Posts tagged ‘road trip’

A Homestead Weekend

31 July, 2016 | | No Comment

So there we were, once again on the open road, driving into a cloudbank from hell. The rains that we drove through that Thursday in June killed 20 people, destroying homes and families alike. The weather is capricious – many people were devastated, while the biggest impact to us was a cleaner car, proving that there is no justice to be found in this world.    It also resulted in a more full hotel, but we would only find that out later.

We were driving into the Homestead, which bills itself as the oldest resort in the country and has the provenance – and sense of antiquity – to back it up.  view2Celebrating 250 years in business this year, it boasts 15,000 acres of fields and forests, with activities ranging from wading and swimming pools to hot springs and warm springs where Thomas Jefferson used to “take the waters” for his health and welfare, from horseback riding and falconry to archery and skeet, from hiking the gorge to just sitting back on the veranda and watching the world go by.  Sitting, typing this from the veranda, I present my view.

I can easily imagine my friend Mark Twain sitting on this same veranda. Mind you, this particular building wasn’t completed until the 1920s, so he certainly didn’t, but he would have enjoyed it.

Thursday dinner was at their Casino restaurant, with a table that couldn’t stop moving.  While the table was loose from the base, and the base was not stable on the floor, we still knew it was actually the Reigning Queen of Pink causing our dinners to bounce – the table was rocking in rhythm. Any of the rest of us and it would have been rocking asymmetrically; with her at the helm, our dinners were executing a perfect sine wave.  The restaurant at the Casino (which turns out of be a word used in its original meaning, which has to do with indoor sports and has nothing, to my regret, to do with gambling) had a small army of staff milling about, which was odd because none of them seemed to be able to find our table.  I mean, the movement might have been throwing them off, but still.

fireworksAs the Homestead is celebrating 250 in business this year, they are setting off fireworks each Friday in the summer.  To further commemorate this 250th anniversary, they’re serving a different cake every day of the year, in the lobby with tea from 3-4pm.  Friday’s was lemon blueberry – most excellent! I can’t imagine more than about 100 ways to do cake; hats off to their chef.

Prom_King_and_QueenSpeaking of Anniversaries: allow me to digress a moment on the reason for the trip. My parents this June celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. The same month saw my mother turn 70 a few days later.  They are amazing!  (For those of you doing the math at home, yes, my father plays up the fact that she was a teen-aged bride.)

My father, having been a math major, added 50 with 70 and declared it a 120 celebration – and celebrate we did, with them and the Very Clever Aunt and Her Michael. We are, at least on my side, new to the “resort” scene. In this case, certainly, I could get used to this in a hurry.

Friday we were joined by the aforementioned Very Clever Aunt and Her Michael; dinner was at Jefferson’s.  There any number of amazing restaurants at the Homestead, plus four bars.  In point of fact, dinner was preceded by drinks with Kipling, who went out of his way to ensure that we had excellent seating and an excellent time.  Jefferson’s was a great dinner; I enjoyed braised lamb to die for with gnocchi and sage.  One of the funniest bits was actually a few hours before dinner; I got a call from the restaurant confirming our dinner reservations – they had meant to reach my father.  I decided that I might not be “the” Lang, but I was “a” Lang, and I was qualified to confirm our reservation.  The RQOP, who’s first name starts begins the alphabet, stepped out of the shadows and announced that no, SHE was “A. Lang,” by god.  I stood corrected, but I confirmed the reservations anyway.

nomsFollowing dinner and the fireworks, we retired to the Very Clever Grandparent’s room.  We had all been carefully instructed: “no presents.”  We decided that “no presents” didn’t count if the presents were consumable and stood a good chance of not leaving the grounds.

During the course of the trip, I posted a postcard or two – and found a wonder. I have always wanted to drop a letter into one of those old-fashioned “mail your letters here in this box on the wall” boxes; the old Cutler Mailing System letterboxes.   mailboxAs a former letter carrier, those things were cool – a blend of art and function, usually with old art-deco styling to them.  I doublechecked first, since many times you see them and they’re no longer being serviced or checked on, but the Homestead confirmed that theirs is still in use, and if you’re on the upper floor, you can still drop your letter in the upper box and it will slide into this one.

This town is small enough that the post office closes before noon on Saturday, and the Homestead doesn’t bother – so any mail that misses on Friday will go out Monday.  I am perhaps irrationally excited to have mailed things from a Cutler box.

The next day dawning bright and clear, we hiked the Cascades Gorge. That sounds simple, but it isn’t.  The reason it isn’t is named Brian La Fountain, who is the funniest, most well informed, most energetic, most passionate tour guide I have ever encountered. Number One Son, who does NOT want to go outside much, not only expounded on his appreciation for the hike, but gave Brian a hug – a rare compliment from a 16-yr-old boy.

falls2The hike itself was amazing. I shall include only a sample of the views, because if I posted all the pictures I took, this post would take more time to load than we took hiking the gorge.

