It is, however, very much part of the travelling.

Let me begin today’s post by telling you this simple fact:  last night was awesome!

Last night, we were all in bed by 9:00.  Soon after that, the fun began.

At about 10:00, the room was quiet except for the window rattling due to my better half’s snoring.  I was lying in there, admiring the silent bits between the snores when all of a sudden, to my surprise, out of the clear blue skies… the hallway exploded in the sounds of children laughing, talking and playing.  They sounded so happy, so joyful and carefree. 

So rude.

No, seriously, they were shouting four-letter words at each other, and I’m not talking about words like “food” or “love” or “cake” or “mama.”  Finally, after a few minutes of this, I couldn’t take it anymore.  So I got up and opened the door to yell –

– and they were gone.

It was as if they sensed that I was coming to yell at them and they hurried to hide in the shadowy doorways, behind the potted fichus tree or under the ice machine.  Or maybe their parents finally stopped them. 

Figuring they were gone, I closed and locked the door and went back to bed.  As soon as I closed my eyes, they were back. This time they were playing with a super ball, throwing it up and down the hallway and exclaiming at the ball’s crazy bounces.  When the ball hit my door and stopped nearby, the kids ran to it, giggling as they wrestled for it.  I got up again, intent on yelling “Get off my lawn you crazy kids!” or something to that effect.  Whipping open the door, I looked out into the hall to find it empty once again.

Now, I’m not saying this hotel is haunted or anything, but clearly I was either losing my mind or there was some other-worldly prank being played on me.  I closed the door, muttering some of the four-letter words I had learned earlier, and went back to bed.  Soon after, the kids were back, wearing out their ballet slippers despite the fact that their daddy had locked them in their rooms.

Wait… that’s “The 12 Dancing Princesses” not “The Story of the Day Zero (Reprise) Sleep Study” story.  The kids weren’t dancing, they were playing. And clearly, they were not locked in their rooms.  But this time I was wise to them.  This time I knew what was going on.

This time I stayed in bed and said, “There are no kids in the hall; they are simply a manifestation of my mind’s own hatred of the chaos of traveling.  They will not prevent me from having coffee.”

Repeating this over and over again, I felt a wave of calm wash over me.  There would be coffee.  All would be fine.

The kids continued playing and I eventually drifted off to sleep. I woke up to talking and giggling out in the hall several times over night, but I was able to roll over and go back to sleep.  The funny thing is, Ginny, Rosa and Nick all slept through it.

Sometimes I hate being a light sleeper…

Anyway, I woke up this morning slightly less refreshed than I might have liked to have felt, but energized to get home to the garden, the pets and the friends and family I knew were eagerly awaiting our return. Oh, and the reliable, fast Verizon Fios internet – I was looking forward to that, too.

So we packed up most of our stuff and went down to the continental breakfast.  I must say, Holiday Inn Express provides one of the better free breakfasts I’ve had in hotels. There are usually eggs or omelets, juices, toast, coffee, yogurt and Danishes or muffins.  Oh and bacon – there’s usually a lot of bacon.

But today, if you wanted bacon, I hope you got there to the breakfast before The Bacon Lady.  The Bacon Lady, apparently, decided that the majority of the bacon was for her, so she loaded up her plate with a huge pile of the fried pig fat.  Then, as she turned, a bunch of it slid off her plate and fell to the floor.  So, what did she do?  That’s right – she stepped over it and turned back to replace that which she had dropped.  Then she went to her table.

Now, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned this incident at all except that she never went to pick up the bacon she dropped; she just left it there, oozing slippery grease and porcine juices onto the tile floor.  I *might* have even let her slide on this except she then proceeded to not eat the pile of bacon she brought to the table.

Does she not have any respect?  Does she not understand how many good pigs laid down their lives so that she could have the opportunity and joy of ingesting their tender, highly salted and fried flesh?  Did she not understand that her wastefulness will, ultimately, drive up the price of my next stay at a Holiday Inn Express?

Well, now she does, for when The Bacon Lady reads this (and you know she will, eventually, read this golden bit of literary genius), she will know of the eternal shame and dishonor she has brought upon herself and her descendants for generations to come.

Way to go, Bacon Lady.

So.

Where was I?

Oh.  Right.  We finished breakfast, leaving nothing on our plates of course and then we loaded up the car.  Finally, we set off on the last leg of our journey home.

Once again, the drive itself was reasonably simple and uneventful.  We stopped at our requisite four or five restrooms, the kids watched movies – it was all good. We have some interesting stories from the rest areas, though.

First up is the one where I went to get my travel mug filled at Starbucks.  I got to the front of the line, placed my order and handed the barista my mug.  You may recall from last year that I stopped at a Starbucks on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and they refused to fill my mug.  Since this was a different Starbucks on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and since another year of enlightened environmental learning had taken place, I figured that they would be happy to fill my mug.

And I was right!

The nice barista smiled as she took my mug. Then she took a paper coffee cup and filled it with coffee. This completed, she then poured the coffee from the paper cup into my mug.  “Don’t worry, ” she said as she handed me my now-filled mug.  “I’ll use the other cup for the next customer. I’m sure you understand.”

Well, thanks for assuming, but no – I do not understand why you had to use a middle cup to fill my mug. But I suppose I do understand now why I didn’t get the travel-mug discount like I was supposed to.  Thanks for clarifying that for me. 

At least she didn’t put a plastic lid on the paper cup before pouring the coffee into my mug.

The second event was far more traumatic, largely because it impacted my family.  It’s one thing to mess with my brain; it’s another thing to mess with me and my kids.  Oh and with my wife, too.

See, we were hungry.  So, we stopped to use the restroom, of course.  That done, we were still hungry, so we decided to get some crappy turnpike rest stop pizza.  So, I ordered 4 of them, much to the dismay of the zit-faced teenager behind the counter.  He took my money and said it would be a few minutes, so I waited. And waited. And waited. And then, for fun, I waited some more.  That accomplished, I happily took the four tiny pizza boxes that had cost me $24 and went to the table to which my starving family had staked a claim.  We opened our respective boxes and took a bite of the pizza… and it was still frozen.  The edges were warm and the cheese was sort of melted, but the bread was still frozen.  So, I took it all back and asked the kid to reheat them. He was annoyed, but he did it. After he gave them back, they were, in fact, warmer than room temperature, but they were not hot.  We ate them anyway because we were hungry and in a hurry.  But it was certainly less than satisfying.

Back in the car, we were able to laugh about the incident, but it was no less annoying, despite the laughter.  Nevertheless, we finally made it home.  The animals were happy to see us.  The garden was happy to see me.  My sister-in-law, who had spent the week living in our house to take care of things, was happy to not have to deal with the spiders anymore.

