My Trip to NC

By Me

Wednesday, Feb 28, 2007

The biggest news of the day is that I actually made the flight. Or rather, that Continental actually got the plane into the air. I boarded the plane and crawled down the aisle to my seat in the back of the plane. I couldn't breathe. Here is a picture I drew of me on the plane.


A screwdriver mid-flight helped make the plane bigger.
Of course, Dollar Rent A Car didn't have the car I reserved (Why did I bother?) So I wound up with a big, red Dodge Ram pickup, complete with gun rack, spittoon and complimentary can of Skoal. Since I've been driving an Escape since trading in my Cobra nearly two years ago, it was nice to feel the testosterone flowing again.

Before arriving in NC, I was asked whose house I would be staying at - my sister's or my cousin's. Thought bubbles could be seen floating near my head as I weighed the choices. My sister's: Sounds of demons banging on garbage cans are only outdone by their black German Shepherd, Stickintheye, who barks at me incessantly. Of course, there is also their other dog, a miniature Dachshund who has lost her girlish figure and come to resemble an engorged tick. I would be sleeping on a bed of nails in the basement, adjacent my nephew's room, where he recently demonstrated his Tasering skills.

My cousin's: The sound of a chorus of harp-playing cherubs gently wafts upon your ears when you first enter the house. You're soon greeted by Casey, a soft retriever who slowly walks up to greet you, but is never pushy when seeking affection. I would have my own private suite, complete with a bed with FOUR pillows and those drape-like things that hang between the box spring and the foot of the floor. I had also heard rumors of their buxom, 28 year old neighbor who could often be seen working in the backyard - which also contained a trampoline! Hmm... decisions, decisions

I finally made it to my cousin's house around 11PM

Thursday, March 1, 2007
I learned that while being squished on the plane, the frames to my prescription sunglasses broke, so that was my first priority. I wound up finding a pair of shiny gold sunglasses that *almost* fit my lenses at Wal*Mart. I felt that, by all rights, I needed a gold tooth if I were to continue wearing these glasses as-is, so my next stop was at Lowe's, where I bought the supplies needed to sand and paint the frames black. That's better. Now I can party.
I went back to my sister's house where we engaged in a game of Chinese Checkers with Randy, whose unique gameplaying strategy had him winning the game. Soon after it started to rain, so my mother and I watched as my sister moved her ferns (three potted, one not) from the shelter of her porch out into the rain. We even let the Tick out to pee at this time. At this point, I needed to catch my breath - my sister was expecting UPS to deliver the $65 Persian rug she bought on e-bay. The house was abuzz with anticipation.

When the rug finally arrived, we spent the next hour expertly installing it in the dining room while my sister kept remarking, "I didn't know the Persian rug would be from Iran, honest." The first 55 minutes of the installation was done as we tried to work the rug into position with the dining table and chairs still in the room. We finally relented and moved the table and chars, unrolled the rug and put the furniture back in the room. 5 minutes.

I recovered from the afternoon's excitement and was looking forward to dinner at Vinni's that night. The most memorable part of dinner was watching my sister hit on our waitress for me. It was so Cyrano, without the death. Or drama. Or anyone named Roxanne that I know of. And my cousin wasn't there. Okay, it wasn't Cyrano, it was more Dude, Where's My Car?, but you get the idea.I think I dropped my card by the check before we left. Oops.

My sister drove home with me in the truck so she could bum.. um... tic-tacs off of me. You know the Universe is topsy-turvey when I'm the DD. She chain tic-tac'd until we got to her house.

