Day 2: My Slow Descent Into Madness, and My Recovery

I'm falling a bit behind here, but hopefully, it's understood that traveling long distance with three little boys keeps one busy. Day 1 had me exhausted, but day 2 drove me nearly insane.

We stayed at the Westin on Legacy Friday night. What a disappointment. I've really come to expect more from hotels, and Westin has a fairly good reputation. The hotel itself was nicely appointed, and the room was decent enough, but the service was lacking (case in point, as I hauled luggage up the steps into the hotel, 3 bell hops stood by, oblivious, chatting with one another; at least one was kind enough to open the door, but none offered to take the bags). What really gets me, though, was that I had to pay for Internet. In this "shwanky" hotel, I had to pay for Internet, when virtually every hotel or motel these days offers Internet for free. And it wasn't a nominal fee: it was $10. My conclusion was that Westin offers the semblance of a high-quality hotel, but they miss the essence; it's the little things that count.

But that isn't what drove me mad. The day started with Amy needing to run out to the car to grab some additional luggage, only to return and tell me that my car was covered in bird droppings. The night before, I had moved it to bring it closer to the hotel (so I wouldn't have so far to drag in the luggage), and I had parked under a tree. Now, I had given it a moment's thought, because trees like to drop things; it's their way of reminding human-kind that they still have an important place in this world; but, I figured they couldn't do much damage in the night. Evidently, though, unbeknown to me, there was a "Birds Who Eat Glue" conference in the tree that night, and they had been well-fed the day before. The car was covered, and the turds weren't coming off. So, I drove most of the morning with a car covered in bird dookie.

Meanwhile, Joseph wasn't acting his usual chipper self. He was in bed, and not feeling well. Moments later, he was in the bathroom, over the toilet feeling a little better (what was that glib remark that I made in my Day 1 post about children knowing the perfect time to puke?). Joseph (evidently) does not like traveling to California on a full stomach. What a way to start the trip. Thankfully, he had fallen asleep before dinner the night before, so there wasn't much in there. Still, it did not bode well.

Thinking that perhaps his tummy upset was due more to hunger than to illness, we decided to seek some breakfast. Initially, we headed to IHOP, I in my bird poop car, and Amy in the minivan with Joseph in the backseat, holding a plastic bag in case of stomach emergency. Arriving at IHOP, we were quickly reminded that it was 10AM on a Saturday morning. So, we forgot IHOP and started heading up Preston, until eventually we ended up at Le Peep.

Thankfully, we got there just at the start of a new wave of eaters, so we didn't have long to wait. Le Peep has recently redecorated, and replaced several of their tables with booths, one of which was ours. We ordered, making sure to get something easy for Joseph to drink (he would have gone for orange juice, but we got him some apple juice), but Joseph quickly decided to sleep. So, he stretched out on my side of the booth, and took a brief nap.

After a few minutes of rest, Joseph awoke, looked at me, and then chundered his apple juice all over the seat; it ran in a little rivulet toward me, so I had to maneuver myself to quickly find him something to finish up in, while simultaneously stopping the flow, and keeping my pants clean. It could have been so much worse, but I'm such an introvert that added to the overall mess of the whole thing was my own anxiety at being a spectacle. We cleaned the mess up, took our tab, and got out of there lickety-split after that.

At this point, we decided to split up. Amy headed to the house to await the Merry Maids for a final cleanup, and I headed out to find someplace to get the car wash. I started by going to the Shell on Preston, as it was nearby and they have a car wash, but the fact that the sliding door for the car wash exit was half closed was an ill omen. I figured that I'd go ahead and fuel up, and see if the car wash was offered, so I pulled up to the nearest pump. Keep in mind that I was pretty frazzled by this point - dealing with puke, driving a bird-plop-mobile (so much less cool than the Batmobile), and recovering from anxiety at making a technicolor show at the restaurant.