And just like that, it was all, officially and unofficially, over. We had a good time out there in Illinois, but we were happy to be home in New Jersey, to sleep in our own beds, to look forward to getting up in the middle of the night to take Doolittle outside.  I don’t think we’ll be going back to this place in Sheridan, but that’s mostly because of the distance. We can find other ways to be off the beaten path much closer to home and, probably, with internet access.

I think we’ve already decided we’re going back to Massanutten next year. I’m sure you can tell how excited I am to travel again in a year or so.  But for now I’ll resign myself to traveling the long commute each day from my house down to the dungeon. That’s certainly enough excitement for me for a while!

It was bright and sunny when I awoke on this glorious Friday morning. The birds were chirping their happy songs, singing about their thankfulness for the rains which had made the worms fatten up and come to the surface.  Songs about the sunshine warming their backs.  Songs about the girl birds they didn’t get because the girl bird’s daddy didn’t like their songs about sunshine and earthworms (these are country birds, after all). 

I whistled quietly as he walked into the kitchen to brew up some coffee for the morning’s breakfast. Ginny and the kids happily joined him at the breakfast table and smiled.

“Father,” said Nick, “I wanted to thank you for providing such a wonderful vacation this year.”

“Yes, father,” nodded Rosa, the sunshine reflecting off her clean, white, perfect teeth.  “And thank you for getting breakfast together for us, Daddy, allowing us a few extra minutes to sleep in our warm, comfortable beds.”

“Why, you’re very welcome, children,” I said, pouring some soy milk onto my cereal.

Everyone looked at Ginny, sitting at her spot by the table.

“Growl, gurgle, grr, growl, grr,” she said, which loosely translated means “Yeah, thanks. Why’d you make me get up so early? Where’s my tea?”

The tea, of course, was on the table, in front of her. I blew gently toward it and the gently-rising steam wafted toward Ginny. As the smooth aroma entered her nostrils, she smiled.

And there was rejoicing throughout Sheridan, Illinois at Ginny’s new-found happiness.

Okay, okay… none of that really happened. I mean, there was breakfast that included soy milk and cereal.  There was tea.  But there wasn’t a lot of smiling. Ginny did say “Growl, gurgle, grr, growl, grr,” but that’s what she always says so we didn’t really think anything of it.

The truth is, we were all a little sad.  The vacation was officially done – all over but the driving. We hurried through our breakfast ant then set to finish packing and cleaning up what needed to be cleaned up and thrown out.  I packed our bags into the trunk, setup the laptop for movie viewing in the back seat and found space for our large amount of recyclables and compost.

Yes, even on vacation we compost and recycle. I just wish we didn’t have to transport the recycling across state lines like this – recycling should be available and required everywhere!

But that’s a rant for a different post, I believe.

Everything in the car, I did one final check to make sure we didn’t leave anything behind. Finding nothing, we left, turning in our keys at the front desk. It was a this point when the internet was, apparently, restored, because the “No internet access until further notice” sign was removed as I stood in line to return the keys.  I asked and my girlfriend Angela informed me that it was fixed early that morning.

Go figure.

Anyway, we drove off, sad to be leaving but happy to be headed home to our fresh garden veggies, our beloved pets, friends and family who clearly missed us and our working, reliable internet.

It was a few minutes into the drive when we realized what we had forgotten: we forgot to get a few souvenirs.  We had gotten most of the ones we needed for folks who were helping us out, but a few people we never found anything for. We had intended to stop at a local shop and get stuff, but we never got out to the shops.  I will not state the names of the people who got rest-area souvenirs on the grounds that they might hurt me. And I will never tell.  Never!

The drive today was, for the most part, uneventful and dull.  If you’ve seen flat land, you’ve seen the areas of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio through which we drove today.

We arrived in the vicinity of our hotel, the same one we stayed in on Day Zero, and we went straight to the local Subway shop to get dinner, thereby circumventing any hemming and hawing about where to go. We checked into the hotel and went to our room, at which point the kids proclaimed that they were not going to swim in that pool again because it was too cold and too green.  I tried to convince them that a little algae was good for their skin, but they didn’t buy it.

So, we ate our salads on buns. I checked my email, finding 120 or so new messages since the coffee shop yesterday afternoon.  We didn’t watch TV because this hotel inexplicably has no kid-friendly channels.  By 9:00 we were in bed and by 9:02, Ginny was snoring loudly.  It was, as you can see, an exciting evening.

But that’s tomorrow.

Today is now and today I am on vacation so I’m going to let tomorrow worry about tomorrow while I worry about getting internet access.  Yes, yes, I’m still on about the stupid internet. I need to get this stuff to my editor!

So, I marched back down to the activity center and demanded the location of the nearest internet café.  One wide-eyed young lady smiled at me and said she could help. her angelic voice soothed my internet-starved soul, calming me like a choir singing famous Barry Manilow or Air Supply tunes might do.

Well, okay, that’s a terrible analogy because a choir singing “Copa Cabana” or “Making Love out of Nothing at All” would irritate me quite a bit.

See? This internet withdrawal has taken away my ability to make good analogies. This has never happened to me before. No, really. I’m really embarrassed. If this happens to other guys, then I hope there’s a little blue pill for it soon, because this is terrible.

So where was I?

Oh, the lovely young lady, I’ll call her Angela because:

1. it’s a girl’s name
2. it starts with “Angel”
3. she said those angelic words: “I can help you.”

So, Angela says, “There’s a coffee shop the next town over.  They have free internet. Here, let me get you directions.” 

Now all of the maleness in me cried out to tell her that I’m a man and I don’t need no stinkin’ directions, but I resisted this because I didn’t want to derail my impending internet fix. Angela returned, smiling at me, with a paper that contained directions to the next town. I thanked her, stopping short of planting a big, sloppy kiss on her because, well, I’m sure she just saw me as some creepy old dude and therefore it would have been inappropriate. 

Anyway, directions in hand, I skipped back to the timeshare. Okay, so I walked, but I was skipping on the inside. I explained my adventure to Ginny and the kids and they were visibly underwhelmed.  Disappointing as this was, I got them moving and we had some lunch. We decided to play our miniature golf game later and Rosa decided to join me on the trek to Internet-land.  Nick and Ginny decided to play some tennis and swim while we were gone.