Brian explained a dozen things in a dozen ways, and did so while keeping up a running patter of puns and jokes that jollied even my jaded children into enjoying themselves. He is a terrific guide; making sure people can hear him, making sure we understood the rules and their reasons. falls1I also noticed his quiet attention to the details that he didn’t talk about – he was very careful about counting the group, making sure that everyone was keeping up and doing OK with climbing over the wet bridges and steeper rocks, without making it at all obvious that he was doing so: The mark of a great guide is that you don’t see the attention he’s paying. He’s a great guide. He also has a gift for stand-up comedy to rival Leno.  He told us only one lie: He said he was 50 years old.  No one with his exuberance, good looks, and joy de vivre could be so old.

treeballsThe interesting views of nature are not limited to the gorge, however.  Right outside our door was a tree.  Well, a few dozen trees, really, but one of them stood out – most trees, growing as they do straight up and tall, have a somewhat phallic look to them anyway.  Very few have the balls to show for it, though.  (The Human Tape Recorder decided this one much be named Johnny One-Nut.)  The most embarrassing bit is that I took the picture, then sent it in a text to a good friend, female type.

BUMD:  Tree balls – bigger than I thought they’d be!
Her:  Wow that’s an interesting tree.  That protrusion looks quite phallic.
BUMD: Oh my god, I’m sending you deciduous dick pics. I’m so busted!

So, I’ve joined the ranks of the Bros who send dick pics.  I feel so basic!

indoor_poolIn addition to the amazing nature scenes, there are outdoor pools and spas and springs, plus there’s an indoor pool – in case it’s raining, or you’re just feeling indoorsy.  And when I say indoor pool, I mean This Is What I Want My Basement To Look Like.   Is that too much to ask?  This pool is larger than my house and would have made the Romans proud.  One of the best parts of swimming was seeing Her Michael’s tattoo: It says “#FFFFFF TRASH” – which is funny on a lot of levels, not least that it’s only supported by Netscape 5.0 these days.

We had a terrific time all around.  SOBUMD and I were instructed on our golf swings, the girls went horseback riding with FOBUMD, and the ladies took in the wonders of the Spa.  We all wound up in the outdoor pool (of course it has a bar, why do you ask?) at one point or another, complete with its massive water slides.  Canoeing, however, was cancelled due to the torrential rains that we’d driven through – a good call on the part of the Homestead.  There was a delightful dinner at a grill named after Sam Snead, who is famous in the golf world and called this town home.  linda_remingtonOn top of all that, I was very lucky and, with 5 minutes to spare, had the  chance to satisfy a life-long interest in falconry with Remington, the Harris Hawk.

Falconry is fascinating.  It turns out that while much falconry is in fact accomplished with falcons, much more is done with hawks here in the United States.  The Homestead has many birds and trainers; I was introduced to Linda – and Remington.  You need 2 and half years of training apprenticeship to receive a falconry license in the US.  Linda names some of her birds, such as Remington, after guns – because as far as the US fish and wildlife department is concerned, in her hands, that’s a lethal hunting weapon.  remington1This is somewhat incongruous considering that you need practically nothing to own an actual Remington.

Wearing the gauntlet, I had Remington land on my hand and then, with a slight flick of the wrist, sent her aloft again, on her way to the nearby roof.  Despite a wingspan of close to 3 feet, she weighs only slightly more than 2 pounds – and can fly through any opening wider than her chestplate.  Linda had her demonstrate this by standing us increasing close together and convincing her to fly between us – impressively nearly knocking my phone from my hand in the process.  I was wing-whacked a few times – it was an experience I’ve thought about for more than 40 years, and I was thrilled.

boyThat evening was the last, and as fitting of a final dinner at such a place and to commemorate such a 120 celebration, dinner was in the formal dining room.  If you’re picturing something from Downton Abby, you’re not too far wrong.  We dressed, we all dressed.  Even those of us who do not, as a rule, dress for dinner, dressed.

That’s right – the kids cleaned up.  Even Number One Son, who looks slightly like Kramer from Seinfeld in this picture.  Glamour seems to come more naturally to the girls.  girls I tend to wear business attire pretty much every weekday, so the whole business of getting dressed up wasn’t as traumatic for me as it was for Number One Son – he dressed for the ages, for one of the most formal events of his young life.  I dressed for a Tuesday.  Hardly seems fair, really.  Also, the Very Clever Aunt and Her Michael were not exempt from this!  While the caption over their heads states “Birds of North America,” they are from Baltimore, and so technically I think this is a picture of Orioles.jani_michael

The dinner was sumptuous, with live music, yummy wine, appetizers, and dancing – until SOBUMD took her first bite of her dinner and had an anaphylactic reaction to something in the sauce. She’s highly allergic to cinnamon, and while the staff didn’t think there was any in the dish, there must have been something close enough to it.  She had been looking forward to that plate since before we’d arrived, so not being able to eat it was killing her – unfortunately very nearly literally; it took me 20 minutes to get her back to the room, along with several hits from her emergency inhaler and enough Benadryl to stop a horse.  (She decided against the epi-pen only because that would have involved an ambulance ride to the nearest ER, and the Benadryl and inhalers were starting to kick in – along with not wanting to further complicate the evening.)   The rest of the crew was able to finish dinner (although the prime rib evidently got the better of Number One Son), and we all made it to our respective beds.  Luckily, we all woke in the morning as well.

backdoorI woke early and took a few pre-dawn pictures of the place for posterity, to compliment the pictures of the previous evenings.  The building is too large for any one picture; these only just begin to provide a sense of scale.  There are nearly 500 rooms, all of which were full while we were there – largely because The Greenbriar, firepitwhich is only a few dozen miles away, had flooded in the recent rains and sent a lot of its overflow to The Homestead.  Our building itself had taken some water, but nothing compared to the devastation around us.  The wet grounds provided morning fog for the sun to burn through, the kind that armature photographers love.

