftovers after the guests departed, so now we "have" to eat more food before we leave. (Of course, when they prepare extra food on Sunday, that makes our jobs more difficult. This time it was some kind of Thai dish. Very tasty.)

Now, you might think that there would be few things I'd enjoy more than watching a four-hour race, but you would be wrong for two reasons. One is that I really don't enjoy racing that much. I don't know why, it's just not my thing.

(warning: peeve alert.) The other is that for some reason, most networks (ABC in particular) seem to think that you only really want to watch about 30% of the race, so they show you a few laps, shrink the screen and mute the race to show you a commercial, go to a full-screen commercial, and then cut back to live action after they missed a crash or a key pass or something. They then repeat this process about 50 times.

Imagine watching a football game this way. How many times would you bother? Once or twice, maybe, and that would be it. Better yet, imagine watching soccer that way. (If you're old enough, you don't have to imagine. ESPN used to do that for World Cup matches until irate fans pointed out to them that you don't do it that way. This was back when ESPN thought it knew everything about sports. What's that? Oh, never mind.) It doesn't help that Tony George pretty much killed open-wheel racing several years ago, so the sport itself (even the race) doesn't have the allure it has 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.

So we sat through most of the race, then I drove my friend and his wife to the airport to drop her off (they had separate flights because, well, it's a long story and not mine to tell). We got back in time for the next race (second verse, same as the first) and resumed our places. (Mine was in front of my laptop, naturally. With the internet confusion cleared up, I was alternating between my baseball sim and various Facebook things, mostly Castle Age. Are you in my army yet?)

As the evening wore on, we switched from unexciting NASCAR to the wonders of DVR, watching the cult classic Superbad. (Yes, I know it's hardly old enough to earn "cult classic" status, but it's really the only type of praise it deserves. It's dumb but funny.) As an added bonus, we tried to match people at the party to characters in the movie. Well, okay, maybe just to Seth and Evan. But it worked.

"Seth" was easy to match, in part because he, too, was stumbling drunk. (In the old days, we basically had a race to drunk to see who won, and usually nobody did. Now, some don't drink at all, and most others don't get too drunk. The exceptions are usually locals who don't know any better. We may not drink heavily, but we can make sure you do.) He was also clumsily blunt with many, many thoughts ... it was rather entertaining to listen to him throw out compliments that weren't even left-handed.

The catch to that part of the story was that he had a 5:55 AM flight on Monday. There were several jokes about who would get him to the airport in time to catch his flight (surprisingly, while a taxi was mentioned frequently, it did not win) and even a couple of thoughts that perhaps he wouldn't even make it onto the flight. ("Seth" is a tall, heavy guy. He's also not necessarily the kind of guy who would be a low-key drunk at an airport. We wouldn't have been surprised if security had told him to take a seat for 4-6 hours.) Apparently, he made it ... my only concern was making it clear I wasn't going to be taking him. I had enough driving to do the next day, thank you very much.

Back to the hotel for the final night ...

Day 6: Richmond to Indy, about 615 miles

I get up, pack up my things, head out to the car (did I mention how much I love express checkout? there is nothing like avoiding the clueless people at the front desk; usually I mean the people checking out, but not always), and back to the house. I normally go home from the hotel, but this time I decided to max out time with my friends.

Everything was in order when I arrived. "Seth" had been successfully delivered to the airport, presumably made his flight, and we could focus on, well, not much of anything. TCM was showing The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, a classic Spaghetti Western, so I stayed to watch that, and then after lunch (glad I stayed to eat some tasty grilled hot dogs rather than eating on the road), the rest of us travelers packed our cars and headed our separate ways (some to North Carolina, some to the western side of Virginia, and me to old familiar I-64).

The interstate was just as I remembered it, and I settled in for the drive I'd done a few times in the past ... although this time, the stop-every-hour trick made it much more bearable. My GPS didn't catch on to the US-35 trick because, well, the DVD is old and doesn't know about the construction in West Virginia, but it figured things out soon enough.

Unfortunately, I didn't get quite the weather I wanted. There was a bit of rain as I was traveling west, so I had to turn on the defroster at times, and that knocked quite a bit off my mileage. (I got 55.7 mpg on the Altoona-to-Boston leg and 55.0 on the Boston-to-Richmond leg. Yep. Take that, BP.) Fortunately, a semi led me through the two-lane section in WV, and once we were on the divided-highway part that goes through southeast Ohio, everything was fine.

I got home pretty late – very late, in fact, about 3 AM, mostly because of my unwillingness to leave – but it wasn't a big deal. After all, the cats were well-fed, the house was still without AC, and I didn't have to get up for work the next day.

Even as a consultant, I knew to take the next day off. Sure, I can drive 2500 miles in six days, but I need some time to catch up afterward. A man's got to know his limitations.

