Back from a week in PA. An adventure for sure. Let’s see how well I can recap. It’s long.
Saturday – The car is packed to the gills but I manage to get it all in. We pull out at 5:15 AM, we drive all day until about 6:30 PM and arrive at Wilson, NC. We have dinner with Ali’s friend Sue, and her daughter Kaitlyn. We sit next to some high school kids that thought it was cute to make little comments when Kaitlyn was acting funny. I muttered about how I was going to reach over and strangle theses idiots if they don’t stop. I didn’t hear anything else afterward. The actual drive that day was fine, however once we got out of Florida and were surrounded by the typical barren greys and browns of winter, we both felt depression creeping in. Something I had not felt since my last PA winter. It was amazing how fast that feeling returned.
Sunday – We get up and enjoy the nice hotel provided continental breakfast and head out between 7:30 and 8:00 after a nice night in the hotel. I got to watch the Eagles beat up on the hapless Cowboys. We got from NC to PA in a quick 6 and a half hours. Our only mishap was hitting the Washington DC area right before the Skins game which resulted in sitting in a half hour traffic jam. We pulled into my mom’s at 2:30. It was in the 30’s. Quite a climate shock but oh well we would make the best of it. All of the gifts that we had sent up there were awaiting wrapping and we forgot to jam in our extra wrapping paper so my first duty was to head out to Redner’s and stock up. It felt so odd to be there again, not much seemed different but it sure felt strange to be back in the environment that I moved 1200 miles to get away from. My mom and sis showed up later and we had a nice night.
Monday – On Sunday night we noticed that our showers were rapidly losing hot water. Also the diverter in my mom’s tub was shooting 85% of the water right down the drain. The hot water heater had been replaced 8 months prior so there should not have been a problem. In true Mom fashion she worried about it all night and called UGI first thing at 6:30 am this morning since she has a service contract on it. They told her that someone would be out today but they could give no time estimates and that the rep would call before visiting. They said if noone answered they would assume that noone was home and would not come. My mom, Ali and Torrin already had a shopping trip planned so I said I would stay home and man the ship. While I was home I replaced the faucet so the diverter problem was fixed. But then I just hung out, and hung out. All day long I hung out. No call. Finally at 6 pm the guy shows up with no call. He looks at the heater, does a couple quick tests and says the heater is fine. So I wasted all day sitting there for nothing. The hot water was fine the rest of the week so I think the diverter issue may have been causing it to use the hot water faster than a normal shower would. Monday night we went up to Gary’s for a reunion/ Xmas/ MNF get together. I got drunk and had a good time. I miss the vball crew almost as much as my family. A good time to counteract the wasted day.
Tuesday – Christmas Eve. The weather forecast for Christmas still calls for snow but I don’t take it very seriously. We head over to my brother’s for Chrsitmas Eve dinner/lunch. My bro has a full fledged sports bar in his basement, it really is something to see. He has has neighbors over ALL the time and entertains more than I can believe. The food is great. We had a built in out cause we had to visit friends of ours that night. We had a brief visit and then headed home to see what Christmas would bring.
Wednesday – The big day. We woke up to snow covered cars but the roads were only wet. It looks like we dodged the bullet. It starts to rain and melt what little snow there was. However a quick glance at the weather channel said it will turn back to snow. Bah they are full of it. We begin the Christmas festivities. My brother and his wife are and hour and a half late. Ali and I opened our stuff ahead of them. My mom went super crazy buying gifts this year. She spent way too much but defended it by saying it may be the last time everyone is all together at the same time for xmas. By the time we were done opening, the snow had returned in earnest for awhile. It was big, wet snow that was coming down at a blizzard like rate. It was piling up fast. I decide it would be a good idea to take the Nissan on a quick test drive through Flying Hills to see how it handled in snow since it has never been in snow before. I made it around the loop but it was very tough. I wanted to try to back it in to the parking space but could not so I took it down around again since I couldn’t go any other direction. This time I got stuck coming up the small hill since I had no momentum. I tried multiple times with no luck. Finally I gave up and tried to back down. It was very hard to see. I heard something go under the car. I was stuck. I inadvertently backed over a concrete half circle thing that is used to keep cars off the grass. I desperately tried rocking it but it was hopeless. My brother was watching from the window and came down. We tried pushing but we just fell on our ass as it was too slippery to get footing. We wound up having to jack the car up and pull the concrete divider out by hand. So my bro and I took turns on our bellies in the wet, muddy mush pulling this out. What a mess. After removing it I finally could get out and took my car back down and around and parked it where it stayed. Obviously we couldnt use our car to go to my Dad’s so we all piled into my bro’s Suburban. Even with it’s 4wd and tank-like weight it had trouble. Several times we had to squeeze by downed trees that littered the road. We got to my Dad’s and he already had lost power. Being resourceful they prepared the dinner on top of their woodstove and out on his gas grill. 🙂 It was a good dinner and we had an enjoyable time. We called home and my mom still had power so all was good. My Dad took us home, however as we pulled into flying hills we saw a huge tree was across an intersection and there were no lights on, anywhere. My mom lost power 10 minutes before we got home. No wood stove there to provide heat. We decide to tough it out and bundle up. Surely the power would be back on soon. We went to sleep knowing this would be a Christmas we would remember forever.