Eventually the sunrise did what it always does to such times, and it was time be under way, back to the open road, and home.  We returned to our lives feeling like Muggles, bereft of the magic words that had sustained us for the past days:  “Please charge this to room 7155.”   It turns out that doesn’t work at my local grocery store at all.  We also missed the whole concept of having cocktails served before going through for dinner.  mistysunriseThis is an inherently civilized thing to do.  If I could have brought the redoubtable Kipling home with us, I would have.

The after action report on the 120 celebration and the Homestead Weekend was best summed up in an email exchange between FOBUMD, who organized and funded the entire trip, and the rest of us.  A few days after we arrived home and became reacquainted with our more usual standard of living, he sent the entire party a note thanking us for celebrating with them.

For a change, I was speechless.  The English language doesn’t have a lot of good words to convey the sense of appreciation we felt, but I was reminded of FOBUMD’s description of an evening he spent, years ago, with his brother George. “A brother is someone who picks you up in the rain with little notice, takes you home, stays up past 2 am while you talk and finish all his Scotch, then drives you back to the airport in the morning and says ‘Great to see you’ – and means it!”

2dad_julesA father, to continue this example, is someone who celebrates a set of anniversaries and birthdays by taking the whole family to an amazing resort, coordinates specific activities for specific people, makes sure the logistics are so seamless as to be invisible, pays for it all, and then thanks US for coming – and means it.

He concluded that we have the best family in the world, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree.  We’re looking forward to the 100th anniversary!

 

 

 

A Bavarian Weekend Story

26 May, 2016 | | No Comment

“I’ve lost the bride.”

There may be no words in the English language more terrifying, more fraught with angst than those. (Well, possibly a sign stating “Sorry out of coffee” in a diner window, but that’s a story for another time, and besides, they’re closed.)

Let’s look at these four words.

I’ve – It’s personal, and it’s past tense. This is something I did, something I have done and cannot undo.
Lost – The absence of a thing, the lack, with the understanding that it’s something I had at one point, but have no longer.
The Bride – Sheer. Unadulterated. Terror.

These are the words SOBUMD and I heard a high-heeled, gown-wrapped woman utter as we walked past her into the Bavarian Inn last weekend for our Anniversary. I, luckily, have never lost the bride. It’s been 25 years since we held hands and jumped over my sword, and while I haven’t misplaced her yet, we decided to get lost for the weekend to celebrate.

The Bavarian Inn, should you find yourself in Shepherdstown, WVa, has all the amenities you could want from a getaway spot: rooms for sleeping, fireplaces, rooms for formal eating, rooms for less formal eating, swimming pools, and a view of the great Potomac River that could inspire poetry, or at least that kind of “huh, wouldja lookit that” sigh that passes for poetry among most folk these days. There was even a decent-sized hedge pig just outside our balcony, rooting among the flowers and the hedge, having a grand old time.

Bavarian View

Potomac River

Since we were only there for an overnight, we decided to maximize our time and headed straight for the pool – despite the 50-degree weather and the on-again off-again drizzling blatter of the rain. It couldn’t really even be called rain, truly – a heavy cool mist that couldn’t make up its mind to piss down or just piss off and let the sun through. It certainly wasn’t going to prevent us from getting into the mostly heated pool, the infinity edge of which appeared to drop off as a sheer cliff face to the curving bend of the Potomac River, 200 feet or more below us.

The view was wonderful, the water was warmer than the air around us – albeit not by a wide margin, but warm enough to get in and float around. After all, this was our own private pool! I realized that it wasn’t really our own private pool, but it seemed that way since we had it all to ourselves. We paddled and splashed our way to the edge, enjoying the vertiginous sight of the mighty river below, pondering the story arc of the past 25 years and contemplating the arc of the next 25, dreaming of the stories we will write together.

Paddling around the pool at the Bavarian Inn recalled for me a different story, one told by David Niven in his autobiography “The Moon’s a Balloon.” He recounts a chilling tale of Bavarian skiing one day, years ago before modern ski equipment, and mentions that he “suddenly felt coldest where he should have felt warmest,” if you get his drift. He got down the mountain as best as he could, and went straight to his friends and the doctor at the lodge, concerned about frostbite in a place most men should NEVER be concerned about frostbite. The consensus was that he should warm the afflicted appendage in an alcohol solution, and so a (presumably inexpensive) brandy was poured for him in a (presumably large) brandy snifter – which he then carried gingerly into the men’s room. He stood in front of a urinal, his chilly willy dunked in the drink, thinking about the horrors of amputation and reconsidering his recreational hobbies, when a casual acquaintance entered the room and took up arms at the urinal next to his. He glanced over.

“My God! David, what are you doing?”