The long and winding road, part 2

When last we left our hero, he was venturing across the land, braving holiday traffic and ancient subway systems to visit friends and relatives. Our story continues ...

Day 3: Boston to Richmond, about 650 miles

This was the big one. (Check the map again. This is the long squiggle on the east side of the "triangle" representing this voyage.) I knew there could be a number of complications, not the least of which was holiday traffic on roads with which I'm not familiar (I've been to Richmond, just not from the northeast), and the lack of cold drinks and protein bars in the car could be a problem, but there was nothing to do but stick it out.

I kept to the same pattern, stopping about every hour, except for the first two hours. Connecticut has lots of exits but no rest areas along I-84 (I prefer rest areas for quick stops because they're right off the highway and don't have additional customers like fast food places and gas stations do), so a couple of hours in, I noticed my attention was wandering a bit. (In fact, that was the worst it turned out to be on the whole trip.) A stop in New York took care of the attention problem, and I patiently retraced my steps to I-81, then headed away from the old route and toward new territory (and new states: I'd never been to Maryland before).

In the past, taking I-64 was nice, except for two stretches: the West Virginia Turnpike, where I-77 meets it, and the stretch in Virginia where I-81 (yep, the one I'm on) meets it. In both cases, traffic picked up as the interstates merged and dropped off abruptly as soon as they parted. Of course, this time I'd be on the busy part, or so I thought.

My GPS had other ideas. After six or seven hours of begging me to take the coastal route, it finally conceded that perhaps I had the right idea. However, as I crossed into Virginia, it suggested that maybe I shouldn't head back to I-64 (going southwest), but instead should try US-17 to I-95 to Richmond.

I thought about it for a while. Points in favor of US-17: it was more direct and was probably still a major highway, and if there was still traffic, I'd be closer to Richmond. Points in favor of I-64: it's an interstate, so there wouldn't be any stoplights, and it might not be that much longer. I took the US highway. Sure enough, there were a couple of stoplights that really slowed me down (probably added 15 minutes to the trip), but overall it wasn't bad, and once I was on I-95, everything was fine.

Finally hit the hotel at 8:15 or so, about 13 hours after I left. (I stay at the same one every time, the Holiday Inn Express on Mayland. It's just off I-64, so very convenient there, but about a 40-minute drive to my friends' house. There really isn't much that's closer.) Hooked up the laptop, updated my status and gave an approximate arrival time, cleaned up, and headed out. (I left the laptop: didn't feel like tearing it down three times today.)

Made it out to the house at a decent hour. Managed to avoid being parked in – their driveway is fairly long and has spots to the side for additional parking, because people tend to come and go at these things. On Friday, I'm typically one of the view who does leave, so I need to be at the back if possible.

Usually we pitch in around the house, inside and out, partly to thank the couple for hosting every year and partly because we like to help. This time, though, all the hard labor was done. (Oh darn.) All I could do was sit and eat, and eat I did. Friday, it was "just" meatballs, white chicken chili (I think), and some kind of coconut-mango cake that was pretty good. Caught up with the regulars who made it, hung out for a while, and headed back to the hotel around 1 or so.

As a side note, have you ever noticed how short the "king-sized" beds in hotel rooms seem to be? I'm not at all a tall person (5'8½", the last time someone measured me: I took the extra half-inch and kept it), and yet I've never found a bed in which I could comfortably sleep longways. Maybe it's because they use suction to make the beds, I don't know, but I always feel like I have to sleep at an angle to be under the covers. (There's a joke here about being single, I'll let you make it.)

Day 4, no driving

Well, by "no" I mean "to the hotel and back", but frankly, when you've crossed 11 state lines in 3 days, a little 40-minute drive doesn't even count.

Slept in until 10 or so, hit Castle Age, and then back to the house for the real party. (In the old days – aside from the fact I wouldn't have been driving because I stayed at the house – this would have meant hitting the keg. Now it means parking my butt in a chair in the air conditioning and staying away from drunk people.) Hanging out, playing Out of the Park Baseball because the internet connection isn't working (well, it was, but the secondary router wasn't, and I didn't feel like interrupting the hosts to get the key to the primary router), drinking this excellent licorice-mint tea, and waiting for the food to finish.

The hosts are very, very, very good cooks (did I mention that already?), as are some of the guests, so we always eat very well, and this time we had a challenge: clear out space in the chest freezer so they could fit the half cow they'd ordered. (Yeah, a half. Not a quarter.) Hmm, sausage: Greek sausage was very good, and I think there were kielbasa as well. (They make their own sausage, and no, you don't want to know how it's made.) French fries. A deep-fried turkey injected with some kind of habanero sauce. (They also like things spicy and grow many different kinds of peppers. Strong peppers. Like the kind that you have to wear gloves to handle, and even if you do, getting some oil on your skin may mean a trip to the basement to find laundry detergent. Don't know what I mean? Imagine the burn you felt on your tongue the last time you ate something really, really spicy. Now imagine that on your hands.) Pulled pork. Curry. Some more veggie stuff I didn't eat. Hamburgers. Hot dogs. Deep-fried brisket. (I know, it sounds weird, but it was good too.) Cake. Cookies. Brownies. S'mores by the bonfire.


