Travelogue
I recently returned from a week-long road trip with my parents to Alabama. I'm sure you can imagine how thrilled I was to embark on this journey. Fortunately, it wasn't that bad. Ready? Here goes:
Day 1
We depart around 8pm for Chesapeake, VA, where my parents have made an appointment to be shown a house at 8am the next day. This is a 200 mile detour en route to our intended destination. It seems that the Senior Olympics convene in Chesapeake during this time. This makes it rather difficult to find travel accomodations. Lucky us, we get the VERY LAST motel room in the entire township and surrounding area. And now we know why it was still vacant. Let's just say that my mom wouldn't take off her shoes the whole time, and kept muttering something about us all getting crabs.
Day 2
We depart the heinous motel room to go check out the house. The house belongs to a friend of a friend and hasn't gone on the market yet at this point. My parents had seen pictures of it, but decided they didn't want it because it has a pool. Don't ask me what's wrong with my parents. However, after not finding anything else to buy or rent or occupy at the navy's expense, the house with the pool was starting to look pretty good. My parents put a contract on it as soon as they see it, and now I have a place to live in the fall. Everybody's happy. We make it all the way to Augusta, GA.
Day 3
At 6:45am, at my mother's behest, my dad calls the father of the bride to find out what time the rehearsal is that day. My dad reassuringly tells him, "We're leaving now." He neglects to tell him we're leaving from Augusta, GA. The bride's family spends the entire day in angst thinking we just left from Virginia. How fun. At the rehearsal, we meet the groom's family, who have the collective social skills of a hat rack. We enjoy most excellent BBQ.
Day 4
Day of Wedding No. 1. Dress that I ordered special to match the bride's color scheme does not fit. Forgot tuning key for the harp. Panic ensues. We rush to the mall and the hardware store. Panic subsides temporarily. At the church, I find out that my quick-fix substitute for a tuning key does not work. This is bad news considering that the harp at this point sounds like an, albeit angelic, flock of geese. Hick relatives to the rescue! The groom's brother-in-law has the necessary tool in his car. Now all that remains is for me to actually get through the songs without mishap. Yeah, right. I butcher the grandparents/parents' processional. It's so painful. And just when you want to crawl under a pew and hide in embarrassment, you have to go to the reception. I attempt to blend into the upholstery.
Day 5
Day of Wedding No. 2. With the stress of the previous day forgotten, we head up the road an hour to my father's hometown. There we meet my uncle and drive to my aunt's new house. My dad performs the wedding on their back porch and we have a big picnic. I get to see my cousins in various stages of starting their own families: my eldest cousin is married with a daughter, my next cousin has a daughter but is not married, and my next cousin is engaged with no children. And then there is Meredith, who is moving back in with her parents.
Day 6
We visit my great-aunt and -uncle in the morning. We marvel over their restored WWII radio and hear stories about the Depression. Actually pretty cool. My dad pores over family tree paraphernalia with my great-aunt; my great-uncle succumbs to the urge the rest of us are fighting and promptly falls asleep. We meet my aunts and uncles again for lunch and later catch up with some other friends of the family (read: friends of the parents) in the area. We resume our quest to patronize every Cracker Barrel on the lower east coast. We stop someplace in Georgia.
Day 7
We have nothing to do today besides go home. Books on CD from Cracker Barrel keep our stir-crazy selves effectively sedated. After having amassed an impressive collection of splattered bugs on the windshield, we finally make it back to DC. Next time I'm flying.