Being David Niven had its advantages. His immediate reply was, “Why, I’m pissing in a brandy snifter. I always do.”

So there I was, hand in hand with SOBUMD, watching the river flow under the trees playing hide and seek with the mists and the rain, when David Niven’s story came rushing back to me as a kind of satori of embarrassment. One of the downsides of having a very new bathing suit is that one could forget that this new one might happen to have a zipper.

No brandy snifters were required, but I was quite glad to have realized my condition before our reverie was interrupted by six basic bros, all of whom had brought their beers with them, and most of whom might have been muttering things about lost brides. None of them looked particularly put out, and so I have to assume the erstwhile groom was not among them. (If he was with them, I will assume the wedding hadn’t been entirely his idea.)

SOBUMD and I headed back to our fireplace and changed for dinner, which was sumptuous, as was breakfast the following morning. The weekend was topped off with a stop at a small Shepherdstown Bookstore that was large enough to hold the secret of a long and happy marriage:  There, among all the stories on the shelves, you can get lost together or separately – but tucked in between the poetry, the biographies, the fiction, and the cookbooks, there’s always something for everyone, and your story never ends.

Just don’t lose the bride!

You and I Remember New Jersey Very Differently

23 April, 2015 | | No Comment

So there we were, once again on the road home, when it all went to hell – that’s right, somebody had to pee.

It all started, like most weekends do, on the previous Wednesday, when SOBUMD took the Reigning Queen of Pink to Baltimore to see Wicked on the Baltimore version of Broadway. I stayed home and hung out with Number One Son and the Human Tape Recorder, and by hung out I mean mostly they ignored me, which is about par for the course at 14 and 16 years old, I suppose. As the RQoP and SOBUMD returned from their sojourn, we started packing in earnest for the trip to New Jersey for Easter. We hadn’t been up to see family in far too long, and it was time to cross state lines, nail some beers, and resurrect relationships – all the trappings of Easter, without the suffering. Some say you can’t really have Easter without suffering, but we were willing to forego full verisimilitude for the sake of skipping the whole agony bit.

The universe, of course, had different plans, but we didn’t know that as we packed.

Saturday morning saw us with wheels up at Oh-Dark Thirty, which was in reality about “Oh it’s getting pretty light out at Six AM.”

The gods of the highways were with us that morning, and we were well under way before the sun was up in earnest. (People in Ernest, PA, are probably pretty tired of hearing about things happening in their town from the rest of us.) We made NJ by 1030, stopping once in PA for the chance to pay FAR TOO MUCH for gasoline, or, as SOBUMD put it, “support the local economy.” Once there, hugs and hellos unfolded into lunches and dinners, which were interspersed with opportunities to acquire beer. Beer was acquired along with marshmallows, and the evening devolved wonderfully with a fire, conveniently contained in a fire pit, and the roasting of marshmallows, buns, bunions, and booties. I left the firepit once I realized that not only was I the only Big Ugly Man Doll there, but I was in fact the only man there at all – I ran like the coward I am, and left the fire to its feminine fate. Therefore I only heard about the sautéed bunions after the fact, but I’m reliably told that booties were shaken and bunions were toasted. Only the fire pit knows for sure, and it’s not talking.

Easter Sunday dawned with promises of miracles, and we were not disappointed. There is a Muslim guy in New Jersey making bagels, and he’s open Easter Sunday with nice, fresh, hot, Jersey bagels – the kind you can get in New York, but not here where I live here in Va. We’re too far south of the Mason Dixon to get a decent bagel, and too far north to get decent BBQ. It’s a culinary purgatory – I have to assume I was a bad chef in a past life. Anyway, we jump at the chance to get *real* bagels when we travel north. These were wonderful!

Driving home from NJ, we stopped at the Clara Barton Memorial Rest Stop, which is clearly owned and operated by Cinnibon, to pee, and the fans blowing the scent of cinnamon were at full blast. (Note: I’m sure if Clara Barton were to come back to life and tour the NJ Turnpike, she’d be horrified to find out someone named some nasty turnpike piss pass and drop stop after her. “What the heck is this? This place is filthy! Get a mop, and take my damn name off that sign! Why did you name this crap after me? Susan B. Anthony got a damn dollar and all you could manage for me was filthy gas station restroom on the Turnpike?”) Anyway, we got back in the car, SOBUMD started driving down the road, and in about 10 minutes she was coughing. And coughing. And more coughing. Eventually I looked at her and asked if she wanted me to drive. Nods head. “Can you talk?” Shakes head. We switched drivers on the left shoulder of I-95, always fun, and I pulled us over at the next exit. She sat there sucking for air with an anaphylactic asthma attack until she could breathe enough to swallow a bit of water and get 3 Benadryl down. 2-3 more minutes and I’d’ve stuck her with the epi-pen. Got the rest of the way home by midnight; took her to the urgent care folks the next day, since she still couldn’t take a full breath, where they said “You don’t have an inhaler? Now you do; tape it to the epi-pen and carry both at all times.” So she’s back to breathing again.