Rosa and I set off after dropping the other ones off at the tennis courts. We drove. And drove. And drove some more. Apparently what Angela forgot to tell me was that the next town was 40 minutes away.  But whatever, we came into town and found a parking spot near a movie theater. I’m not certain that we were parked in a place we were allowed to park – the signs are so different out West – but all’s well that end’s well, right?  No parking ticket means it was a legal spot as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, we went into the coffee shop, a wide-open place with a few tables in it and fewer customers.  Rosa helpfully pointed to the “Wireless available” sign in the window. I feel guilty using someone else’s wireless without buying something, so I bought myself a coffee. Rosa got all doe-eyed or puppy dog eyed as I ordered, so obviously I had to get her something, too. I was going to do so anyway, but for some reason she seemed to think otherwise.  The drinks were made, or poured as the case may be, and we sat down at a table right in the middle of the store. I figured I wanted to ensure that my poor, internet-deprived laptop would get as much of a jolt of wireless juice as possible. 

Booting up, I was met with the lovely message that internet connections were available and I clicked on it with glee. Then I watched in a combination of joy and horror as Microsoft Outlook proceeded to download 1200+ new emails.

1200.

Plus.

And that wasn’t including the spam.

I skimmed the subject lines and picked out the ones I could dismiss outright.  Then I picked out the ones from my editor who was worried that I’d dropped off the face of the earth.  I read through the Facebook notices from people who were missing my witty banter, but decided not to reply to them all at this point, just because I didn’t want to get absorbed into Facebook for hours on end.

I sent out my three Chinese Whisperings documents and responded to several urgent work-related items. Before I knew it, two hours had passed. Rosa didn’t care, really, because she was reading.  But I figured I should trek back to the timeshare – I mean, there was a critical mini-golf event awaiting our return!

Forty minutes later, we were back near the resort.  Ever the man of efficiency, I stopped at the gas station to fill up ahead of our long drive tomorrow, saving us a critical 13 minutes in the morning. We then went back to the resort, waved to the security guard who may or may not have noticed us at all, and went to the pool.

Collecting Nick and Ginny, we went into the activity center to get golf clubs and balls.  While waiting for the requisite restroom visits, I watched a lady walk over toe the plastic ware to get a knife. She violently grabbed one knife and pulled it out, knocking five more out and onto the ground as she did so.  She then grabbed thirteen ketchup packages (or so), dropping several more of them onto the ground as she yanked her greedy, clumsy hand away from the bin.  Once again, she didn’t pick them up.  She did, however, stare at them for a few seconds before using her foot to push the packets over toward the corner. I’m sure she did this to prevent any ketchup-related accidents.  She’s so thoughtful.

We collected our golf equipment and went out to play.  Suddenly, Rosa and Ginny decided they didn’t feel like playing, so they headed back to the timeshare to pack.  But we had already taken four balls and four clubs, so Nick and I did what any self-respecting miniature golfer would do – we decided to play as though there were four of us playing.  So, we played for ourselves as well as for the girls.  Our plan was to keep the best scores for ourselves and then assign the lower scores to the girls as punishment for breaking our Unbreakable Golf Tradition.  We used their clubs and balls for what would be their turns. As it turned out, we didn’t need to fudge anything – the scores ended up being very similar to what we all scored normally, so we just kept them as played.  The scores were:

If you review the scores from previous Events, you’ll note that these are reasonably consistent with past performance.  Must be something about the clubs and balls chosen by each player.

We returned our clubs and went back to the timeshare to help with the packing.  Well, “help” is a relative term where packing is concerned; with packing, I help by staying out of the way and letting Ginny do it.  I pack the bags into the car, she packs the stuff into the bags and we all live happily ever after.

Tonight’s entertainment was “Prince Caspian”, another great selection.  Then, after the kids were in bed, we finished off the wine and our current season of “Heroes”.  Then it was off to bed with visions of highway construction (aka Indiana) dancing in my head.

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

We came to learn that the reason the internet was down was that lines and satellite dishes were damaged in the storms the other night. At least that was their excuse. I thought about yelling and screaming at them, but I stopped.  First of all, these kids are just doing their summer jobs; they have no power to actually fix the internet problems and, right or wrong, the information they were being given was all they could regurgitate to me

Besides… I’m on vacation, damn it!  I’m relaxing!  I’m sure it’s obvious by now that when I’m relaxing, I don’t let anything bother me.  That’s obvious, right? 

Right?

Fine.  Don’t answer.  I don’t need you to validate or judge my relaxation abilities or my patented Strategic Technique for Relaxation, Enjoyment, Sun and Sanity method of relaxation (it’s called the STRESS method for short).  The STRESS method is known throughout the world and if people would just listen to what I tell them to do, it would be highly successful and profitable. 

Anyway, once we finished breakfast, we watched a lot of Harry Potter extras from the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone DVD.  Have I mentioned how much I despise the silly games and hoops some DVDs make you jump through to get to the extras?  I mean, come on – why do I have to tap the correct bricks in the correct order to get into Diagon Alley so that I can watch the deleted scenes? Didn’t I buy my way into Diagon Alley when I plopped down my wizard gold and bought the DVD?  Oh, and, the pompous jerk who’s voice is the narrator on the DVD and makes fun of me for tapping the wrong brick deserves to meet Voldemort in a dark alley on one of the Dark Lord’s bad days, perhaps after a night out on an evil wizarding bender or something.

While the kids watched the extras, I busied myself by catching not one, but two flies in my hand. You have to admit – that’s a good skill to have. 

Anyway, after what felt like an eternity of these extras, we headed down for our penultimate miniature golf extravaganza. Similar to the prior days, club swinging and chest thumping ensued.  Our scores were:

Anyone paying attention to these pretty tables of results will notice one important fact:  I’m not getting any better at this.

But who’s keeping track anyway?

Next we had lunch in the activity center.  Wow, what a horrible meal.  We had grilled cheese and fries with a soda. It cost me about as much as those famous hammers the military bought cost the US Government for this meal.  Perhaps I’m just a snooty consumer, spoiled by my use of whole grain breads and quality cheeses.  This sandwich was made on a cheap knock-off of Wonder Bread.  On the bright side, I *think* there was some kind of cheese on the bread, though it might have been nacho cheese sauce or perhaps spray cheese.

After lunch, we decided to go swimming, but to do so at the indoor pool.  I figured we’d be best served giving the pool chemicals another day to work on the puke from yesterday.  Plus all the drunks and little kids who were swallowing the pool water were helping to filter out whatever might have been left over.

Once up to the indoor pool area, we decided to go canoeing instead of swimming. Nick had resisted this option when we suggested it earlier in the week, but today we convinced him to give it a try.  If he didn’t like it, we wouldn’t make him do it again.

So, we got the canoe and put on the required life jackets (funny how motorcycle helmets don’t seem to be required here, but life jackets are).  All set, we pushed out into the lake and started paddling. Not long after we started, Nick informed us that he loved it.  I knew of knew that was going to happen.

Sadly, not long after Nick’s acknowledgement of pleasure with canoeing, the thunder clouds started rolling in.  So, we had to get back to shore and go inside. I thought the dude running things there was going to have a coronary as he jumped and waved and shouted for us to come in.  Dude! Relax!  We’re on vacation!