Friday, March 2, 2007
Today I decided to don my Rustoleumed sunglass, pinch some Skoal and giddy up in the ole' pickup to mingle with the locals. Since I rarely travel, I knew I'd better take advantage of this opportunity to do some things that I couldn't do back in Jersey. First, I made my way over to the local Verizon store to buy a new cell charger, since mine was sitting on the seat of my car back in Newark - where I wouldn't forget to bring it. (The new charger promptly ripped the metal guts out of my cell, making it unchargeable)Next stop - Target! I was dismayed to find that this Tarjay had a men's clothing section that measured about 12' by 10'. It wasn't until I ventured through the remainder of the store and heard the chorus of angels that I realized why - they needed to make room for the liquor store section. Ah, North Carolina. On to Wal*Mart! (or Wal*Martz as my Lawn-Guyland native family members call it. Has a nice ring to it) Wal*Martz had a much better selection of my-kinda clothes... not that I needed any. Still, for $9.99 a shirt, how could I go wrong? I grabbed three of the same shirt in different colors and headed back to the ranch. There was a 2PM fern-watering on the agenda that I simply could not miss.

Friday night we went to Joker's, a dueling piano bar not too far away. It was my cousin Claire, her husband Bruce, my sister, me and one of my happenin' ten-dollah Wal*Martz shirts. I realized when we walked into the bar packed with twenty-somethings that we were officially the old couples. The "old" part didn't bother me so much as did the idea that we looked like two couples. Oh well, we sat in the back of the bar and drank Lite beer with Geritol shooters. My sister did not hit on anyone for me this night, not even our waitress, who looked about nine and probably weighed all of sixty pounds. I think her day job was playing harp at my cousin's house.
I seem to recall that we also visited my sister's NJ native friend, Karen, at some point during my four day visit. For the sake of argument, let's say it was Friday - but I can't be sure. Hell, I don't even remember who went to visit. (Friday must've been a very GOOD day) I DO know that my sister, my mother and I were there, and maybe a nephew or two. Here's my recollection of visiting NJ Karen:

My mother, sister and I are sitting at the kitchen table, along with Karen. The rest of her family, including her husband, mother, mother's boyfriend, and children are huddled standing in the corner, frightened to death by the loud, heathen clan that's invaded their sanctuary. I remember seeing rosary beads. Meanwhile, my mother tries to tell the riddle where you need to get a fox, chicken and bag of chicken feed across a river without having more than one of them in the boat at the same time. (I'm sure there was a reasonable segue into this, and she didn't just blurt it out in the middle of a discussion of the Presidential Primaries.) The only problem was, she didn't remember the three things that you needed to get across the river, so our conversation went something like this:

"Here's an old riddle. You come to a river and you've got a sheep, a duck and a penguin and you have to get them across the river."
"Ma, a sheep, a duck and a penguin?"
"Or whatever, it doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters, that's the point of the riddle."
"No it doesn't. Okay, it was a man-eating tiger, a duck and a penguin."
"If it was a man-eating tiger, there is no riddle - you're dead."
"You have to get them across the river."
"Okay, I put them in the boat and row across the river."
"No, because if you take the tiger and the penguin, the tiger will eat the penguin."
"Not if I'm there to stop it, which I wouldn't, because I'd already be dead. Since it doesn't matter what the three things are, how about we make it a deck of cards, a lamp and an emu?"
"Oh Michael, now you're being idiotic."

The conversation went on like this for some time and when it wasn't about the sheep, the duck and the penguin - it may as well have been.

Saturday, March 3, 2007
Saturday morning, my sister, mother and I headed down toward Charlotte to have breakfast at IHOP, then hit the local indoor/outdoor flea market. Upon noticing orange garbage bags scattered along the shoulder of Rt. 77, my mother commented, "Oh, the fugitives left their garbage bags. You know, the fugitives that pick up the garbage.""That's mighty conscientious of them", I said, "What with their busy lives on the run and all." That one took a moment to sink in.

That afternoon, we decided to take the Skoal truck and drive it through The Lazy 5 Ranch, which is Mooresville Carolina's version of Jungle Habitat. Or is it Mooresville's equivalent of Niagara Falls? Not because it's swarming with naive honeymooners, suiciders (like there's a difference?) and surrounded by water, but because any mention of The Lazy 5 Ranch evokes an Abbott & Costelloesque response by any relative Larry:"Slowly I turned, step by step... you're taking a rental car through Lazy 5 Ranch?..."It got to the point where one would think we were driving their testicles through a metal press."Don't worry about it - I got it covered."