All three kids were pretty much silent the rest of the way home – they were pretty freaked out at the thought that she might die there. I didn’t think she’d die, but I was unsure enough that I pulled us in front of a place called the “Country Pride Restaurant” instead of the Subway, which was next door. I figured if she *did* die, I wouldn’t want them reminded of it every time they passed a Subway. Too many of them. I told SOBUMD my thinking on this later; she laughed. She also gave me the finger, but at least she laughed.

As my aunt used to say, another Easter shot to hell.

Come Fly With Me!

15 August, 2013 | | 2 Comments

I know, it’s been too long, and I’ve missed you too – but you can’t have a triumphant return if you don’t take some time to gather your mojo now and then.

Besides, today is an auspicious day.  21 years ago today, SOBUMD and I stood up in a church in front of family and friends and made promises until death did us part, and to our surprise no one said anything when the priest asked the crowd, “If anyone feels that this marriage is not in the best interests of baseball, speak now or forever hold your piece.”  At 21 years, our marriage can now go pick up beer at 7-11, but it looks so young that it would still get carded.

But rather than reminisce on the last 21 years, I’m going to focus on the last 4 days.  To commemorate those blessed nuptial celebrations, we woke up before the crack of dawn this past Sunday and drove to North Carolina’s Outer Banks – wheels up at 0430, and as Adrian Cronauer said, the “0” stands for “Oh my God, it’s early.”  We were packed and loaded for bear, by which I mean I managed to bring 4 different pairs of shoes, because I’m a girl.

Driving pell-mell down the coast in the gathering sunrise, stopping only to fill the car’s tank and empty our own, we made Stack ‘Em High pancake house by 0900 – good time by any measure.   It turns out I can’t stack ’em as high as I used to, but I still put a respectable dent in my hotcakes.  Pancakes were followed by finding the hotel, and since we couldn’t check into our rooms until four, we used their access to the beach and headed for the open water – stopping first to apply sunscreen in greater or lessor amounts.   Everyone enjoyed the beach, including myself and Number One Son, who is starting to be old enough to notice that some of the bodies on the beach make grown men think of wardrobe malfunctions, and prison terms.  We enjoyed the beach for several hours, by which I mean the Human Tape Recorder and I went out and got lunch and brought it back to the beach, and we hung out until we could check in.  Lunch, for those scoring at home, was from a place called Ten 0 Six, which was great – nice people, good food, neat local art for sale on the walls.

But I’ll skip to the lesson here – the kids burned. Well, that’s not wholly true. Number One Son burned. The Reigning Queen of Pink didn’t burn so much as boil.  (Note to self: do not let small pale pink things apply their own sunscreen.)  Of course, once applied and everyone was frolicking happily in the surf, no one gave it another thought – we HAD applied sunscreen, pretty liberally, all over, after all.   The Human Tape Recorder is in pretty good shape; she got a little pink but not too burned.  Number One Son’s nose is a study in epidermal conflagration, and the RQoP has blisters on her cheeks and chin.   The only positive here is that neither of them will ever again question anyone telling them to put on more sunscreen.  To say that we feel terrible would be gross understatement.

Dinner was a quick jaunt to Armstrong’s Seafood, which boasts a few tables, a big local fish selection, and a waiter who could get a smile out of a burnt prune.  The food was good, plus they had Black Radish beer, from my beloved Weeping Radish brewery – a taste I’d been missing for the past 14 years or so, that being how long it had been since we’d gotten to the Banks.  We hit a Brew Thru on the way back to the hotel, mostly because the kids didn’t believe us that there were places like that, and got to watch a particularly amazing lightning show from a large storm just north of us.  The storm had no chance of keeping us awake, however.

A little after 3 am, though, I woke up enough to step out onto the balcony of the hotel, facing the Atlantic, and looked out at the waves.  That being the prime night for the Perseids meteor shower, I was graced with the spectacle of distant lightning from the receding storm, the pounding surf, and a couple of shooting stars, all displayed for my viewing pleasure.  It was amazing, and I was asleep again inside 5 minutes.

Breakfast found us at Bob’s Grill (motto: Eat and Get the Hell Out!), and should you find yourself in Nags Head, you should find Bob’s as well.  Great food fast and a very friendly staff, motto notwithstanding.  Since the order of the day was to try to stay out of the sun, we found things to do that were not the beach – to wit, the Wright Brother’s Memorial.

The Doors of the Wright Brothers Memorial

The Doors of the Wright Brothers Memorial

There is a bowl on the top of the memorial that at times holds a marine beacon like those used in lighthouses.  The beacon wasn’t there when we saw it, making it look like there was a large salad bowl on top of 1200 tons of granite. There is also a set of doors, wonderfully wrought with stylized images of the conquest of the air.   There is no information anywhere to suggest what might be inside this vault, leading one to all sorts of dreadful speculation about what horrors it could hold, and wondering if the bowl on top were to be filled with the blood of human sacrifices, would some creeping eldritch terror from the dawn of flight come flapping out of the vault below to consume all the Piper Cubs in the world?