I got out to pump the gas, and ran my debit card into the reader, but it didn't read. So, I tried again; still no luck. As I was pulling my card quickly out of the reader a third time, I noticed the little graphic that had eluded me initially, showing that the card had to be oriented in the reverse direction. "How inane," I thought (well, I probably didn't have the capacity to think that - I probably actually thought something more in the Neanderthal vernacular, like "Munghrl"). Regardless, I thought this was a useless gesture toward lefties. I have nothing against lefties (I have some in my family), but let's face it: the majority of the world are right-handed. This card reader was designed so that once you'd pulled your card out of your wallet, you would have to manually flip it to orient it (with the magnetic strip to the left) to slide through the reader. It's unnatural, and introduces an extra step into what should be a fast process (please! let me spend my money faster), unless you're left-handed, and in that case, everything should run smoothly. I can almost envision the spiteful southpaw engineer sitting in his studio scheming his subtle vengeance upon us. "They'll pay! But only after they flip their card!" Man, I was in a mood that morning.

After finally getting the card run through the correct way, I was prompted, "Is this a Debit card or a Credit card?" I chose debit. "We're sorry, but we're not accepting debit cards at this time. Please see the attendant." Last straw, quick call to Amy, "where do you usually get your car washed," and I'm off to a gas station on Lake Forest. I drove down Lebanon, to Coit, and then up to Main, and figured that I'd take Main to Lake Forest. Now, I know some of you are already shaking your heads, "you poor sap," you're thinking. You see, y'all are familiar with the geography East of Custer, but I am not. I don't go that way. Amy does, but I don't. To me, the geography East of Custer is a haze. I mean, I know Main does some wonky things, but I had no idea just HOW wonky.

I drove down Main. I passed Custer. I passed Alma. I looked at a street sign whizzing past, telling me that I was now on Stacy (ruh-roh). I drove. And then I was at the 121. I tried to construct a mental map of how driving East I had gone South - 121 actually runs at an angle, turn Stacy a little this way, okay! I can see it. Ben quietly sat in the backseat as I went all Jason Bourne driving around the streets of Paris, flipped a u-ey and drove back North...er...West...er...whatever up Stacy at Mach 2. I was fuming now, hunched into my drivers seat, wishing ill will on scornful left-handed gas pump designers, watching the light around me fade to a narrow blue tunnel as I approached light speed. I made it to Alma, turned North, found my way to Eldorado (it SHOULD be El Dorado), and found my way to Amy's car wash.

I filled the car. I got my car wash code. I made the way to the car wash, and discovered that it was unlike anything I'd ever used. Nowadays, most of these self serve car washes are drive in affairs. You type in a code, get a brief warning about impending peril to antennae and side mirrors, and drive into seething dark tunnel out of Star Wars, until a big red light tells you to stop. You wait a moment in anticipation, alarm bells ring, a low rumbling growl surrounds you, the smell of pina colada fills the air, and a large spinning Elmo is thrust against your car.

But this one didn't work that way. Instead, you drive carefully so that your left-tires are fed into a track. You type in your code, and then you're SUPPOSED to push a Start button and the machine grabs your car by its wheel and drags it through the seething dark tunnel. I didn't know that. I got the perilous warnings (warning! you're about to get a car wash), and then I drove into the tunnel. And sat. And the machinery stared at me. I sat. I pondered. Do I pull forward a bit more? I could see some machine moving in that track where my tire was. Finally, I backed up. Okay, what was I doing wrong. There were more instructions now, er, there was one I hadn't seen before. "Press Start." The rest is what one would expect from a car wash, but as I came out of it, I could see that some of the bird-glue-droppings were still attached to my windshield. At least they were now clean bird-glue-droppings.

About this time, Amy called to tell me that there'd been a change in plans. She was just going to leave a key under the mat for the Merry Maids and we'd go ahead and hit the road. We met up, found out that one of the kids needed a potty break, and headed back to the house. We made sure everybody used the restroom before leaving (I know, heh heh, useless gesture of futility), but it also gave us a chance to say a travelling prayer before hitting the road proper, and it gave me one last look at our house.

Amy said the prayer. I was a complete psychopath at this point. We shut the door, got in the cars, and made our way to Amarillo.

As we turned onto the 380, sanity began to return. For me, the open road is therapeutic. I could feel the madness fading away, and was happy, at last, to be on the road that will eventually lead to California.