Backlogs of Roadblogs

Yes, the blog updates are falling behind already. These things happen when you don’t have the internet connection you were expecting or counting on. I’m pointing at you, Red Roof Inns. Updates will now happen as connections and time allow.

Saturday was the second day of the "pre-trip" travel. We said our farewells to my folks and my brother (and their two cats). Mom presented us with a pair of Washington State grown apples. Our plan is to bring them back to their native home and perhaps find a nice orchard for them where they can be re-released into the wild. Run free, little leggless produce, run free...

Heather, Keith and I drove from Manchester, CT to Hornell, NY to spend a night with Heather’s parents. The route crossed Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York State and Pensylvania before cutting back into Hornell in the southwest part of New York. The drive itself was largely insignificant, to the extent that we never even got out of the car in Massachusetts. This, we’ve since realized, marks the only part of our trip in which we haven’t actually planted our feet on the soil of a state through which we passed (though we’d all been to Mass many times before). Even Pennsylvania got walked on, in the form of a gas station stop where all the locals looked like freaky X-files mutant people and they charged significantly more to pay with a credit card than cash.

Yes, I’ve defamed the good people of the fine State of Pennsylvania. Specifically the weird-ass inbred ones in some backwater woodshed community. I don’t feel particularly bad about it either. In fact, I will go further to say that dental hygiene is not actually "hokum quack hoodoo", and they really ought to be more open minded.

Somewhere along the way we stopped at an Arby’s for lunch. Middle of Nowhere, New York. Heather and I are ordering our sandwiches, Keith is waiting for his, and out of the blue the laws of statistical odds explode into a million little shards.

One of Keith’s old friends from college walks in the door with his wife. They’re just stopping in for luch while helping a friend move.

Keith did go to school in New York State, but it was in Pottsdam, roughly 300 miles from this particular Arby’s. Neither Keith nor his friend lives anywhere near this particular Arby’s. And the likelyhood of two uncoordinated carloads of people mid-move at that particular moment both breaking for food at this particular Arby’s? I can’t begin to guess. Freaky.

We got to Hornell around 5:00 PM. Heather communed with her parents, Keith and I crashed on the sofas watching Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters. Dinner was baked ziti from the restaraunt at which the rehearsal dinner from our wedding was held. For lack of a more eloquent way to put it, the evening was spent "chilling".


Liz – Heather’s co-pilot for the journey and her Maid of Honor – arrived at the house at 8:00, just in time for a game of Texas Hold ’Em. Heather’s parents are both poker enthusiasts, and her dad is damn near an expert on the game theories of poker, so that’s always fun. Honestly, as competitive as I am, I really don’t mind being the first one to bust. In the end, Keith hauled in the big money - a whole $4 - and my father in law took the two dollar consolation prize. Man, we’re wild.

And we all went to be before 10:00 PM. Like I said, wild.