On December 17, 1903, Wilbur flew for 59 seconds.  His girlfriend back in Dayton, on hearing the news, was heard to remark: “59 seconds? Sounds about right.”  But the memorial does make you think about a world where flight was impossible in one decade and routine the next.  In 1903, the trip from Kitty Hawk to Dayton took 7 days.  This can now be made in less than 11 hours by car, and flown in several hours less than that.  There was a small piece of the Kitty Hawk plane that went up to the moon and back with Neil Armstrong.  As a nation – heck, as a species – we went from the standing on the ground wondering how the hell birds did that, to the surface of the Moon, in just 66 years. That is more technological advancement in the space of a human life than there was in any other two thirds of any century, ever.

SOBUMD at the top of Hatteras

SOBUMD at the top of Hatteras

I’ve decided the Outer Banks is a magnet for engineers.  Proving this, our next stop was the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.  I took a quick picture of SOBUMD at the top of it, and she remarked that it had been 17 years since I’d taken her picture there.  I told her that I’d never taken her picture there.  It took her a minute to remember that the lighthouse had been picked up and moved 2900 feet west in 1999.   I mean, sure, it was going to be eaten by the ocean, but that’s a fate that pretty much all of us are going to share eventually.  Who the hell just picks up and moves one and a quarter million bricks, stacked 187 feet high?  We do.  We’re crazy like that.   Since it’s mostly decorative in today’s age of GPS and lighthouse apps on the iPhone, you would think as long as they were moving it they could have made the damn thing a little shorter, or put in a lift while they were at it.  All this engineering magic and I still have to haul my ass up 257 stairs?  Sheesh.

We got back down again and headed for the hotel, and some rest.  By rest, I mean that 257 stairs notwithstanding, the HTR and I still took our pet kite (Joe) for a walk on the beach – if you can’t fly a kite at Kitty Hawk, you can’t fly a kite at all.  Joe the kite went up easy, and I tied him to my belt.  If you think having a kite 200 feet in the air tied to your belt would look odd, you’re pretty much right – it looks just as odd as you think it does.   We returned in time for – you guessed it – more walking, this time to the Red Drum Taphouse for dinner.

Here’s a neat thing about walking to a restaurant for dinner – if you get there and the wait is 40 minutes, you’re still going to stay and wait, because you’re not walking back.  With the magic of the hat, and a few well placed “wow, these kids are troopers to have walked here” comments, a 40 minute wait suddenly became 10 minutes, for which I am eternally grateful.  In addition to good food, the waitress at the Red Drum also had a sense of humor about the name of the place – you can’t tell me people don’t pronounce it “Redrum!” all the time.  I understand the head chef is a guy named Dick Hallorann. Walking back to the hotel proved worth the effort, as the last of the Perseids fired a few shooting stars overhead, and we made one last stop on the beach to watch them before bed.

Obligatory Sunrise Picture

Obligatory Sunrise Picture

The following morning rose with the dawn, and the HTR and I took Joe the Kite’s sister Betty the Kite to the beach, early.  If you can’t fly a kite on the Kitty Hawk beach, it could be the lack of wind, but we decided that Betty the kite is afraid of heights.  After a few dips and dives, first by the kite and then by us, we headed back to check out and find some Duck Donuts, which are every bit as good as you think they are.  The lemon icing is particularly amazing, and the coffee’s worth the wait by itself.

A Very Pink Horse

A Very Pink Horse

We made a few stops along the way out, first to pose the RQoP next to a horse even more pink than she is, with wings, of course, because what’s the point of a horse that can’t fly on Kitty Hawk, and then on to Kitty Hawk Kites, to find a new kite who might serve as a therapist for the clearly neurotic Betty.

It began to rain as we left, proving that even the weather was sad to see us leaving.  SOBUMD got her final island wish granted as we headed west over the Wright Memorial Bridge to the mainland, as a large pod of dolphins broke the water to frolic and wave farewell to us, with a flashes of fins and something that sounded suspiciously like, “So long, and thanks…”

If the island was weeping for our leaving, it could only have been weeping like the Radish weeps for my tasty beer at the Weeping Radish.  I’m not much for lagers, but the Black Radish is one of the best.   The best part of that stop was that I was the only one to eat the sauerkraut, unlike the last time we were there, 14 years ago, when we fed it to the baby, who loved it.  Driving home 2 hours later, we had the windows down and tears in our eyes, and we didn’t love it quite so much.

But all good things come to an end, and thus our trip started as it began, later in the day but with the mighty tires still turning the earth beneath us, bending the planet around to where we wanted it to be.  It is interesting to me that two of the best known tire brands are called Bridgestone and Firestone.  What’s with that whole “stone” thing?  We haven’t made tires out of stone in thousands of years, or at least since the invention of the bumper sticker.   Despite bumper stickers being the main source of idea sharing in America these days, there were only two notable bumper stickers from the road trip home:  One that said “If you’re going to ride my ass, at least pull my hair,” and another that boasted “This car is running on clean, renewable bacon.”  Now THAT’s engineering!

And so today, as SOBUMD and I celebrate 21 years of church-sanctioned Hey Hey, I bid you, gentle reader, Hello Again.  Inspired by the Wright brothers, I’ll try to keep this thing off the ground a little more this year.

