The Hunt for Red Hyundai
The first folks I asked for transport to Roanoke had other commitments, and that’s completely understandable: this all happened on pretty short notice. I was getting a little panicky about finding someone.
Then, by the sheerest coincidence, I was talking to a friend on Thursday night who’s a woodworker. He had an appointment in Staunton on Friday, and casually volunteered to drive me the rest of the way down I-81. I couldn’t say no! The trip turned into quite the adventure, as his delivery truck has no stereo, no AC, windows which must be wrestled into place by hand, and (it turned out) a bad left turn signal. But, while the whole excursion was draining, the conversation was great. I have no complaints.
Thanks to missed connections and three separate car-accident highway backups, the trip took nine hours, and I reached Mom’s place around 11 or so. We chatted briefly, but I had to beg off because my energy levels were almost non-existent. When I came back in the morning, we talked for quite a while, and I fixed her air conditioning set up, the new shower sprayer, and her computer’s Internet connection. When it came time to leave, I took her red Hyundai back to Chesapeake as promised. The five-hour drive on Rt. 460 stayed pleasant, and I got home in time to surprise Starr with a scallop dinner after her workday.
Today, I have done nothing useful. I am exhausted, and the house needs a lot of work still, but I have managed little. I will need to make up for it this week. And now to whine about something trivial: today, the ‘not-Easter’ celebration starts in WoW, and it begins with a ‘not-Easter’ Egg hunt. This is a lovely idea, except there’s some nice rewards for collecting large numbers of eggs, and you can’t get to any of the places where they appear; the micro-second an egg spawns, someone else has already clicked on it, and it fades right back out. People are ‘camped’ at all the spawning points, collecting eggs. Perhaps they’ll get bored, or finish, and I’ll have the chance to pick up a few after work later this week. 🙁
Technicon arrival
I’m in my hotel room in Blacksburg. The plan was to check in, and do a little shopping for a few things, but impink and kittykatya were in the hotel lobby, and we stopped to chat… looked up and half the con was there. The “Meet and Greet” started hours before the official panel time, but it’s cool, I got to see friends I haven’t seen since last Technicon, and others I haven’t seen in many years. I’m having a good time!
I has another Guest badge. I’m kinda enjoying my slowly-building collection of those.
Okay. Brain shutting down on it’s own. I feel better than I did this time last year, so fingers crossed that I don’t collapse tomorrow. Night!
Come Sail Away
While driving to work this morning, watching the sunrise and listening to the Trance Euphoria podcast, I flashed on a fantasy that’s been with me since I could drive, if not before.
In that fantasy, I’m cruising down the Interstate at standard driving speeds, waiting for a nice gap in the cars before and behind me. At the right moment, I reach down to the center console and hit the switch that activates the repulsor pads in the undercarriage.
As the aft thrusters warm up, I feel the small jerk that tells me that the wheels have lost contact with the ground. I hit the button that folds them away into the fenders, bring the thrusters up to 200 MPH, and climb into the sky, arriving at work in 15 minutes instead of 50.
That little vignette hits me on almost any drive longer than 20 minutes. I love visiting all sorts of places… it’s the actual getting there that I often find so tedious. Needless to say, mine would be the only car that could do this, otherwise there’d be flaming wrecks scattered across the landscape. (And not always other people’s fault, either: last night I almost broadsided someone because I was thinking about my grocery list rather than the road. Bad Borg.)
We got a real small convoy…
I feel guilty when I let Twitter do most of my LiveJournal updating for several days. It doesn’t help that my DSL, which was working fine for a while, died again over the weekend. They’ll come by on Friday to look at it. Cox Cable, folks, I’m telling you now.
So, what exactly was I up to with all that driving? It’s an epic tale…
We left Chesapeake early on Friday morning, heading to NoVa to see Owen. On the way one of my tires sprang a leak; we pulled into a White Tire to have it fixed. It turned out that the tire was fine; something I’d hit on Xmas eve had bent the rim a bit, and that was letting air out. They hammered the rim back into shape, re-balanced the tire, and refused to charge me. Happy Holidays indeed!
To say that Owen was charged up to see us might have been an understatement. He wore us out just talking to us! He received a glow-in-the-dark NASA Langley shirt from us, which he wore all night; his parents gave us an elegant hanging candelabra and an Elfin Tree Door (which is already installed on a suitable tree in our yard).
When we left for the hotel, Owen’s folks sent us to a French cafe for dinner. I’ve never eaten French food before, and was surprised at how tasty a charred, bloody cut of meat could be. (Look at dish, and mentally sigh. Put forkful of dish in mouth, and mentally jump at the flavor!)
The HoJo’s we stayed at that night was clean and cheap, and the bed mattress might as well have been a solid slab of wood. I kid you not, Starr found the floor more comfortable.
