Too many miles

welcome to the blog. the first entry will probably a little long.


For a while there, I didn't think we'd ever get home.

1,245.6 miles later the family has returned from out yearly journey to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

BACKSTORY
This has become the family vacation spot since I was born. I have only missed out on 2 years where work prevented me from traveling. My parents discovered the OBX two years prior to what was then my sister and I. We started the trip down. As children the trip took 12 hours. That was with lots of stops, a ferry ride, and occasionally stopping over night at a hotel half way.
4 people, 1 station wagon, 1 ton of shit. Life wasn't so bad. We spent two weeks at the beach and as kids, couldn't be happier.

Then the little brother came along, same scenario +1 person. Life still good.

Then we grew up. Three grown children no longer fit in the back seat of a station wagon. Nor did the amount of crap we took along with into one car, or roof rack.

So started the need to take two cars. My parents in one with the stuff, most of it anyway. The other carried my sister, brother and I plus what was left of the stuff. I would follow my father (more to come on that) and my sister would follow my mother. When we started this my brother could not yet drive. By this point even in one car the trip was reduced to 10 hours.

there is a little more back story, but enough of that for now...

TO PRESENT DAY
This trip, and when I say trip I mean the part where we get in a car and go from point A to point B was by far the WORST trip we have ever taken apart in.

Lets start with the trip down:

8-16-08
wake up call: 4:00am. But apparently only for me because my parents decided to sleep till 5.

on the road by: 5:30am with my father behind the wheel of one car and myself the other

first pit stop: somewhere between 9 and 9:30am at the Pilot gas station at the very bottom of the NJ Tpke.

first driver switch: 11:30am Some gas station in Sailsbury, MD total drive time thus far=6 hours

TRAFFIC: 1:30pm on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel
TRAFFIC TIME: 1 hour....

second driver switch: just after the traffic...just after 2:30pm (from here its only another 1.5 hours to the OBX)

Arrive in the....TRAFFIC: just outside the OBX sometime after 4pm, there was a little congestion in between.

Get to the Reality to pick up keys to condo 5:50pm.....drive time 9 something hours.....


THEN ITS TIME TO HIT THE BEACH!!!!!!

and that was great, warm weather, nice waves. good times all around. but this is not a feel good post.


the trip home......

8-23-08
Revere: 6:15am

get to and leave the D&D: 7:10am

almost clean drivin to the Bay Bridge: 9:30 (first driver change, mom and sis take over)

moving along.....and lunch time: 11:45am (all this means is we get subway and eat in on the road, driver change back to dad and myself)

we don't change drivers again. we are in Sailsbury, Md at the very least it is 6 hours.

.....


TRAFFIC, and lots of it....


so we hit traffic upon more traffic upon more traffic


but a quick side note:

i am the only one who drives when my dad drives. following him, on any road, forget 95 or any major highway, is like following the Tazmanian Devil. He lane changes swerves and speeds at will. You have to be psyco to want to follow his ass. but i seem to get the wonderful task of doing so,

now apply this to traffic. you loose him. there is no keeping up.

so we get lost in traffic.

we change lanes more time than Micheal Jackson changes ethnicities/molested little kids (you pick), OJ Simpson was filmed driving his white truck, and Micheal Bolton wrote a terrible song, combined.

we find out that 95 is jammed with traffic, so we get off on rural route 13, to hit slow moving volume. We change back to 295, to the Garden State. Only to go back to 95 for a time. Then we hop over to 87....but MORE TRAFFIC so we change to Route 6, which only goes through ALL OF BUMBLEFUCK,....but after hours of slow driving we manage to get home at sometime after 7:30....drive time=10ish hours...with the longest being a 7 hour stint....

was it worth it?

ask me after i sleep it off...


thats it for now.