It became clear that my wife and kids weren’t going to follow my lead and pretend not to hear the dude, so we packed it in; canoeing was done.  Swimming was out due to the storm, too.  So we did what anyone on a lazy vacation would do – we went to the car and pulled out the New Jersey Nets basketball.  Nick and I played some one-on-one, a friendly game, of course, but I beat him again.  I may be old, fat and bitter, but I still got game, you.

Soaked from sweat and the rain that started coming down in buckets, we decided to go back to the villa and call it an early day. Once back in the villa, the TV came on and, after a while we watched the Narnia movie. Because Aslan, I mean the kids, wanted us to watch it.

The evening ended with “Heroes” once again.  Because it’s just cool.

So, I journeyed to that crib and I let myself inside… sorry, went to a Tone Loc place there for a second; all better now… So, I went inside the Activity Center and was met by a big, ugly monster with fangs, horns and blood dripping from its rotten, fetid mouth. 

Ahem.  I mean, there was a sign. With words on it. And the words were:

No Internet Access until further notice.

I stared at the sign for awhile, trying to digest the meaning.  No internet?  Really? Next thing they’ll tell me is that we don’t have flying cars, unicorns or sustainable energy policies.

Wait.  We don’t have those.

But we should have them and we should have internet!  It’s a biological need, right up there with the need for hot coffee, broccoli and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Seriously – how could there be no internet?

I asked questions in my best good cop/bad cop kind of way. I begged.  I fell to my knees and I cried and cried.  But nothing changed the words on the sign. 

Nothing.

Spent from the massive emotional trauma I had  just endured, I slithered back to the villa.  The kids were watching TV and Ginny was asleep, so they had no sympathy for me and my plight.  Thank goodness my coffee was still hot.  I *finally* figured out the little missing detail I needed to make the story work.  The best friend… I knew there was something she was hiding!

Nick decided he wanted to take on Ginny in some tennis.  So they headed down to the courts and played a set. Nick won, 6 games to 4.  If you ask Ginny, she’ll tell you that the match was closer than that score.  If you ask Nick, he’ll tell you that he schooled her.  Having seen Nick’s mad skillz with the tennis racket yesterday, I would tend to believe his opinion of it. Apparently, whenever he’d lose a point, he’d get angry, though, so this is something we’re going to have to work on.

Mid-morning, we went down for our daily miniature golf battle. It was yet another hard-fought clash of mini-golfing wanabees, but we survived it with good sportsmanship and will live to exist as a family for another day.  Today’s scores were:

After golf, we decided to hit the pool. So we wandered to the outdoor pool we’ve frequented this week.  Walking up, we found it to be empty.  Getting closer, we found it to be closed.  I assumed it was due to the lack of internet, since everything seems to be internet-connected these days. But apparently, it was actually closed due to the fact that someone got sick in it.

Today’s public service announcement is:  There’s a reason they say you shouldn’t eat for 40 minutes before you get in the pool.  You should listen to this advice.  Thanks for the consideration.

Note how I changed that to a friendly blue color to make the message come across more appropriately.

Luckily, we had another option for pools – the indoor pool slightly up the road.  So we wandered up there.  It was, of course, crowded, since someone couldn’t hold their lunch, but there was plenty of space anyway. The pool was nice, but we preferred the outdoor one, I think.

The neat thing about the indoor pool was that it had strong jets running down the center of the pool.  They were really strong and that made it fun to play with them.  Note that I did say “fun”.  For those who don’t know, the rule in my house is:  “No Fun – for fun leads to head injuries.”  And I was having fun swimming in and around the jets. Until I swam into one of the jets and it hurt my eye. 

But don’t worry.  I can see clearly now, the pain is gone.

Okay, that was dumb. Now I’ve got Johnny Nash stuck in my head.  Thanks for making me do that. Really.

We headed back down to the Activity Center and borrowed movies again. Tonight’s selections were “Air Buddies” and “Spy Kids.”  By the time we got back to the villa, Rosa decided she didn’t want to watch “Spy Kids” even though she selected it.  All sorts of angst, whining and overly-emotional dismay ensued.

So we watched “Air Buddies”.  It was a cute movie, but I kept getting stuck on how much freedom the dogs had to move about the country.  I mean, to get all the places they went, I’d have to get a passport or at least pay an extra baggage fee.  But other than my old, bitter, grumpiness, I enjoyed the movie.

Over dinner, we watched the first Harry Potter movie, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”. It was as good now as it was when we first saw it.  Not as good as the book, of course, but a really good movie nonetheless.

Once the kids were in bed, we settled in for some wine and adult activities.  In this context, “adult activity” means:  we watched some episodes of “Heroes.”  Yeah, we’re wild and crazy like that.

–>

So, I made my morning coffee and settled in to write.  Words, so often my friends, have been failing me lately, but even so I’ve been able to get some to flow onto the page.  Apparently, though, my life-long struggles to write about myself continue and I struggled greatly with my bio.  Who’d have thought that writing approximately 100 words could take so long?  I mean, I can usually bang out a thousand words or more in thirty minutes – even faster on a good day!  But tell me to write about myself and, well, it’s like I’ve never written or spoken a single word in my life.  This is why I never changed jobs despite being miserable for a long time at my old company – I didn’t know how write the cover letter!  And the resume – limit me to a few bullet points and I am dead in the water!

But I digress.

Ultimately, I got my bio written.  To do this, I used one of my secret writing tricks.  Now, clearly, I can’t tell you my secret technique for extracting intimate details from such a stoic person as Rob Diaz; if I did, I’d probably have to make you read my bio and that, my friends, is torture – even illegal in some parts of the world.  But I suppose I can safely tell you that it involves me creating a fictional Rob Diaz and setting him in a blindingly bright room with a bowl of pureed bacon, a box of shrimp-flavored donuts and a crazed Phillies fan who thinks he’s Jack Bauer.  The Jack wannabe will torment this fictional Rob Diaz while playing Justin Bieber’s greatest hits on repeat play (and at maximum volume).  And if fictional Rob still refuses to talk, his interrogator partner-in-biography will cut off his –

You know… I should stop.  I mean, it’s not cool to see a grown man cry, right?  Especially over his – coffee—being cut off in a fictional biographical world. Right?  Tell me you wouldn’t want to see this happen.  Tell me!

Ahem.

Well, let’s just end with me reassuring you that the bio got extracted written and we moved on with the day.

Next up was some tennis.  Nick has been playing tennis for the past couple of summers and he is actually quite good at it. He has been looking forward to playing against me for a while because he wanted to soundly defeat me at it.  The trouble is – he didn’t realize or remember that I was a half-way decent athlete in my day. And, I work out every day at the gym, so what I have lost to the aging process has been somewhat minimized.