Once in The Lazy Five Ranch, we proceeded through the sloooow, winding road that exposed us to all the free-range animals. First we saw a pig. Then another pig. Then we drove for a few minutes without seeing anything, but soon encountered... a pig. Then another pig. Inside the car was your driver, me, my mother, Claire in the rear passenger-side seat and my sister in the rear driver's-side seat. Three nephews and one friend-of-nephew were riding in the bed of the Skoal truck. No matter how hard I slammed on the gas or brakes, all four remained in the truck throughout the ride.

The trip finally became interesting when we encountered a herd of longhorn steer who apparently didn't have enough sense to turn their heads to the side when walking past my side view mirror. The last animal we encountered was a rhinoceros (One a them there Carolina rhinos) who surprisingly did not get pissed off when I threw animal feed at him. Name-calling didn't fare much better.
We finished the tour. It was almost 5:00. Snack Time.

Snack Time occurs every day around 4:00PM, when all cousins, sisters, brothers and mothers and degenerates-by-association get together for drinks. Not that we need an occasion. One of my fondest memories of NC is when I drove my mother over to Claire's for Snack Time. There we were, Claire waiting at the front door while my mother and I walked up the hill of her front yard - a 1.5 liter bottle of Smirnoff in ma's arms, a magnum of Cabernet in mine. Ah, family.

Sunday, March 4, 2007
I had a 6:00PM flight, so I woke up early and paced for 10 hours until it was time to go. By this time, I had STILL not seen the elusive buxom neighbor, Nessie. I had, in fact, seen an elderly couple walking up and down the street on several occasions and concluded that this is really who lived next door to my cousin. We had "snacks" one more time before I left.

Around 3:00, I began checking the status of my flight online. The first check showed: Delayed, 6:30 PM.
Around 4:00 it showed: Delayed, 7:00PM. At 5:00, it was: Delayed, 7:20PM. And by 5:30: Delayed 6:30. Huh? As far as I was concerned, undelaying a flight is against the rules, but in any case, it was time to go. I hopped into the Dodge Ram, pinched my last bit of Skoal, threw on the Rustoleum shades, waved goodbye and drove off into the North Carolina Sunset.

Everything went surprising well from that point forward. The drive from Mooresville to the airport in Charlotte was uneventful. Finding Dollar Rent A Car was surprisingly easy. There was a shuttle from Dollar to the airport ready to go in no time. We were within the first 200 flights on line to take off on the runway, unlike departing from Newark. We landed upright, and my luggage appeared on the carousel by the time I reached it. The only mishap turned out to be a pleasant experience. I was parked in Cheapo Parking lot P6, and waited at the shuttle bus stop outside the terminal marked "P6, P7". I got on the first bus to come by and headed for the long term parking lots.
Now, you may think that given their names, P6 and P7 are next to each other, but in reality, they are a good mile or two apart. As it turns out, the bus I got onto zoomed past P6 and was an express to P7.
I heard the driver make an announcement:
"hrfus scwhiggam zerrrb brrrip"
Huh?
In a few minutes, the bus was empty of all passengers except for me and we were headed for the exit gate.
I mentioned to the driver that I was in P6, so she naturally stopped the bus and kicked me out. According to her, the actual lot destination is clearly marked on each bus tire, right next to the maximum tire inflation PSI. My mistake. There I stood, 10:30 at night, dragging my Swiss Army luggage through a vast Newark parking lot. Suddenly a woman in a white minivan asked me where I needed to be.
"I got on the bus thinking it would go to P6 but it went to P7."
"Happens all the time. C'mon, I'll give you a ride."
I threw my luggage in the minivan as we zoomed through the back roads from P7 to P6. I related my "Terminal C" story. She begged me to write the airline.
Telling this angelic minivan-driving woman the general area of my car did not suffice – she dropped me off AT my car and made sure I got in okay.
Would it be too much to ask for her to be in charge of flight scheduling, luggage retrieval and everything else to do with air travel? I guess so.
But she was a good end to a good trip.