This is a good one. Promise. Sit tight, get comfortable and get ready for a chuckle or two. Our lives? They are made for books sometimes; at least I think so...
Our flight is from Richmond; we drive there and are met with menacing skies. The first leg of our trip and flight is from Richmond to Atlanta. Our flight is delayed already from the word go because it has yet to arrive....due to bad weather on the East Coast. We sit. We try to keep the Littlest busy. He is lying on the floor (yes, I know, in the airport, PPS, bad Mamma) playing trains, then flinging them across the marble floor as passengers bustle by. Luckily no one trips or falls. We put him in the stroller and walk him up and down up and down the long floors; anything to pass the time. Finally, our plane comes in and we are literally rushed onto it so we are not relegated to being stuck further, they want to get us in the air. We arrive in Atlanta but not in time to make our connecting flight. We have the Littlest and the Oldest, it's 10:15 at night and they are telling us we can't leave for 24 hours. Maybe they don't know me. Ahem.
"Give me one more option" I say to them not so politely (grin) with a tight smile plastered on my face.
And they did. They offered to fly us from us from Atlanta to Las Vegas and would pay for the rental car to drive the rest of the trip. Our original plan is to fly into Phoenix where the wedding is so Vegas isn't that far away; right? Sure. My husband and I look at each other, glance down at the passed out Littlest in the stroller, knowing time has slipped and it's now 11:15 and we've wasted one hour in two Customer Service lines, we realize our fate staying there is not much better. It's instant and words are not necessary, we're going to Las Vegas and we're driving to Phoenix. No hotel, just get off the plane and drive straight through. In my mind, we were already supposed to BE in Phoenix so all this extra hoopla was wasted time; I wanted to be there already. Whatever it took, planes, trains and automobiles if need be.
We arrive in Las Vegas and my mind could not even begin to compute what time it was or even...that we were really in Vegas. Signs for Blue Man Group, for various Hollywood stars shows, I was worn down mentally and physically and this craziness in the airport was buzzing past me in a blur. As we go to the carousel and realize our bags are not there to greet us, we don't dwell long on it, and move along quickly to the rental car task. We know we'll deal with it soon enough, we need our baggage and I can't register how upset I'll be when I let it all sink in.
We get the car without much trouble. Unless of course you count the fact that they were charging us $225.00 for the DAY in that thing, but then again, why worry, we weren't paying that ridiculous fee, the Airline was. And we're off, and thank God for the GPS we brought along or we'd be dead in the water with these boys. Dead dead dead. I insist to drive the first leg. Pride is an ugly thing and so is a husband who pushes himself to the point of sickness and I've been there, it's no fun. I'm first up and glad to do it. Never mind how incredibly my eyes are burning and heavy? They're beyond heavy; I'm operating on auto pilot now. I take the wheel and quickly we're off on a road that turns out to be very interesting. Lots of back roads and no lights, I wonder if we're going the right direction. Silly. Of course we are, we have our trusty GPS. Right. Windy roads and I'm driving as slow as I can because you know, I'm a woman and I'm good like that. Mario Andretti in the seat beside me however asks me no less than twelve times if I'd like him to take over. No. Slow down cowboy, I have it. I suppose it was somewhere around three in the morning when we come to a security check. Hmmm. The man advises us we should have a full tank of gas and to drive slow as we pass the HOOVER DAM. Well. There's something I wasn't expecting to see at all on this trip, the Hoover Dam. You know, at this point, I'm flipped out, it's late, I'm exhausted, we're in Nevada (not on the original itinerary) and now we're passing the Hoover Dam. Oh my how this sent waves of energy through my husband and Oldest child who is now awake. They tell me this is where they filmed a certain part of Transformers and Superman so he tells me to stop so he can take pictures (in the dark mind you). I oblige. Whole bunch of hoopla -notsomuch about the Hoover Dam and its incredible view but more because of the movies.
As we move along in the car, we get further away from the windy roads and are finally met with long runs of flat road as far as the eye can see. Phew! Finally! I notice lots of sand, lots of cactus, and just desolate empty miles in every direction. Where are we? My eyes are like cast iron, I can't turn up the music to keep me awake or the boys will wake and it's so hot I can't open the window for air on my face. As there are no cars for a trillion miles behind us, I see no need for the rear view mirror and turn it to my face. I am now doing facial exercises and making funny long faces at myself in the mirror at an attempt to keep myself awake. I swerve several times, not good, I know, now start singing out loud just enough for myself to hear, "La la la la laaaaaaaaaaa". Not working. I notice something in the road ahead of me. What is it? More than a something its some things and they are moving. Coyotes. Walking very slowly across the dark desert road. I have no choice but to slow down. One is looking straight at us and I see his beady eyes glaring into the headlights of our car. Am I dreaming? Am I so delirious that I'm making this up like a mirage in the desert? No. They are real and I have to swerve to miss them and man I gas it hard. This wakes up my husband and he thinks I just can't drive but in defense, I tell him what happened and he tells me to pull over, he'll drive now. I.am.not.pulling.over.now.to.save.my.life. I absolutely envision those coyotes just waiting for a car to stop and people to get out so they can devour them into bits and pieces. No. I keep driving in misery and fear. So tired now I can not believe we're putting ourselves through this. At some point I begin to seriously doubt where we are, where we are going, and if we are going to be ok.