The fire. That's my job. (I'm not saying I'm a pyromaniac. They are. I don't actually stand in the fire, you know, just close to it.) They have a nice fire circle behind the house, and when the weather is right (as opposed to when it's so dry you can't have a fire), we build a big fire. Big. Not this time, because we didn't have the attention for it, and the NHL was unkind enough to put on a game right around dusk, but it was enough to burn some fun things and make lots of marshmallows. (The swirled marshmallows are interesting, if you've not tried them before.) The other pyro and I made a little assembly line: we'd load up marshmallow sticks for the kids, they'd cook them and come back to us, we'd set up little plates, put the marshmallows on the plates with whatever they wanted (S'mores or plain), and load up the next sticks for the next kids. (About seven kids in all. We can handle it. We're former food service professionals.) At least half of the S'mores were actually eaten and not dropped on the ground, so that was a success.

Back inside to watch Game 1 of the Finals ... there was one drunk Flyers fan there (yes, I know it's redundant, but who's telling this story anyway?) who thought it was a "low-scoring" game. Look, we just saw a lacrosse game (NCAA semifinals) end 12-8. That's low-scoring. 3-2 after 1 is not a low-scoring hockey game. Anyway, the Blackhawks win, the remaining outsiders clear out, the regulars filter inside, and we have our ritual viewing of EuroTrip. (Scotty doesn't know.)

We move cars around just right so that the drunk people can stay and I can leave (this is harder than you think when you only have a gravel driveway and some vague spots to one side that may or may not be big enough for a car). I head back to the hotel for a good night's rest, looking forward to another day of vacation before I have to leave.

Excess in everything, moderation is for monks

That's what they call it, the semi-annual party that is currently held in Virginia. Friends I met in college (which means we've known each other 20 years or so – scary, isn't it?), friends they met in grad schools, and locals they met along the way ... as time goes on, there is less drinking by the regulars (which is a good thing, we were a pretty scary group back in the day) but usually enough done by the unsuspecting locals. And there are epic amounts of food. I'm surprised that their septic system survives. (One year they actually rented Port-o-Lets.)

Thursday

The trip commences. Cloudy day, which is great for an early start, because it means glasses are OK for most of the trip. (I can switch between those and prescription sunglasses all right, but it's obviously not as easy as taking sunglasses on/off.) Off we go out I-70, which distresses the navigation system because she wants us to go a different way. (This is pretty much the story until we're on I-64. At that point, she realizes that because the hotel is on I-64, we're probably heading in the right direction.)

Not a bad drive, as drives go. A little slow, but we miss rush hour in whatever cities happen to lie between here and there. (Not many.) The hybrid doesn't like the mountains, so we lose a bit of time there. About 45 mpg on the trip, which is nice, even though every place east of Indy has cheaper gas than we do.

Somewhere along US-35, we see rest area cat. He's sitting outside the rest area, watching people going in, presumably to ensure they don't cause trouble. He has no time to be petted, but instead settles himself on his side where he can still watch the entrance. Nice work if you can get it.

We listen to baseball about half the trip. The Padres are nice enough to entice bees to delay their game so that it finishes after the 7:00 games start. Naturally, when we arrive and share the news, people have no idea what we're talking about. Apparently bee delays are not common.

Arrive at the hotel, I check in, we head out to the house, we eat some fried stuff and catch up with people. I head back to the hotel, log on, and sleep.

Friday

The last day for party prep. I'm back at the house around noon. The gravel arrives about 12:30. Our hosts have a gravel driveway that is such in name only at the base and head of the drive. The newly-arriving gravel is to be spread at each end.

The kind driver does what he can to distribute it somewhat reasonably at each end, although we end up with a nice pile at the base of the driveway. Rakes and shovels in hand, we begin.

It's clear after not much time that most of us are desk people, not outdoor people. The gravel weighs more and more as the task continues, although thankfully it did not rain. Apparently this makes things much worse. I'm the first to concede defeat, so I go inside and sit in front of the laptop, carefully managing my tycoon teams and mafia whilst the others foolishly pretend they're in the 20s.

Eventually it's all spread adequately, so food prep begins. Chopping, dicing, deboning ... there's usually enough food for three times the number of guests that show up, but it's all fun stuff to cook and to eat. (Also, most of us worked in the cafeteria at one of the dorms at Purdue, which is where we met, so we had institutional experience prior to having our own kitchens. Of course it doesn't help a ton, but at least we'd been exposed to a number of kinds of food and ways to cook it. I miss the convection ovens.)

