Saturday, February 5, 2011

Day 2...


Day 2.
Socrazy and I were supposed to wake up super early (before the rooster crows), or somewhere around 4 in the morning so that we could be on the road by 5. Needless to say, neither one of us woke up in time. It was very important that we leave early because we had 14 hours to drive to get to “Aunt Ada Mich-chicken” and I didn’t want to arrive in the early morning the next day. We missed my sister’s “wake-up” call and slept through the alarm. So at 6:30 I opened my eyes, stretched my legs and arms and flung out of bed and while whisper screaming at Socrazy “Wake up! We are late!” So we threw our clothes on, stripped the bed, and tiptoed out the door with the cats. Started the engine and rolled out the driveway.

As we shift gears, the windows fogged up due to our hot steamy morning breath. Hmmm… delish! (Thank God, I brushed my teeth) We roll down the steep hill and see dawn is ever so present over the city. I remark on how beautiful the city is, especially when it is sleeping.

We first stop at my Uncle’s - brother’s café, Donut Express so that we may get some very large coffees and something to eat. After we picked up our coffee and food through the takeout window, I drive toward the road (the main road which is rather busy and the “exit” portion would have my SUV bottom-out, so I decided to play my cards on the traffic. Mean while as I am in motion of driving toward the busy road, Socrazy is getting huffy with me about why I choose to use the main road, that I would end up sacrificing a lot of time this way…

So what do I decide? Well, I am currently in Massachusetts, so what better way to act than a Mass-hole. So I turn up the radio and step on the gas and tell him to stop yelling at me. As we pull out in front of someone practically at snail pace, I start to accelerate while the person behind me is now quite aggravated. We drive along to the gas station, to fill the gas tank since it is pretty much on the way to the highway.

We later notice that the egg sandwiches that we ordered were very wrong, usually they would come with a toasted bagel, egg, cheese and some sort of meat. All we got was a cold bagel with egg on it. But that doesn’t matter because in reality we didn’t really need all that protein.

            I fill up the tank hop back into the car, and Socrazy is filling-up the window cleaner fluid. A few moments pass, he gets into the car and we take off for route 90. For a good four hours we are silent. Not talking to one another, not playing music, just silent. I look over just to make sure he is not sleeping, and as I suspect he fell a sleep a little bit. He soon wakes up, and starts talking to me. We are talking about where we are going to go which route to take ect. All that we know A.) is that it is winter time, so we can not go straight across from Aunt Ada-Mich-chicken to Portland, Oregon; B.) Socrazy wants to see Chicago and Detroit and C.) I have a friend who is willing to house us when we arrive to California in San Francisco.

            As we were talking, we decided that it would be best to stop when we had a half a tank. So we are somewhere in upstate New York, with a half tank of gas and pulled off the highway to fill up, bathroom break etc.  We decided to pick some very nutritious gas food, which we ended up throwing away. Perhaps it is because we are on the road, the lack sleep or that we were not in the comfort of our home, but nasty food on the road has something about it.

            For many more hours it was silent, until I broke out my old CDs. Most of which are scratched to all hells and back.  As I flip through them and wondered why I even took them with me in the first place, I noticed Socrazy looking at them and getting excited for the BEASTIE BOYS! So my first reaction is just to go past it and see what else I could find but ended up flipping back to it realizing I might not have anything better. Oh, by the way the reason why I am not using up to date equipment is that I don’t really have that with my vehicle, and the FM transmitter that I do have doesn’t transmit so well when there are mountains blocking the signal. So CDs are it. I put the CD in and we start dancing around in our very snug-seated positions.

            Many hours pass, and as we continue to push the petal to the metal and drive across the mountainous terrain of New York to the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, which comes a quick stop of flat plain-like land.  At this point, we can see for miles and grow quite tired of the redundant appearance, and the vastness. Wondering if we are there yet and how many miles have we gone… In the morning, an hour seemed to go by like minutes, and now minutes seemed to go like hours.

Please don’t get me wrong; it is not that the land is not beautiful. It is that after 8 hours one’s body grows tried of sitting and looking at miles that seem to go one for hours at 70 mph.

We stop at some very fancy mid-western fast food place for dinner. A place that is foreign to most Nantucketers, but well known to those of the place deemed “AMERICA” called Burger King. (Out of the healthier fast food vs. not so healthy fast food, we chose not so healthy).  After eating we hop back into the car which is sitting in a parking lot full of ice, when upon entering there was one very special driver who refused to look behind him as he backed up, with his wife and new-born aboard, he barely acknowledged us, however she seemed very apologetic, as if to say, “Yes, this is the intelligent man, I chose to marry.”

            As we cautiously drive over the ice, not to step on the gas too much and have an accident we slowly pull away from our grooved parking spot. Once back on the road, we decide to pick up the pace. We drive. We Drive, and We DROVE. Hours passed and now it was time for coffee to get hyped up so that we could eventually crash into our already awaiting bed at my sister’s home.  

My sister calls wondering when we would be arriving. We had one more hour to go, and my sister deemed it to be two. So we push the metal down to make sure we arrive there in one hour, so that we could go to the bathroom and collapse in the bed.
For some reason, I knew I had aggravated my sister, perhaps it was my poor timing, scheduling, or lack of “desire” to get out of bed that morning, but I could sense and urgency for us to get there. Her husband had gone to bed hours ago, and so didn’t the children. So for me it was no wonder why she was wondering where we were.

So I expressed quite frankly my need and want to get there now. So we drove. We follow her directions and follow the directions provided by my Christmas present from my Father, an iPhone with maps. As we drive down some scary narrow dark windy roads, I ask Socrazy to drive a little slower, so as not to end up in some briar patch or snow bank.

We reached our destination, in a little less than 15 hours. Time to set-up the kitty litter boxes, food, brush teeth, change into P.J.s and collapse into bed. 

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