Finally after countless miles of desolation, no lights, no cars, just us, the pitch black road and the video game white lines that never ended, we see a gas station. In the middle of nowhere it appeared and I was glad to see it. It was there we switched and I think my eyes were closed in seconds. Just give me ten minutes of sleep, it's all I need. The road blends into darker abyss as we drive and drive and we can tell the sun will be coming up soon, light begins to slowly fill the sky and at some point we trade back so I'm driving when the sun rises full in the sky. The boys wake up and are excited to see we are driving parallel with a cargo train and we begin to see cars and activity and less desert. What desert is it anyway? Still we don't know. We make it to Phoenix with none of our baggage; just us and our boys and the car. We eat breakfast at a Chick Fila where there was not a soul the entire time we ate. I completely felt we were in the twilight zone now. No one at Chick Fila? Not one person? Apparently they are just building them out in the West, not many folks know about them so we enjoyed a very peaceful and quiet breakfast after all the zaniness of the previous night and early morning.
It wasn't until days later that I remembered to ask my Aunt, "By the way, if we drove from Vegas to Phoenix and drove through a desert, what desert was that anyway?"
"Oh I wish you had called me." she said.
"Why?" I asked.
"You all drove straight through the Mojave Desert. Now THAT'S a desert. It's barren, nothing for miles and miles." was her answer.
The Mojave Desert? I've heard of it; and not in a good way. It instilled more fear into my heart. I was scared for what we did in hindsight -realizing it was not a smart decision for us to drive like that through the night. We were put on the spot and made an impetuous decision. We were given a choice and we took control of a situation we otherwise had no control of. It's what I asked for, 'another option'. Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it; eh?
Our flight is from Richmond; we drive there and are met with menacing skies. The first leg of our trip and flight is from Richmond to Atlanta. Our flight is delayed already from the word go because it has yet to arrive....due to bad weather on the East Coast. We sit. We try to keep the Littlest busy. He is lying on the floor (yes, I know, in the airport, PPS, bad Mamma) playing trains, then flinging them across the marble floor as passengers bustle by. Luckily no one trips or falls. We put him in the stroller and walk him up and down up and down the long floors; anything to pass the time. Finally, our plane comes in and we are literally rushed onto it so we are not relegated to being stuck further, they want to get us in the air. We arrive in Atlanta but not in time to make our connecting flight. We have the Littlest and the Oldest, it's 10:15 at night and they are telling us we can't leave for 24 hours. Maybe they don't know me. Ahem.
"Give me one more option" I say to them not so politely (grin) with a tight smile plastered on my face.
And they did. They offered to fly us from us from Atlanta to Las Vegas and would pay for the rental car to drive the rest of the trip. Our original plan is to fly into Phoenix where the wedding is so Vegas isn't that far away; right? Sure. My husband and I look at each other, glance down at the passed out Littlest in the stroller, knowing time has slipped and it's now 11:15 and we've wasted one hour in two Customer Service lines, we realize our fate staying there is not much better. It's instant and words are not necessary, we're going to Las Vegas and we're driving to Phoenix. No hotel, just get off the plane and drive straight through. In my mind, we were already supposed to BE in Phoenix so all this extra hoopla was wasted time; I wanted to be there already. Whatever it took, planes, trains and automobiles if need be.
We arrive in Las Vegas and my mind could not even begin to compute what time it was or even...that we were really in Vegas. Signs for Blue Man Group, for various Hollywood stars shows, I was worn down mentally and physically and this craziness in the airport was buzzing past me in a blur. As we go to the carousel and realize our bags are not there to greet us, we don't dwell long on it, and move along quickly to the rental car task. We know we'll deal with it soon enough, we need our baggage and I can't register how upset I'll be when I let it all sink in.