The score of our match is… unimportant. Nick learned a valuable lesson today about good sportsmanship – at least I hope he did.  I tried to teach him how to step up when his game was failing him, too… little tricks to fight through the game when things aren’t going smoothly.  I’m not sure if he learned that or not as he focused more on how tilted the court was in my favor.

Now, before anyone paints me as an awful, evil parent, let me explain that Nick is very, very competitive. He makes everything a competition – seriously, he’s a competitive tooth brushing champion!  What this means s he always wants to win, no matter what. But what it also means is that he does not want anyone to go easy on him. And trust me: he can sniff out anyone who isn’t giving their all.  So, as upset as Nick got at losing our match, he was even more upset when I backed off a little for a few games. He was actually yelling at me for missing shots if he detected anything that made it look like I wasn’t giving my all.

So, I played well in order to show him respect.  Really!

After tennis, we went back to the timeshare and collected the laundry. I figured I’d do the laundry in the coin-op by the activity center and work on my Chinese Whisperings stuff, check my email for work, etc. Ginny and the kids went to the pool to relax and play.

Let me tell you – these have to be the slowest washers and dryers on the planet.  They took forever to run. It didn’t help that one was broken and another set was full of someone else’s laundry.

Let me digress (again) for a moment. As a public service announcement, let me remind you that you shouldn’t leave your laundry unattended in a public laundry room.  You never know when someone might slip, trip or fall, accidentally spilling a bottle of bleach on your fine, silk underwear.  And if you leave them in the dryer, they might end up in a pile on the floor, over in that corner where the cleaning staff appears to be afraid to go.

Not that I’d ever do that to someone on vacation. We’re all friends here, right? I’m just making a friendly suggestion about proper laundry etiquette, that’s all.  Besides, I don’t use bleach.  And it is none of your business if I might have tried on the silk undies.  I will neither confirm nor deny the internet rumors about this.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, right – in the laundry room with my trusty laptop.  My plan was to email my Chinese Whisperings bio to my editor. Of course, the internet was not working properly, connecting and disconnecting faster than germs flew out of the nose and mouth of the kid who sneezed on me while I was sitting in the laundry room getting nothing done because the internet wasn’t working. It’s times like these when I wonder how anyone ever got anything done in the days before widespread internet capabilities. Sadly, I’m old enough to remember working before widespread use of computers at all – but still I don’t seem able to pull off getting anything done now that I’m addicted to used to having the internet all the time.

Eventually, the laundry finished, with “finished” being a relative term because I didn’t feel like paying another $2.00 to start the dryer again. After putting all the clean, only slightly damp clothes in the car, I joined the family by the pool.

After splashing around for a bit, we went for the daily cutthroat game of miniature golf. Our results today were:

Aside from Rosa’s rough outing, you’ll note that our scores from today are very similar to yesterday’s scores. So, we’re consistently bad.  And I always say there’s something to be said about consistency.

Worn out, we decided to borrow some movies from the activity desk because the 4,327,922,125 movies we brought with us (give or take 4,327,922,100 or so) were not sufficient to provide entertainment for us n our fourth day away from home.  So we borrowed “Underdog” and “Muppets Take Manhattan” and headed back to the villa.

Both movies were actually pretty good. “Underdog” surprised me just because it looked like it would be kind of dumb.  And the Muppets… well, you can’t go wrong with the Muppets!

But watching “Muppets Take Manhattan” got me to thinking – I think the next show Cross Creek Players puts on should be “Manhattan Melodies”, the musical within the movie.  I’m thinking I’d be a shoo-in for the role of Miss Piggy and, I’m sure it would be a smash hit!  So, note to the Cross Creek Players’ decision makers:  Manhattan Melodies as a follow-up to The Music Man.  Trust me – it will be huge!

What?  That’s still weather, even if it’s not a big bad windy and wet storm, isn’t it?

Anyway, it was planned to be a somewhat lazy and laid-back day.  Partly that’s because I don’t feel like driving 40 minutes or more just to get to civilization. Partly it’s because I have some editing and reflection pieces to write for Chinese Whisperings.  Partly it’s because it’s vacation, gosh darn it, and we’re supposed to be lazy and resting!

So, I spent the morning lamenting the lack of internet in the villas.  I had things to send to my editor, stuff to do for work and a general addiction to email, so this missing feature of the resort was causing me some stress.  People think I’m addicted to coffee, and while that may be true, I get far more withdrawal symptoms from a lack of internet than I do from a lack of coffee.

So, each of us had a good morning.  I wrote and had some coffee. The kids watched TV and movies. Ginny slept.  I suppose, in a way, this is exactly what we each wanted to do with our vacations.

A little before lunch, we wandered over to the recreation center and borrowed some clubs and balls to play miniature golf.  We play some cutthroat, no holds barred miniature golf, so there was taunting and chanting and name calling.  Okay, so maybe I did most of the taunting and chanting and name calling, but the rest of them allowed me to do it so they are part of it.  besides, if I’ve learned anything from watching news coverage of Little League coaches, or from watching that scene from the movie “Miracle” where the hockey players are throwing up all over the ice, it’s that yelling and screaming at people always results in better performance.  But you can be the judge.  I’ll post our daily scores so you can see how it goes.

But I fear I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

Before we went to play miniature golf, we had an eventful, laid back morning.  Except for the burner that got left on on the stove and the locked bathroom door behind which there was no one to unlock it… it was rather dull.

The burner being left on was exciting.  We have an electric stove in our villa. The burner was on high. I don’t know what made me realize it was on. Maybe I saw the smoke. Maybe I felt the wasted electricity burning a deep mark of doom into my soul. Whatever it was, I caught it before it melted the frying pan in which we had made grilled chees sandwiches.  I did not catch it before the house filled with smoke, though. I like to think I caught it just before the smoke detector sounded the alarm and brought the Chicago fire department and hour and a half out of their way to save us… but I suppose the smoke detectors could have just been decorative; things really are different out in the far west here in the Chicago region.  But not as different as they are in the south…

Anyway, all the ceiling fans got turned on, windows and doors were opened and soon enough the smoke had cleared. So we decided to go swimming and play miniature golf.

That’s when we discovered the bathroom was locked.

Apparently, Mr. Nick decided it would be exciting to lock it.  He forgot, or didn’t know, that unlocking a bathroom door from the outside isn’t easy.  Eventually, I tired of hearing the naysayers among my family(read: all of them) who had decided I couldn’t unlock the door and that I needed to call maintenance.  So, I sent them away to start swimming without me.