 

Chicago and Back

11 December, 2012 | | 3 Comments
Driving Into Chicago

Driving Into Chicago

Sorry about that, long week.  To resume the narrative:

So there we were in Chicago, once again in the city with the broad shoulders and the many superlative encased meats.  We got there in time for lunch, which was a pilgrimage to Gene and Jude’s Hot Dogs.  Voted “the best Hog Dog in the Nation” in more than one tally, we had to get there.  Luckily, the Very Clever Grandfather knew exactly where it was, since he used to go there when he worked in his father’s machine shop – Georges’ Screw Machines was just down the way.  Like the Dalai Lama, I always want them to make me one with everything, and they did.  Oh, yes they did.

Georges' Screw Machine Products

Georges’ Screw Machine Products

The fries go on your dog, in your bun, all over the place.  The onions, the relish, the peppers – and just a damn good hot dog.  There’s a reason these things beat out – barely – Hot Doug’s Hot Dogs.  Plus the fries were outstanding.  After satisfying our curiosities and our tastebuds, we took a detour on the trip back and drove past the machine shop.  It was sold a number of years ago, but to our surprise and delight the new owners left the old sign out in front.  Pretty cool. 

The following day dawned slowly, with a trip to lunch at the aforementioned Hot Doug’s Hot Dogs.  The line was as brisk as the wind – a little more than a half an hour wait, around the block in the cold.  By the time we made it to the front door, a glance behind us revealed that those just joining the line would wait longer than we had – always a gratifying feeling, no matter how small and shallow a person I try not to be. 

Hot Doug's Hot Dogs

Hot Doug’s Hot Dogs

Couldn’t blame them – Friday and Saturday are Duck Fat Fries day.  Speaking of duck, what did I have?  I had a “hot dog” – except that this hot dog was a duck and cognac sausage topped with foie gras.  I also had a more regular dog, but the things that guy can do with encased meats – I have to wonder if he’s actually stolen the elder wand.  No – with the fries done in duck fat, I’m sure he’s stolen the elder wand, because those are magic.

Following our excursion of gustatory delights, we wended and wobbled our way to our friends’ Myke and Marcy’s house, where we were met with warmth, joy, love, and also tequila.  The Human Tape Recorder is close with their older daughter, while the Reigning Queen of Pink is close with their younger.  Number One Son decided to remain close to his iPad on the couch – until he came up to find me and Myke, and discovered that my friend has a keyboard and monitor setup that most hard-core geeks only dream of.  The four monitors in a square on a pole impressed him – that he could mouse through them all at once impressed him.  That one of them was an Apple and the others were WIntel impressed me – I’m still not sure how he managed that bit of magic.  Then he showed Number One Son his printer, and printed him a small replica of a Dalek from Dr. Who.

On the 3-D printer.

It took about 25 minutes, sure, but for Number One Son, they were life-changing minutes.  Myke pulled the Dalek from the printer when it was finished, snapped off the base, and handed it him.  “That’s it.  You are officially the coolest person I have ever met.”   I didn’t tell him, but I’ve felt the same way about Myke for a long time.  Number One Son has now decided that he has to learn Java and programming, as soon as he can.

Surprise Santa

Surprise Santa

Saturday dawned, wonderfully and well, and we prepared for the party with more hot dogs.  I’m kidding – wait, I’m not.  Lunch at another restaurant, but it was a chain, and the dogs were so-so at best.  Not going back.  Dinner, now, dinner was great – the entire and extended family was in wonderful attendance.  The Very Clever Grandfather put together a presentation of the first 95 years of the Queen Mother of Pink’s life in photos and presented it with military precision, interweaving music, humor, narrative, and hundreds of pictures to get the QMoP (and the rest of us) laughing her 95-yr-old butt off. You may have already drawn some conclusions about my family, but I’ll add to the mystique by telling you this:  the words “banana butt” were included in the narration.  With the noted military precision, the presentation concluded just as the food was brought out.  The festivities even included a surprise visit from Santa!  It was a surprise to all of us, since he had been in the restaurant for another gig and happened to wander in.  Welcome to parties with my family.

The Queens Of Pink

The Queens Of Pink

The list of the QMoP’s great-grandchildren has grown as well; my three lunatic children have been joined by the 1-yr-old Klayton and the newly-minted Stella by starlight, and we were excited to find that there’s a player to be named later due in June. It was also fantastic to see my cousins Dan and Amy and their families – Charlie, Owen, and Cameron.

We could have danced all night, but events conspired to have us up and on the road early the next morning, and so off we went, saying our sad goodbyes to beloved kith and kinfolk close and distant, near and far, and planning already for the centennial party 5 years hence.  The next morning came too early, as they always do, and we were off.

Driving to Chicago is great.  Drive 6 or 7 hours, find a hotel with a pool and a bar, lather, rinse, relax, repeat.  Driving home in a day, for 12 hours?  Not as much fun.  Why, then, would we do this?  I had jury duty the next day, of course. 

The Human Tape Recorder, being more dedicated than any other 14-yr-old I know, set up her command center in the back of the car, fired up my laptop with its cellular Internet connection, and worked on her homework for most of the ride.  The younger two alternated between Harry Potter and Indiana Jones movies, which kept them quiet and occupied for a good while.  SOBUMD and I took turns driving and staring out the window at the mist.

