My vacation to the red states

Published 16 Aug 2005

Why is it that lately my vacations have been more about transportation than anything else?

I won’t go into detail about the pathetic flight situation on both ends of our trip. It should suffice to say that on the way there, we ended up being given $2000 worth of plane ticket vouchers on United, and on the way back we were given two free round-trip tickets on US Air. All this was basically for not being total assholes to the airport staff when we were told about the ridiculousness of the flight situation. My advice— be nice to people. You may end up with about 17 free plane tickets.

But back to the whole transportation thing— I’m pretty sure that about 90% of the time we weren’t on a plane, trying to get on a plane, or asleep, we were stuck in cars. I hate being in cars. I finally had a mini-meltdown over at Glenda’s about this today. I just don’t get the fascination.

We had to drive 3 hours from the Pittsburgh airport just to get to Brian’s family’s house. While there, one of the things we always do is take several drives up to the old family farm on the top of the mountain. I could live with this if we ever spent as much time out of the car at the farm as we do driving there and back. This time we took several other drives to see friends, cabins of friends, and other random stuff.

Once we got to Michigan, we had to drive all over the Detroit metro area to go to my aunt’s current house, my aunt’s new house, the restaurant my mom wanted to eat at, and the wedding which we were almost horribly late for. I’m talking hours in the car.

Anyway, I have had enough of deisel fumes and slight nausea from shitty roads to last me a lifetime.

On a lighter note, I did finally see the black bear up on the farm, which is a first for me. I will post a photo as soon as my suitcase gets here, which has my firewire cable in it. I think it is still in San Francisco. There were also more butterflies (both in diversity and number) than I have ever seen in one place before. It was amazing, and there are photos of some of them coming too. We also had a muskrat swim right up to us, so close I could see its whole little face and its bewildered expression. Unfortunately that happened too fast for a photo.

I also wrote half the article you’re all waiting for, so that should be coming soon.

Well, time to unwind with a margarita in the hot tub and spend some quality time with the kids. And by kids I mean of course Solstice Sue Marie Bob and Gypsy, aka Kitty G (who won’t sit for a portriat).

Filed under Miscellaneous, Personal