Eating, talking, and sending off one of the families. Apparently they had a birthday party in Baltimore on Saturday. This is kind of like planning movie night during the first weekend of the NCAA tournament, but they're long-timers, so somewhat forgiven. (Plus they're coming back on Sunday.) Late night Friday means movie night, so this time it's Superbad. Surprisingly funny, but then again I think it's the atmosphere. Perhaps not so funny watching it myself.

Back to the hotel, two of us this time. We see a few deer on the road back to civilization; it's a state highway, so the speed limit is 55, but it's a winding two-lane road in the dark, so we don't go quite that speed once we've seen the deer. Most people use a little caution at night around there.

The other traveler checks himself in; he's trying to be more careful with money, so he's staying elsewhere Thursday and Sunday. Of course, he's delayed because the person at the front desk, well, isn't at the front desk when we arrive. Eventually he gets his room. (Separate rooms, of course. I prefer to sleep in my own room unless accompanied by a willing woman.)

Saturday

Party day. We meet around 11 and head back to the house. Food is heating up and people are starting to show up. I stay outside for a bit and play bags ... we lose the first match, but our conquerors include the host, who has to attend to newly-arrived guests, so we stay and a new team takes their place. We run off four wins or so as I find a nice stroke (holding the bags vertically, a little backspin, aim right of the hole and watch them roll left and in), and then my teammate has to attend to ribs, so we step aside and I go back inside. Plus beer pong and such has started up, and I tend to stay away from those things, not being able to partake myself. (Having a non-drinker participate in a team drinking game can be a problem for his teammate. We did it once. I thought it was funny.)

The DSL is holding up nicely, so I go through a few weeks of OOTP and check my Facebook games. It's nice and cool inside, a pleasant change from the 90-degree heat ... but then again it's raining pretty much everywhere west of Virginia, so we're thankful.

Night comes, fireworks are launched, people drink more, and suddenly I have to build a fire. (Well, not entirely accurate. I have to light a fire. The fire was built yesterday. There are three or four resident pyros ... one is the host, and another is in Baltimore now, so that leaves me. I like fire.) The host lights it, I feed it, and the drunks sit near the fire for about 30 minutes or so until they realize they need to drink more. (I kind of built the fire hot. No one really sat near it.)

We burn some more wood (no weird things this time, like wood of questionable origin or strange chemicals that ought to burn well). The drunk people return, there are discussions about who ought and ought not to have been drinking where and when, most of them are sent inside to play more drinking games, and the rest of us hang out until 1. We leave the fire to burn itself out (it's designed for that), I get the very intoxicated traveling companion, and we return to the hotel. (The next day, he conceded he'd been rather drunk. He doesn't drink that much any more, but he certainly did on Saturday. We blame the mojitos.)

Sunday

Post-party day 1. Locals are gone, people from Cincinnati have left, so there are three small groups here, and we're awaiting the return of the people who braved DC-area traffic on the 4th. Eating of random things, more Facebook, sports on TV. Another Grand Slam event, another Federer win ... we were somewhat limited in what we could watch because we swapped out their DVR for a better one, and of course that doesn't transfer the content. Oh well. Acrostic puzzle to finish, wrapping up things, goodbyes said, I head back to the hotel.

Monday

Time to head back. I swing into Richmond and pick up the traveler, and we head back to I-64 and west. Warmer weather this time, so the air is on and the mileage drops a touch.

Construction isn't bad, but an accident on the turnpike, I think, slows us down, costing us about an hour. Somewhere in the construction, though, we see a crew sanding down the surface of the road, or something ... except when we close on it, we see it's actually a car burning merrily on the side of the road. No obvious flames yet, but enough smoke to make driving hazardous. Everyone's slowed down in the single-lane traffic. Several cars have stopped to help, including a semi driver who looks like he's got an extinguisher, so we keep going.

US-35 is a nice four-lane divided highway in Ohio, but it's only two lanes for most of the West Virginia segment. Fortunately, they've upgraded part of it (the navigation system is horrified that we're driving through the grass and refuses to talk to us until we're back on the two-lane part) and are working on another part of it. Unfortunately, the middle section is unplanned and unscheduled. Tolls are going up to $2 on the turnpike in August. I'll be happy to double that if it means we get better roads soon.

Back home ... I drop off the traveler and arrive at last. The cats are a bit surprised to see me. Their usual cries of near starvation are useless now because of the care ems has taken; they were good to her and only left one small spot of cat puke that could easily have been created Monday. (A real hairball, too, and not the I'm-mad-at-you-here's-unchewed-food-to-clean-up kind.)

Unpack, clean up, and off to bed.


It was a lot of fun, but it's not something I'd care to do too often. Someday I might consider flying again, but only after the airport Gestapo have been removed and when US airlines remember that customer service is important.