There’s a Football Hall of Fame, somewhere, which makes sense to me, since I know there’s a Baseball Hall of Fame.  Having now been to a genuine certified Hall of Fame, albeit for Rock and Roll, I find myself more attuned to signs pointing out this or that Hall of Fame.  So it was no surprise that I saw the sign, outside Notre Dame – there’s a (or probably more correctly, THE) College Football Hall of Fame there.  This makes, I suppose, some sense.  The Fighting Irish I’ve heard of, even if I can’t personally see a need for a hall of fame for college football. If you have to have one, though, right next to Knute Rockne’s last long pass sounds about right.  (“Let’s sell some Hall of Fame tickets for the Gipper!”)

Driving through Elkhart, though, I really had to wonder, when we passed the RV/MH Hall of Fame.  WTF, over? I guess I need to get out more.  I can’t imagine why, what, or how a Recreational Vehicle / Motorhome Hall of Fame could be necessary. “Look, babe, this is the actual motorhome couch where Ron Jeremy first came on the scene with his acting career!”  I wonder if they charge for admission.

I also noticed that Ohio was really trying to fix the color problem I mentioned in my first post.  They’re naming the rivers after colors now – I don’t remember this from the trip out.  We crossed both the Vermilion River and the Black River on the way out of Ohio.  I’m sure there’s an Ecru Creek and a Fuchsia Run around there somewhere.

Driving Out of Town was the Last Time We Saw The Sun

Driving Out of Town was the Last Time We Saw The Sun

If there is any greater joy in life than driving the Pennsylvania Turnpike, it has to be driving the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the dark, in the rain.  No, wait.  Let’s try it in the dark, but in that not-quite-rain that pisses down in an irritating mist, waiting not so much to land on your windshield as to land on the ground, in between the construction signs, and wait for the passing trucks and other motorists to spray it up onto your windshield as they go by.  This would cause you to turn on your wipers.  That’s assuming your wipers weren’t making that godawful SHRONK-HONK, SHRONK-HONK noise every goddamn time you flick them on, for 3 hours.  You can’t leave them on, because you’ll lose whatever remaining shred of sanity you have left, and you can’t leave them off, because you can’t see the damn road. 

What you can do, though, is stop at the Summit Diner.  We pulled off the Turnpike at something that approached dinner time and ate at a place so old, they had a menu item that we had to explain to the kids.  “Creamed chipped beef on toast?  Why is that called S.O.S.?”  Haven’t seen that on a menu in a while!  Neat place, good food.  If you’re ever near Somerset, PA, it’s worth the stop. 

If you’re us, of course, the Walmart down the street was worth the stop as well, carrying as they do windshield wipers.  Now, I’m as happy to boycott Wally-world as the next guy, but at 7 pm in kinda the middle of nowhere, in the rain, with the SHRONK-HONK of my wipers getting on my one remaining nerve, I was prepared to put my conscience in the glove box and set expediency on the dashboard, right next to my plastic Jesus and my shotgun.  SOBUMD ran in and came out a few minutes later with new wipers, plus a butt-cushion for my aging rear, which was an added bonus and tremendously appreciated in all quarters, particularly those of my hind.  I pulled under a handy, and closed, teller window drive-through with an awning at the nearest bank, and SOBUMD worked her windshield wiper magic, removing the old ones and installing the new, despite the cold, and the rain, and the dark.

In short minutes we were back on the Turnpike, the new wipers going full speed!  They sounded like this:  ___.  Right.  Isn’t that nice?  Yes.  The only issue now that they were silent was that they needed to be on full speed all the time, since they weren’t at all good at actually wiping the water from the windshield.  They were more like windshield damp sponges than windshield wipers.  There was some discussion of brand, and installation instructions, but neither the brand nor the instructions indicated that anything should be amiss. 

In about 5 minutes of hellish, wet, low-visibility Pennsylvania Turnpike driving, we hit a tunnel.  “Ah,” thought I, “a brief reprieve.”  I left the damn wipers on for a bit, for good measure.  It was dry, somewhat, in the tunnel.  It ended quickly, as tunnels will at those speeds, and as we hurtled out into the wet night, the formerly soundless new wipers ceased their silence and said, “THUMP-WHACK.  THUMP-WHACK.  THUMP-WHAA.  THUMP.  THUMP.” 

I’m regrettably familiar with what a wiper blade means when it says something like that – you could call me a wiper whisperer – and so I pulled over at the nearest “don’t pull over here unless you’re going to die” spot on the side of the Turnpike.  SOBUMD and I both got out and looked, and I pulled the remaining cover/guard off the left-side wiper and handed it to her.  The right-side cover/guard had worked itself off just past the tunnel.  The instructions didn’t mention them – they figured you could see the damn things.

Don’t install windshield wipers in the dark. 

Once free of the damn plastic covers, the windshield wipers worked great.  Visibility went up and noise went down until I was able to turn them off, crossing into Maryland.  (It only rains on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.)   From there on we made good time, pulling into our house a scant 12 hours after we’d left Chicago.   The road is long, the food is good, and the Queen Mother of Pink is 95 years old. 

Much love to all the wonderful family and friends who made the trip possible, and worthwhile – we’re looking forward to the next one.  Hey, we’ve even got new windshield wipers!