We get the car without much trouble. Unless of course you count the fact that they were charging us $225.00 for the DAY in that thing, but then again, why worry, we weren't paying that ridiculous fee, the Airline was. And we're off, and thank God for the GPS we brought along or we'd be dead in the water with these boys. Dead dead dead. I insist to drive the first leg. Pride is an ugly thing and so is a husband who pushes himself to the point of sickness and I've been there, it's no fun. I'm first up and glad to do it. Never mind how incredibly my eyes are burning and heavy? They're beyond heavy; I'm operating on auto pilot now. I take the wheel and quickly we're off on a road that turns out to be very interesting. Lots of back roads and no lights, I wonder if we're going the right direction. Silly. Of course we are, we have our trusty GPS. Right. Windy roads and I'm driving as slow as I can because you know, I'm a woman and I'm good like that. Mario Andretti in the seat beside me however asks me no less than twelve times if I'd like him to take over. No. Slow down cowboy, I have it. I suppose it was somewhere around three in the morning when we come to a security check. Hmmm. The man advises us we should have a full tank of gas and to drive slow as we pass the HOOVER DAM. Well. There's something I wasn't expecting to see at all on this trip, the Hoover Dam. You know, at this point, I'm flipped out, it's late, I'm exhausted, we're in Nevada (not on the original itinerary) and now we're passing the Hoover Dam. Oh my how this sent waves of energy through my husband and Oldest child who is now awake. They tell me this is where they filmed a certain part of Transformers and Superman so he tells me to stop so he can take pictures (in the dark mind you). I oblige. Whole bunch of hoopla -notsomuch about the Hoover Dam and its incredible view but more because of the movies.
As we move along in the car, we get further away from the windy roads and are finally met with long runs of flat road as far as the eye can see. Phew! Finally! I notice lots of sand, lots of cactus, and just desolate empty miles in every direction. Where are we? My eyes are like cast iron, I can't turn up the music to keep me awake or the boys will wake and it's so hot I can't open the window for air on my face. As there are no cars for a trillion miles behind us, I see no need for the rear view mirror and turn it to my face. I am now doing facial exercises and making funny long faces at myself in the mirror at an attempt to keep myself awake. I swerve several times, not good, I know, now start singing out loud just enough for myself to hear, "La la la la laaaaaaaaaaa". Not working. I notice something in the road ahead of me. What is it? More than a something its some things and they are moving. Coyotes. Walking very slowly across the dark desert road. I have no choice but to slow down. One is looking straight at us and I see his beady eyes glaring into the headlights of our car. Am I dreaming? Am I so delirious that I'm making this up like a mirage in the desert? No. They are real and I have to swerve to miss them and man I gas it hard. This wakes up my husband and he thinks I just can't drive but in defense, I tell him what happened and he tells me to pull over, he'll drive now. I.am.not.pulling.over.now.to.save.my.life. I absolutely envision those coyotes just waiting for a car to stop and people to get out so they can devour them into bits and pieces. No. I keep driving in misery and fear. So tired now I can not believe we're putting ourselves through this. At some point I begin to seriously doubt where we are, where we are going, and if we are going to be ok.
Finally after countless miles of desolation, no lights, no cars, just us, the pitch black road and the video game white lines that never ended, we see a gas station. In the middle of nowhere it appeared and I was glad to see it. It was there we switched and I think my eyes were closed in seconds. Just give me ten minutes of sleep, it's all I need. The road blends into darker abyss as we drive and drive and we can tell the sun will be coming up soon, light begins to slowly fill the sky and at some point we trade back so I'm driving when the sun rises full in the sky. The boys wake up and are excited to see we are driving parallel with a cargo train and we begin to see cars and activity and less desert. What desert is it anyway? Still we don't know. We make it to Phoenix with none of our baggage; just us and our boys and the car. We eat breakfast at a Chick Fila where there was not a soul the entire time we ate. I completely felt we were in the twilight zone now. No one at Chick Fila? Not one person? Apparently they are just building them out in the West, not many folks know about them so we enjoyed a very peaceful and quiet breakfast after all the zaniness of the previous night and early morning.
It wasn't until days later that I remembered to ask my Aunt, "By the way, if we drove from Vegas to Phoenix and drove through a desert, what desert was that anyway?"
"Oh I wish you had called me." she said.
"Why?" I asked.
"You all drove straight through the Mojave Desert. Now THAT'S a desert. It's barren, nothing for miles and miles." was her answer.
The Mojave Desert? I've heard of it; and not in a good way. It instilled more fear into my heart. I was scared for what we did in hindsight -realizing it was not a smart decision for us to drive like that through the night. We were put on the spot and made an impetuous decision. We were given a choice and we took control of a situation we otherwise had no control of. It's what I asked for, 'another option'. Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it; eh?
1 comment:
YEE HAW welcome to the west girlie LOL. Love it. As soon as I read "We will just drive from Vegas to Phoenix" I nearly spit out my Crystal light. LOVE IT.
These are the stories your boys will tell. LOL
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