Now I must admit that I had my doubts about my ability to unlock this door. I simply didn’t have the right tools for the job. It took me about 45 minutes and several attempts to take my car apart looking for any sort of tool I might use, but I finally got it unlocked!  In the end, I had to find a pen with a sturdy ink well/tube/thingy in it. I took about 20 pens apart but eventually found one I could use to pop the little spring release inside the door knob, freeing the towel and goggles from their bathroom imprisonment.  I was their hero (the goggles’ and towels’ hero, that is)!

Pleased with my victory over the evil forces of door locks, I headed out to join my loving, supportive family at the pool. We swam and frolicked for a while.  Well, I didn’t “frolic” because I am a man, but I did stoically enjoy the pool.

After the pool, we played the first game of miniature golf for this vacation.  Now that you’re caught up, here are the results:

I never said any of us were actually any good at this game…

Competitively drained, we walked back to our timeshare.  The girls went in and did whatever it is that girls do when boys are not around.  Nick and I took the baseball and gloves out to play catch and let Nick practice his pitching.  I am sure he has gained another 5 mph on his fast ball since the spring!  And, even more important, he has maintained his accuracy while increasing that speed.  He is pretty incredible!

The rest of he day sped by pretty uneventfully.  The kids watched some TV, Ginny read and I worked on some more of my Chinese Whisperings commitments.  Over dinner we watched “Bedtime Stories” which was fun. 

During the movie, I received a text message in which Rosa was offered a part in the chorus for “The Music Man.”  I was offered the part of Mayor Shinn!  We are both very excited to have gotten parts. I’ll never know if my part might have been different if I had been home for callbacks, but I do like the role I was offered.  Rosa and I can’t wait to start rehearsals!

All-in-all, it was a good day with just enough stress to keep it real.  Keeping it real is what I’m all about, after all.

The voices were shaking the room as the boom box started playing the first notes of my karaoke track, almost derailing me from hitting the first word of the song (“Patchin’” if you’re curious as to what that first word is.”).  “You should have filled in the part you wanted on the proscribed line on the audition form,” boomed one voice. “You probably shouldn’t be singing an audition song about compost,” roared another.

I have no idea why I’d be having a dream about this last night as opposed to, say, last week right before or after the actual audition.  Maybe I’m subconsciously worrying that being away for the callbacks will hurt my chances of getting a part in the show or maybe I’m just nervously awaiting the announcements of roles on Monday.  In the end, I just want the show to be successful and if the best role for me to help the show toward that end is for me to be well-hidden back stage or in Wisconsin, then that’s the part for me!

But I’m on vacation, so I don’t have time for regrets.  Worrying is one thing – worrying is what I do best!  But regrets?  I’ve got no time for them.

Today’s big vacation agenda item is a trip into Chicago, the Windy City, where we have tickets to see a Cubs game at Wrigley Field.  As big baseball fans, Wrigley Field is one of those places you’re supposed to go, one of those shrines in baseball that no self-respecting fan of the game could miss going to when only 75 miles away.  So, since we were coming all the way out here, I picked up some over-priced tickets from Stubhub and got everyone excited to see some exciting baseball between two teams we couldn’t care less about: the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Of course, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, it was stormy when I woke up.  Rain, thunder, lightning and wind were pounding against or rattling or brightening our Villa.  I wandered into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, to help fight off the dreary morning and my increasing fear that the game would be cancelled.  As I set foot into the kitchen, my bare feet discovered some cold squishiness.  I looked down and found water bubbling up through the tiles in the floor.  It wasn’t a lot of water, but there was enough to darken the morning just a little bit more.  I watched the weather on four different local stations and the Weather Channel.  It was all about the rain and the flooding throughout the Chicago area.  Apparently, this storm was pretty bad and had caused a bit of trouble.  Good thing we were planning on using mass transit all along, since there is, apparently, no parking anywhere near Wrigley Field.

As unusual as it may be, the various weather reports all agreed that the storm was bad. More unusual was the fact that they all agreed there’d be a break in the weather from about noon until about 4:00.  The game was scheduled to start at 12:05, so we decided to risk it and go.  The kids wanted an exciting trip and so far we’d seen downed traffic lights, powerless stores and water coming through the floor. It could only get more exciting travelling to the big city!

The first leg of our trek to Chicago was a 47 minute drive through the muck, puddles and corn fields to the city of Aurora, Illinois.  Those of you who are like my wife and have too many spare brain cells available for pop-cultural trivia, will recognize Aurora as the home town of Wayne and Garth from “Wayne’s World”.  “Wayne’s World” is one of those movies that I, apparently, don’t have the intellectual capacity to understand. This movie is so deeply layered and so rich in metaphors and symbolism that someone of my low mental capacity simply cannot comprehend its deeper meanings and biting, satirical, anti-establishment political message.

Or, as my wife would say, I’m just a stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddy who’s too stoic to see the humor.

Whatever.

We found our way to the Aurora train station and parked. I allowed my wife to figure out how to pay for the parking and I dragged the kids inside to get the train tickets to Chicago.  This was the source of my next lesson of the day: I’m too honest.

Apparently, Rosa could have travelled for free. But, being honest, perhaps to a fault, I told the ticket agent that I needed three full fares and one child fare. This is because kids 12 and over pay full fare unless they have a valid student ID which will give them a discounted fare.  Of course, Rosa didn’t bring her student ID with her for some reason, even though she should have known she’d need it to get a reduced-price train fare or a beer at the ballgame.  But no, she didn’t bring it.  Anyway, the ticket agent thought Rosa was only 10 or 11 years old and would have given her a free pass. She even said I was too honest!  She gave us the student rate, though, even without the required student ID.  I hope the nice agent doesn’t get fired for such brazen rule breaking.

Anyway, the required restroom inspection was next and was successful. We rushed to get on the train that was about to leave, making it just before they closed the doors. The kids wanted to ride on the upper level of the double-decker car, so we sat in the sideways-facing row of seats.  When the ticket taker came by, he wouldn’t accept Rosa’s ticket… because she was too young to need one.  Sigh…

An hour later we arrived at Union Station in Chicago. In an effort to make sure my kids had their requested excitement, the Chicago Transit Authority helpfully removed all of the directional signs and maps and essentially anything that might have been deemed useful to an out-of-towner.  I couldn’t really see any CTA officials who were helping foreigners like us to find our way, so we were kind of stuck trying to figure out how to catch the subway or a bus.

So, being the world traveller that I am, I did what anyone else would do:  I said, “What would Dirk Gently do?” I’m sure you’ve all read the Dirk Gently books, right?  “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” and “The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul” are two fantastic books by Douglas Adams.  You should read them. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Now that you’ve read them, you’ll know what I did, but I’m going to tell you anyway:  I did what Dirk Gently would do.  That’s right, I found someone who looked like they knew where they were going and I followed them.

