krista@Travelintoxication.comDay 12 of the road trip.
We woke up in Boise at a hotel that has free breakfast. This is an interesting thing that hotels do. Over the last 12 days we’ve experienced a lot of hotels, and a lot of continental breakfasts…even one continental dinner. The dinner was actually extremely yummy…scalloped potatoes, my favorite meal. It was so good, especially after a day of day drinking. Come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure that those potatoes were really good or not….due to the day drinking.
Back to the continental breakfasts…
As I woke up from a not so nice dream about gangsters trying to kill me, Dana and Beth said they were going down to see what the free breakfast was all about. As I got ready in the hotel room they encountered some very odd things at breakfast. Once back in the room they told me some stories. Some not so good stories about a man who was extremely overweight who loaded up half his plate with all the bacon that was in the serving tray, and how a girl kept saying, ‘you’re out of bacon’ to the hotel staff. Uh, look at the plate of the guy sitting to your left little girl. And another story about how an adorable little girl was stuffing her face with all carbs…no fruit, but carbs and lots of butter. Her mother was continuing to butter every carb that she put on her child’s plate, even though the child was extremely obese. It bothered them, and later when I went down for breakfast, it bothered me too. Those same people were still down there eating.
Now, I’m not being judgmental because we all know I’m not the thinnest person, but these people were killing their kids with food…killing themselves with food. I’ve been watching the show My 600 Pound Life and most of the weight gain for those people was due to pain. Like drug abuse, alcohol abuse or other self abuse, pain is the number one reason. I get it. I truly do. Most of us have had pain in our lives…but it is so difficult to see parents doing harm to their children without even totally realizing it since they are also overweight. I think the word Beth used was Gluttony…
I digress…sorry for the little soapbox moment.
As we left the hotel parking lot on our way out of Boise we realized we needed to fill up the gas tank, and Ron Burgandy had also flashed me a ‘low tire pressure’ light. After finding the nearest gas station to fuel up RB we plunked Beth’s $0.75 into the air machine and Dana made sure that Ron’s tires were fully inflated. I’m not going to lie, RB garnered some attention at that gas station…or it was me bending over putting the tire caps back on. At almost 46 years old, I’m hoping it was the latter.
Once we were on the highway, and cheered as we made it back into Washington state…we all realized that the end of the trip was coming into view.
Around noon we were driving through Pendleton, I was doing the speed limit (yes, I was) and a guy quickly ran right up through the bushes in the medium and jumped over the barriers almost into my lane…the fast lane. I would have hit him going 70 miles an hour if he hadn’t stopped. I saw him coming up to the line, I let off the gas just slightly, but I knew better then to slam on my brakes and swerve. But hitting him at 70 MPH in Ron Burgandy…not something dreams are made of, maybe nightmares, but not dreams. Thank goodness he stayed off the road. But it did make me and my passengers freeze for what seemed like an eternity until we passed that guy. Scary stuff.
After we had calmed our nerves, we decided to stop at a rest area around 4:00 pm. Ok, it didn’t take us that long to calm our nerves, but we were definitely all still thinking about the “almost” bad day. We all made our way to the bathrooms and as I was walking back to RB I walked by a son who was around 14 or so, hugging his dad. I looked at them as I passed by and out of the backside of the dad I heard a long, long, looooong fart come out of him. The son looked at me in disbelief and I looked at him, like, What the fuck? His dad turned around, looked at me and said, Oh, sorry. I just looked him in the eye, with a straight face, and said, Oh, I don’t care, you don’t need to apologize. Beth was about 10 feet behind me and heard the dad apologize, but not why. As we all made it back into Ron Burgandy she asked me what that was all about, and pointed towards the son and dad, who were still standing there in front of RB. I told her and Dana the story and we all sat in RB and laughed our asses off.
Again people…a little slack please with this being day 12 of the road trip, seeing gluttony with our own eyes (and actually using that word in a sentence) and almost hitting a man who wanted to run into freeway traffic as we were going 70 mph towards him with no way to stop, I think farting is a good reason to laugh out the stress of the day.
We fortunately made it to my Aunt Kathy’s in the ‘snatch’ (aka Wenatchee) just before 6:00 pm in one piece. My favorite cousin Amy and her hubby Josh were there to greet us as well. They made a delicious meal for us as per usual. These peeps know how to cook! Even bought me my gardenburgers!! Love them. Uncle Bob showed up later after his meeting. We all caught up on the family gossip, trip gossip…basically bullshitted for a few hours all while eating, and some of us partaking in the 30 pack Beth bought the last time we stopped for gas. I love my family, some more than others of course, but one thing I’ve learned about family, we are always there for each other. I would have invited them into my home, just like they have invited me into theirs. My grandmother taught us well.
After solving the world’s problems, joking, after all the catching up was done, we all went to bed. Knowing that our trip was almost over, and that reality was going to smack us hard in the face tomorrow, I didn’t sleep well that night.
But being in a familiar place with people who have known me since birth and still love me…priceless.
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