Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Long Trip Home


Jen here,

After a rather epic drive home all the way from Miami to Victoria, the boats are unloaded, washed, rigged, and (for the most part) ready for spring training. A big big thanks to my sister, Meg, who flew all the way to Miami only to hop in the truck and head home. She didn't even leave the airport and we were already en route back to Canada! The trip took us 11 days, mostly because we had an extra boat on the trailer which slowed things down a lot. It was an amazing trip home, though, and we saw beautiful country, met great people, and had some fantastic adventures. I've taken the liberty of condensing them into a top ten list for your amusement-drum roll please...

10) Hushpuppies, deep fried catfish, deep fried ice cream, deep fried crabcakes, biscuits and white sauce...all seem like a fun idea when you're trying to get a taste of the local cuisine...until you realize that you're sitting in a truck for twelve hours a day and have not gone to the bathroom since you left Miami.

9) Southern hospitality: we adopted, or rather, were adopted by an exuberant hotel manager named Paul Bruno at the Ramada Lodge in Pensacola, Florida. He found us a place to stay in New Orleans, filled our bellies with (more) biscuits and white gravy, and insisted that we phone him when we got there, just to make sure we were okay. He has officially been dubbed our Pensacola Dad, and anyone passing through would do well to take him up on his hospitality.

8)New Orleans is great. The Saints are great. Is it worth trucking around the French Quarter in a monsoon? Sure, just be sure to wear your bright yellow Saints poncho and have a bourbon while you wring out your dripping jeans in a fancy bar where you're the only two people who look like drowned rats. More deep fried southern food in the form of creole goodness: jumbalaya, poor boys, and some sort of deep fried piece of dough covered in icing sugar to top it off. At this point, the top button of the pants came undone.

7) While getting lost, we dub our GPS "Linda" after an unsavory professor that we both had in our undergrads. Picture two girls driving around Yuma late at night yelling "Linda why are you doing this to us!?!" to an inanimate object. And we wondered why a State Trooper pulled us over...

6)Blowing up a trailer tire on the I10 just outside of Houston. Meg says: Hey? Why are we going so slow? I say: You're paranoid. Meg says: Do you smell smoke...

5) Every single gas station attendant in America asking us first where we're from, next where we're going, third are we crazy, and fourth why we haven't killed each other yet? Meg replies that this is nothing compared to nine months in the womb together.

4) Truck stop in New Mexico featuring thousands of terra cotta Jesus figurines. Would the purple one look good in our boat stall at Royal Vic?

3) Nearly dropping the 49er off the crane while unloading it from the top of the trailer in San Diego. Whoops, don't tell Hunter! Uh, I mean, your boat is fine...

2) Rush hour traffic in LA, in the dark, while raining, with a three boat
trailer...then Meg tells a joke.

1) Sitting on a cactus. Why? Let's just say that 6200KM sitting on my butt wasn't painful enough already, so I opted for the extra challenge of having my friends pick needles out of my bum on the side of the road. Had to sit sideways all day from the welt!

Ahh roadtrips. Who wants to drive back with me next year?

Jen