This strategy worked well, despite the dirty looks from the wife and kids who wanted me to ask for directions.  But I’m a real man – there’s no way I’m asking for directions!  If I were going to ask for directions, I might as well just tattoo the word “Tourist” on each of our foreheads in bright, flashing neon colors, perhaps mixing in the words “Gullible”, “Loser” and “Pathetic” just to keep things fresh and exciting.

But as I said, my strategy of following someone who looked like they knew where they were going was working well. They led us out of the train station and onto the streets of Chicago. I don’t know which compass direction we were going, so don’t ask.  My sense of direction is fantastic – just ask my wife.  While she might deny a lot of things I proclaim to be true, she will not deny my sense of direction.  But it was failing me today for some reason.  My sense of direction relies on a complex algorithm that takes into account the angle of the sun in relation to the direction and speed of the wind, coupled with the length of the left whiskers on the nearest small, furry rodent.  here in the Windy City, it was very windy (duh), but the wind was swirling and all I could find were some small birds.  I was not lost, but I could not tell what direction we were headed.

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew a paper from the hand of the guy I was following.  It was as we were crossing a river or canal or something, so I dove after the paper to catch it before it went into the water.  Handing it to the guy, he thanked me… and asked if I knew how to get to Wrigley Field. 

Apparently, he was following the guy in front of him.  Apparently the folks behind me were following me…

Now this is what exciting means!  I promised the kids a new and exciting vacation and I was delivering!  Yay me!

So, as a larger group now, we followed some other folks in Cubs shirts who, it turned out, were following someone in Cardinals shirts. Eventually, we got to the subway. Once again, there were no signs telling us where to go.  Thankfully, a security guard was more than happy to tell us where to go and she helped us get tickets.  She insisted that Rosa was young enough to ride free, but wouldn’t tell me the age limit.   This must be a Chicago thing…

Anyway, the subway became crowded at the next stop. I mean, crammed in with little room to breathe.  Luckily, we got seats because we got on one stop earlier than the crowd.  The ride was an interminable 30 minutes but we finally got there.

Wrigley Field was a short block away from the station.  We went through the bag check line so they could inspect our ponchos and then we wondered to our seats.  We had really good seats, Section 208, Row 5.  The section above us shaded us from any sun we might have had as well as from mist or rain, yet we could still see just about everything except the left field corner of the field.

Seats found, it was time for food. We wandered a bit and found a place selling veggie burgers. So, we happily ordered four veggie burgers as any good, card carrying vegetarian should do.  A few moments later, the lady behind the counter came back and said “Sorry, we’re all out of veggie burgers.”

The cloudy world got just a little darker and grayer at that moment.  No veggie burgers?  How was that possible?  The game hadn’t even started yet and they were already out?  In that brief second I considered a lawsuit. I considered jumping over the counter and knocking things over.  Then, I ordered four cheese pizzas.

The game was great. I was surprised at how many Cardinals fans were there.  I’d say the stadium was more than half filled with Cardinals fans.  But the Cubs fans were definitely louder, probably because we were screaming for the Cubs (since we didn’t care who won, we decided to root for the home team).  It was a lot of fun to watch as the game went back and forth early on.

Midway through the game, we went looking for ice cream.  We stood in line for a while and bought Cubs helmets filled with a swirl of chocolate and vanilla soft serve. The lady handed us the ice creams and what we found was a brownish-colored, soupy, semi-solid liquid.  It was spilling out and making a mess all over the place. I never thought ice cream could be unsatisfying, but this was totally unsatisfying.

We finished our cold dairy soup in a few minutes, then the boy needed to inspect the men’s room.  The girls went back to the seats where they found some idiots sitting in our seats. They gave her a hard time as she chased them away, but they left.  Sitting down, she discovered they had decided our drinks were tasty.  Now, granted, we probably shouldn’t have left them there… but seriously?  Who sits in someone else’s seats and drinks their drinks?

Anyway, the Cubbies one the game and there was much ribbing of Cardinals fans to follow. It wasn’t like in Philadelphia where you’d get beat up fro being a rival fan; it was all in good fun.  We visited another restroom on the way out and this visit took a long time because it was really jam-packed.  It was so hot and humid in that room, my glassed fogged up!  And no, I don’t want to think about what the vapor in the air actually was, thank you.

We had thought about wandering around Chicago for a few hours, but we were all too tired so we headed back to the trains with 13,000 or so other people. We pushed our way to the platform and waited. First train arrived and we simply couldn’t squeeze on. Another train was waiting to pull up just a short bit away so we stopped trying to squeeze in.  The first train started to pull away and then suddenly stopped. It was five or ten minutes before it moved again.  The second train pulled up and we got on quickly so that the kids and Ginny could get seats. I stood in the back.  The train moved slowly due to the one right in front of it, then stopped. We waited and eventually they came on the intercom to tell us we would be passing the train ahead of us due to an illness on that train.  I don’t know what the trouble was, but paramedics were on the way.  I guess Fate was on our side today, what with preventing us from getting on the first train.

Next we did our long walk from the subway back toward the train station. This time we didn’t need to follow anyone, partly because we had already walked this path and partly because I saw a squirrel, so I could now correctly calculate the exact direction we needed to go.  But they sure do mean it when they say Chicago is the Windy City!  Rosa’s hat blew off her head at one point, flying right into the busy street.  A car rode over it, but the Hand of Fate stepped in one again and made the wind blow at exactly the right speed and angle such that the hat skittered between the tires. I ran into the street and rescued the hat, for my second big save of the day.

We found our train and got onto it despite the fact that more than half of the cars were locked. As it began to pull away, the power went out inside the train.  Apparently, this is because they always cut the power when they’re leaving, to “reboot” the system or something. Whatever.  The train moved and this was a happy thing.

Midway through the ride my phone rang. Well, to be truthful, it vibrated, but I suppose that’s the same thing.  Anyway, it was a text message from the guy I’ve affectionately dubbed “Dude Who Spams Me”.  This guy texts me every few weeks with random invitations or questions.  Today’s message was:  “What r u up 2 2nite? I’m in OC with Nolan”. 

I must admit that I was relieved to know this.  I mean, I was worried that Nolan might be lonely or something. I never want anyone to be lonely.  Before you ask: yes, I have replied to this guy and told him he as the wrong digits.  But he keeps texting me.  Maybe he’s lonely. Perhaps it’s my purpose in life to be a somewhat willing recipient of misdirected text messages.  Now I can smile – I finally have a purpose!

The rest of the trip back from Chicago was uneventful.  We got to our villa, made some dinner and watched “Monsters Versus Aliens”.  All in all, a good day!