We went back to Owen’s place for breakfast, and he and I bonded over some Lego. Eventually, we had to leave; Starr’s mom took her by a neighborhood yarn store, though, and we ended up losing another hour to their 25%-40% Off Sale. No problem for me, I had Solitaire and MahJongg on the cell phone. The drive from there to Christiansburg turned out to be the least fun of the trip, though; crossing the Appalachians on Lee Highway was tense and a bit nauseating, and our reward for reaching the other side was I-81. Yippee-doo.
Finally, though, we reached C-burg and we saw Mom waiting for us outside the facility where she’s staying. Mom ordered me to stop a yard and a half away, and walked that distance from he wheelchair to my arms as Starr steadied her. Wonderful! She gave me the best Xmas present she possibly could right there; the Red Lobster dinner that followed only added to the celebration!
We spent Saturday night in the Microtel, which did its intended job of being cheap, comfortable, and a provider of wireless Net access. I know that lots of folks in the New River Valley would have put us up, and I would have loved the chance to socialize, but we’d have been rude guests: coming in late, going straight to bed, and waking up early the next morning for a quick e-mail check and a return to Mom’s place.
After a Cracker Barrel breakfast, Mom took Starr to Mosaic, her favorite yarn store, where we met Benny, Cathy, and Jamie Williams; I passed the time proving to Jamie that I am totally old and lame when it comes to anime and Final Fantasy games, and Starr ended up with a couple more bags of crochet yarn. (I had given Starr yarn money for Xmas. Starr asked and received permission to buy herself other gifts with that money, as she’s now stocked up on yarn for a few weeks.) We said a sad goodbye to my mom, and began the six-hour drive home. I have to say, that used me up. We finally arrived around 8:30 Sunday night, and I was done. Kaput. Over.
Still, it was a lovely weekend, and time and gas well spent. I only wish that I could fly to Technicon Last instead of driving. Or perhaps portal there, if all that ‘cake’ stuff’s been worked out by now.
Movin’ Right Along
Still in the midst of moving. We want to be out of here by the second weekend in November, and this time there will be much less last-minute work. Already, bankers’ boxes full of gaming material, paperbacks, and videotapes have made the journey to the new digs. Most of the living-room furniture has been moved or Freecycled, and it’s a bit bare and echoey in here: mildly unsettling. Meanwhile, we’ve been folding boxes, packing boxes, and toting boxes. Fold and pack and tote. My hip’s fine, but my back is a freakin’ landscape of pain, and I haven’t even matched the amount of labor Starr’s put in while I was at work.
Her parents are leaving the area for the next year or two due to military commitments. They want to hang on to their property, though: a nice 4-bedroom, two-story house with a garage and pool in a nice neighborhood of southeast Chesapeake. So, they asked if Starr and I would be willing to rent the place from them, at less than half what we’re paying for the apartment.
Neither one of us really had to think long about it, especially as we’ll be allowed to treat the place as though it were ours (within reason). Unfortunately, some of the rent savings will be eaten by the gas for the additional commute: another 20 minutes added to the 40-45 minute trip I have now. Sigh. Starr’s got the same problem. But nevertheless, we’re moving, and I have to say I’m looking forward to it. Or rather, I’m looking forward to the move being complete.
Ow.
Tunnel drive
In general, I like living in Hampton Roads, I honestly do. Last night did not provide a good example…
There are three bridges in my Metro area that can take me from work to home. Assuming no heavy traffic, the Monitor-Merrimac bridge-tunnel does so in about 40-45 minutes; the James River bridge adds about 20-25 minutes to that; and the Hampton Roads bridge-tunnel adds about 20 minutes to the MMBT. (I have a bad tendency to refer to them as the Mimbit, the Jerb, and the Herbit.)
Unless it’s 1am, though, there’s probably going to be an additional 10-30 minutes of heavy traffic on the Herbit, and the Mimbit is a crapshoot: sometimes I fly straight through, and sometimes I sit waiting an extra 15-20 minutes. We have handy electronic signs alerting us to congestion on the Mimbit and Herbit, but because of geography, by the time I see one, the Jerb is already out of the question.
Yesterday, the signs warned me that the Mimbit was blocked by an accident – based on reports I’ve heard, an idiot trying to cut off a fellow driver. I had a quick decision to make – wait in blocked traffic there, and hope the accident is cleared within an hour (it usually is) or join all the additional traffic to the Herbit, probably incurring a 90-minute delay. I joined the queue of blocked traffic.
I took 2 hours to reach the tunnel entrance for the Mimbit, only to find that the tunnel remained blocked and that traffic was being forcibly rerouted back to the other two bridges. I don’t know the Jerb route well enough to ensure I wouldn’t get lost, so I joined the crowded line for the Herbit. 90 minutes later, I was finally home. 3.5 hours to make a 45-minute commute. (Turns out that the Jerb was just as bad.)
Starr, aware of the situation thanks to cell phones, had pizza and chocolate waiting. I love this woman.
