I drove today and the morning stretch was BEAUTIFUL. I think we were on Highway 4 and it was curvy, fast and fabulous. The scenery, once again, was gorgeous, and the drive was engaging. Loved it! We made good time on that, headed to I-5 (or, as they say in
Lunchtime rolled around and we directed GPS Jill to take us to Sonic. We get Sonic commercials back home, but there aren’t any Sonics there. We decided to park and walk in, as opposed to park and have lunch in the car. We went in the restaurant and realized that the door opened to the kitchen and not the dining area. We circled the restaurant and found no door in.
Evidently at Sonic, there is no restaurant proper, but an eating area, with drive-thru boards you order at while standing. It was a little weird, but it worked. We ate outside and were accosted by all sorts of flies. Riley freaked out a little, but the flies were pesky, so I don’t blame him on that. Afterwards, we jumped back in the car and headed south.
Of course, before long, Riley had to go No. 2 again, so we stopped off in some sort of orchard just north of
It was pretty uneventful from there on out. We hit the Grapevine (a mountainous drive with what seems like race car drivers), then traffic by
Dave and I have known each other since kindergarten. We attended all the same schools and actually were pretty close throughout high school. As we went to college, we naturally grew apart. It wasn’t until we both married our wives that we started getting back in touch. It turns out that Marci and I and Nadejda were pregnant at the same time. For whatever reason, Marci and Nadejda hit it off and have been close ever since.
Anyway, we headed there for dinner and conversation and to let the kids have some fun that consisted of more than 5 minutes at a rest stop. I got to chat with Dave for awhile, and Marci got her margarita on with Nadejda. The kids went crazy and it was all good.
It wasn’t until later that I remembered that Nadejda’s dad was coming to see Riley and his results. As mentioned on day 1, her dad is a neurosurgeon and familiar with some of what Marci found out about. I’ll save the details for a post later.
After dinner and meeting with Nadejda’s dad, it was off to Ted & Judy’s house, just south of
I had programmed GPS Jill to get us to Ted & Judy’s, but about 20 minutes into the trip, I noticed that Jill was a little tipsy. The arrow that represents us was floating all over the map. That will happen sometimes if there’s interference (buildings), but we were on the 5, no obstructions anywhere. But she kept telling us to drive south, etc, etc, so we thought it was ok.
Well, as we drove and got to where she told us to turn… and there was no turn, well, we figured something was up. I had Marci call Ted for directions and it turned out we were about 5 exits past where we needed to be.
I punched a couple buttons on Jill and got the map working again. I had downloaded map updates prior to the trip but didn’t download
About 20 minutes later, we ended up at Ted & Judy’s with a couple of tired kids, a couple of tired parents, and one dirty ass car. It’s good to be here and the next couple days should be interesting in more ways than one.
