On the road again...

:::humming the familiar tune:::Oh, hi! Glad you could join me for yet another edition of my blog. Since I totally skipped out on yesterday's topic, it would be a really bad thing if I skip out on another one, especially two days in a row. So today's topic is "best/worst road trip". Now before I get into that, I just wanted to mention that in less than one week, we will be on the road to The Big Easy, The Crescent City, or insert your nickname of choice for New Orleans. Yes, the New Orleans Bowl is less than one week away. We are pretty much prepared:

Bowl tickets: $40 each ($85 total, including the handling charge)
Hotel room at the Hyatt: $69/night
Spending cash: $125 (hopefully enough to fill up our gas tank twice, eat cheap, and get back home with)

We are leaving 7 a.m. Tuesday, December 16, will probably arrive at our hotel around 1:30'ish, get checked in, get Michael all painted up and get geared up for the game, go to the pep rally outside the Superdome from 4 to 6 to congregate with fellow Tiger fans, go to the game at 6, be there 'til 9'ish, go back to the hotel (sorry, we're skipping out on the get-drunk-'til-you-pass-out down on Bourbon St.), get up the next morning and come back home, hopefully victorious. As always, I will have pictures when we get back.

But since that road trip has yet to take place, I will now tell about my best/worst trip. I have several that were quite memorable, but the one I remember to be the most eventful was the summer after my senior year of highschool, in 1998, my grandparents were planning a trip to Virginia to visit my aunt and her family, who happen to be my most favorite cousins in the world, Jonathan & Jared. Jonathan is a year younger than me, and Jared is 2 years younger than me, so we were best friends and spent all our summers together. Usually they came HERE for the summer, but this particular year, my grandparents were going to see them, and I asked them if I could go, and of course they said YES. Well, little did I know, my younger cousins, B.J. and Samantha, would be along for the ride, too. My grandparents are early risers, so they were at my house to pick me up at 6 a.m. and I had best be ready when they blew the horn in my driveway. So with one eye open, I lugged my stuff out to the car (a big silver Cadillac), crammed it all in the trunk, then opened the back door to get in, only to find B.J. & Samantha sprawled out across the back seat along with like a million beanie babies they had brought along. Great. Luckily they took the hint that I wasn't planning on making the trip as a hood ornament, so they shoved the beanie babies into a big garbage sack and I sat down in the driver's side of the car, B.J. sat in the middle, and Samantha sat on the passenger side. The sun is barely starting to rise at this hour, in case you've never seen 6 a.m., and we hit the road and headed for our destination. I had never been to Virginia before, so I had no idea how long the trip would be, so I was just along for the ride. Before we get to Nashville, I am ready to kill B.J. Now, imagine a 14-hour road trip in the back of a cadillac with an 8-year-old little boy with ADHD. Now get ready to feel like you want to jump out of the window with the car rolling down the interstate at 90+ mph. That is what I felt like. I was okay until he started digging through his backpack, I'm listening to my headphones/portable CD player, and OUCH!!! I get elbowed in the BOOB! B.J. was trying to tie his red bandana around his head and kept messing it up, so he kept trying to re-tie it, over and over again, to the point that I was in PAIN and so I snatched the bandana away from him and SAT on it so he couldn't have it. Then he kept begging me to let him have it back, to which I refused. Somehow or another he got interested in other stuff eventually. And then there were the frequent bathroom stops. B.J. must have had a bladder the size of a small bean. And who could have a roadtrip where kids are involved without the siblings (in this case, brother and sister) elbowing each other? I finally asked my grandpa to pull over so that I could sit between the two of them to keep them separated. One part I remember quite well though, one of the great parts about the trip...it was about the point where you are driving along I-40 and you cross into the Eastern time zone. There are lots of big hills (I think they are mountains, but I'm told they are big hills) and we all started singing "America the Beautiful", and it sounded GOOD. The song went so well with the scenery, it almost made me cry. Anyway, after 14 hours of a butt-numbing adventure, we were getting close. We were in the mountains of Virginia, the sun was setting, and I wrote this poem that described it. We were literally on the edge of our seats. I wish I'd had my digital camera at the time to take pictures of what I saw. We were on this dirt road, winding up this mountain, it was pretty steep, we were deep in the woods, and we finally made it to their house. Who cared that you couldn't breathe without getting a healthy inhalation of mosquitos and other unidentifiable insects? This was the great outdoors at its greatest. And my cousins LIVED here, right in the middle of it!! As soon as we unloaded everything, I made Jonathan and Jared take me out into the woods. We didn't stay out for long because it was getting dark, so we went back in the house and watched movies all night and laughed, and then I ended up having to spend the night in my whiney cousin Megan's room. She's a sweet girl, just whiney. I can't even tell you how many trips to Walmart we made. The nearest Walmart was about 30 miles away in Lynchburg, and my cousin Jonathan had just gotten his first car...not even sure what it was, other than he would say the radio in it cost $200 and the car came with it, lol. He would drive all slow past the house and as soon as we were out of eyesight, he would FLOOR it, and he would drive like this on a mountain road!!! It was quite the thrill ride. My aunt refused to let us go anywhere besides Walmart, so we got all mad at her, but we still had a blast just hanging out. We all loaded up in the car one day while we were up there and went to Appomatox (the place where Robert E. Lee surrendered in the Civil War). It was BEAUTIFUL out there. The grass, the sky, the mountains, the clouds, it was just a scene to remember. Almost creepy, too, to think that a Confederate ghost could tap on my shoulder at any moment. They also took me out on "the trail" while I was there. This was scary/fun/exciting/exhausting all at the same time. For one, they didn't tell me I'd have to climb this massive hill, nor did they tell me I'd be jumping creeks. I was crossing this one brook, I guess you could call it, and my foot slipped off a rock and I fell in. They got a kick out of it at least. Us city girls just weren't cut out for this country stuff. Anyway, when we finally had to leave to head home, I was really sad. I did get to visit them once more when they moved to North Carolina, and after that, I only saw them at my wedding, and then Jonathan was here right after Jacob was born, but other than that, I've not been able to hang out with them like we used to. And it's funny because when you are young like that, you think you will always keep in touch and always get to have fun times and make great memories, and then you grow up, have a family of your own, and realize there just isn't time for that kind of stuff anymore. We went from playing "army" as 6-year-olds to just goofing off, watching movies, and having heart-to-heart conversations about school and relationships. Who knew that we would move on and lose touch? But during that time I had with them, I thought it would always, always be like that. I guess it's a good thing, in a way, that no one ever told me that it wouldn't last forever, because if they had've, I don't think we would've had nearly as much fun.