Thursday – I woke up early and saw we still were dark. I valiantly decide I won’t let my family freeze so I head out to the local Home Depot and pick up a kerosene heater and all of the accesories. I decide to get the heater once I hear on the radio that power is out for 10’s of thousands of people and it may not be restored until Saturday. I return home with it but am greeted with skepticism of the intelligence of going to buy a heater when the power could come on at any minute. I agree to leave it in the box for awhile and see what happens. Around lunch we head out for a day with Alison’s family hoping power would be restored when we got back. In the meantime my bro came and snagged my mom and sis so they could stay with them. We got back around 8pm and still no power (or phones) Despite pleading from my mom to come over to my brother’s I said we would just start the heater and stay. I cracked the box and fired it up. It heated the place in no time. However, the power came back on during the night. 🙂 So I spent 150 bucks for 7 or 8 hours of heat, oh well. I told my mom to sell it.
Friday – Wow the week has gone fast. I haven’t gotten to see all the people I had planned to and we would be returning to Florida tomorrow. Well at least we had power. We had breakfast with Ali’s grandfather, Pop Pop. He is 89 but still very active. He is great. Later we went to see Lord of the Rings with my 2 sisters. A 3 hour flick and I had to piss for the last 2 hours but it still rocked. An AWESOME movie. Afterward my sis wanted to check out the mall for some after xmas deals. I agreed since she put up with my torment all week, it was the least I could do. The mall was a mob scene with no parking to be found. I finally found one in an unplowed spot. After an hour or two there I made a quick pit stop at Sov to pick up some routers to be used for my CCNA training and head home to pack. We went out for a nice dinner with my mom to California Bar and Grill. Shortly before we were ready to go, I hear a woman call my name, it is my Aunt and cousins. I haven’t seen them for years. It is amazing that we ran into them. We talked to them for awhile, exchanged contact info and headed out still amazed of the chance of that meeting. I loaded up the car, somehow it was fuller than when we came up. I set the alarm for 4:45 am. My mom was sad to see us go. As much as I hated the winter part of the trip I was very sad to leave everyone behind.
Saturday – We wake my mom and say goodbye, she is very sad. We are going to have her down around Easter. We pull out and wave goodbye to all the snow and ice. We get to Wilson NC in 6 hours and have lunch with Sue and Kaitlyn. We were makin great time. We entertain the idea of going straight thru since we are making such good time. The idea fades fast. After lunch we are swamped with a hoarde of snowbirds on route 95 that brings traffic to a standstill. We go through at least 30 miles of stop and go traffic. It was incredibly frustrating. While we sat I was trying to listen to the Eagles – Giant game on a broken up AM station. I barely made out “It’s good! Giants win in overtime!” Grrrrrrr. That made it even worse. In total we probably lost at least 2 hours of time just sitting in traffic. Later in the day we hit another very long delay. A cop had worked thru traffic in front of us so we figured it was a bad acccident. After almost 45 minutes we get up to the accident scene, it is on the other side of a divided highway!!!!! There was no accident on our side. The entire thing was a damn GAPER DELAY! ARRRRRGGHHHHHH. I am border line pyschotic at this point, driving Ali crazy with my incessant cursing. It was bad. She comforted me with the thought of staying at a nice hotel and getting a good night’s sleep. We decided to go till about 9 pm or 800 miles whatever came first. We hit 800 and pulled off at a Georgia exit that had a bunch of different hotels. We checked the first one. No rooms. Oh shucks that looked like a nice one too, guess we will try another, no rooms there either. Well we went through this routine at 4 or 5 more hotels off of 2 different exits, all full. At our 6th or 7th hotel they said no we don’t have rooms but the Howard Johnson just down the street does! Excited, we raced to the motel. It didn’t look great but it is a chain so how bad could it be? Ali ran in and then came out excited that they did indeed have rooms. We got out room card. Oddly it had the room number attached with a post-it note. We pulled around the back. The courtyard looked like a scene out of a murder movie. It was dark, one of the few lights was strobing creating a very erie effect. We got in the room and were greeted with a tub that was covered in lime, stained sheets, towels, pillows and blankets and state of the art 70’s furniture. A total dive. The tub was so gross Ali refused to take a shower. I decided to risk it. When I turned on the water, a brown gush and a dead fly came out. However, after a few minutes it cleared up. The hot water was barely hot enough to take a shower, you didn’t need to use the cold faucet at all. I took the fastest shower imagineable. We laid down on the bed only covered with one blanket that didn’t appear to have stains. Surprisingly, we slept straight through till our 4:45 alarm. Saturday was the worst travel expereince I can ever remember.
Sunday – The big day. The day we finally get home. We were quite motivated to get out of that shithole as well as being excited about the prospect of being home before lunch. Ali who normally is the walking dead in the morning, shot out of bed with me at 4:45 AM. We hit the road. We had no major problems on Sunday and made it from the Georgia/Florida state line to Naples in about 6 hours. It was sunny and upper 60’s in Naples. It felt great. We were relieved to be home to say the least.
So there ya go. If you made it through the whole thing that’s amazing. 🙂 A week we will not soon forget.