Instead, I stayed there in the bed, watching the digital clock slowly tick away the minutes and hours, doing the complicated math to translate the boring Central Daylight Time to the more exciting Eastern Daylight Time equivalent, so that I could know what time it would be if I was staring at the clock, unable to sleep, in New Jersey. Of course, since we were still in the Eastern time zone, I had to first translate the Eastern Daylight Time to Central Daylight Time and before translating it back, but once I applied the correct differential equations and quadratic formulas to the issue, it was relatively straightforward.

I probably should have gotten up and wandered down to the lobby to do some work and write a little, but I didn’t and when I finally did get out of the bed around 5:00, I was kind of mad at myself. And I had a staying-in-bed-too-long headache. And to make it worse, the continental breakfast wasn’t opening for another hour. And the wife and kids were still snoring or sleeping or yelling at each other to stop snoring so they could keep sleeping. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to be jealous of their ability to sleep; but this morning, I was jealous because I felt like I couldn’t do anything at all until they all woke up. Again, I could have gone down to the lobby, but I didn’t feel like it. So, instead, I let the travel voices inside my head get me worked up for an hour, until I finally decided to start making noises in an attempt to wake everyone up.

It eventually worked and after showers and yelling in whispers at the children (so as to not disturb the noisy people in the room next door), we wandered down to the continental breakfast at about 7:00. Soon we were filling our travel mugs with coffee (me), cranberry juice (Rosa), apple juice (Nick) or some weird, somewhat-less-than-healthy combination of coffee, hot cocoa powder and half-and-half (Ginny). Our plates were filled with scrambled eggs that may have begun life as a powder, cinnamon buns, biscuits, bananas, cereal, bagels, muffins and/or yogurt (we didn’t all have all of the items). She didn’t think I noticed, but Ginny, my favorite militant vegetarian, was visibly doing a silent rant about chipped beef and bacon. I’ve learned it is best to allow her to rant about these things in her head so that she doesn’t rant about them in the direction of my head, so I instead turned my focus to the television and the other people in the room.

There was a baseball team staying in the hotel, it seemed. Mid-teenaged players, I’d estimate. They came down in their stripey shirts and pants and grunted at each other as real men do, so I was impressed. I was less impressed by the way they cut into lines for the egg-like things and the juice. The television was showing Good Morning America or some equivalent morning news thing and the news was, of course, all bad and depressing. I watched it, helpless, much as I was helpless watching The Boy fill up on pastries and half a bagel instead of the “good stuff” he picked out for breakfast. It was all awesome to experience, I’m sure you’d agree.

Anyway, we trekked back up to the room after eating. Rosa continued to complain about how she hates elevators, so we continued to take the stairs. I, honestly, prefer the stairs and would have been taking them anyway, but her constant complaining about elevators almost made me want to require the use of the elevator, even at times when we had no need to go up or down. It reminded me of the time when we were in Newark Airport and she suddenly decided she was afraid of escalators… That was a fun thing, as you can imagine, especially since I was already DOWN the escalator with a bunch of our luggage and she was still at the top. After I lectured her quite a bit and threatened to turn around and go home instead of going to Disney… we used escalators every time it was possible to do so and now she at least gets on them, though it appears she is certain she will be falling off at any moment.

It also reminded me of the time when Nick wouldn’t eat broccoli, choosing to go to bed early rather than eat a few small pieces. He’d eat everything else, then complain that his stomach hurt. So, I’d say, “If you’re sick, go to bed!” and he would. Eventually we stopped allowing him to go to bed when he made this sudden “My belly hurts” claim and, in fact, we served broccoli with every meal until he ate it without trouble. Rosa likes broccoli, but it was starting to bug her that she was getting punished too. We ate so many little broccolis, I should have bought stock in broccoli farms. Alas, I didn’t and now that he eats it without (much) trouble, we don’t have it anywhere near as often.

But where was I?

Oh. Right. Coffee. So, we finished packing up our room… an impressively complicated feat considering how little we allegedly brought up to it last night. I moved the furniture back to its original configuration so as to avoid the twenty million dollar furniture moving fee all hotels secretly charge to your credit card in the form of taxes and surcharges (don’t ask them about it – they won’t tell you anything. It is against Hotel Code to speak of it). That accomplished, we headed down to the front desk, via the elevator just to make Rosa uncomfortable (in my many years of experience as a parent, I’ve learned that it is extremely important to make your children uncomfortable as often as possible). We turned in our room key cards like good boys and girls and then I went and refilled my coffee mug with bad hotel coffee. And finally, we were off, at 8:15 am. Not too far off from when I wanted to leave… another win!

The drive itself was relatively simple – the best kind of driving there is, really. Few traffic delays, despite most of Indiana being under construction, fewer restroom inspections than I anticipated and as many iCarly episodes as you could possibly want to hear (in the front) or watch (in the back), along with extras from some movies, like “Bob’s Big Break” from the “Monsters versus Aliens” DVD set. The biggest problem we had was that the built-in compass in my car went wacky. When we were clearly facing north, it was telling us we were going southeast. In fact, as we travelled on a straight stretch, headed in some direction, it was flipping between several different directions on the compass, many of them in direct conflict with each other. As it turns out, it appears the compass needs to be calibrated again because, according to the owner’s manual, we crossed too many compass zones in too short a time. Or something like that. I guess we’ll figure that out later.

There were no helpful maps showing the location of all of the rest areas along Route 80 through Ohio, Indiana and/or Illinois, like there were yesterday in Pennsylvania. But we noted the ones we saw and I’ll provide that handy little chart here. Unlike in Pennsylvania and many other states, when there was a rest area on one side of the highway, there was one on the other side, too. It certainly makes the charting easier. Of course, it would have been more efficient for them to build ONE rest area in the middle, to be shared by both sides. But what do I know? Anyway, here’s today’s handy dandy chart of rest areas on Route 80 through Ohio, Indiana and one part of Illinois (both eastbound and westbound):

*I *think* this was a rest area and I *think* it was mile marker 1 in Illinois. But I’m not positive. The signs were really not all that clear.

Note that I got all fancy here with four colors. If you were to go to Staples or Kinkos or some other disreputable establishment like that, you’d pay a lot to print that chart. So be smart and print these important charts only if you really must and if your budget allows. Always consider the environment as you look at your printer.

So, where was I? Oh. Right. Time zones.

I did a lookup on the internet to find where the time zone changed from Eastern to Central. Now, everyone knows how my internet searching usually goes, but this time I thought I had done it right and therefore was sure the time zone boundary was the border between Indiana and Illinois. So, we planned to watch with great excitement as our cell phones suddenly shifted times and we looked for the big glowing signs announcing:

Congratulations! You have just crossed into the Central Time Zone and you have, officially, gained a 25^th hour in your day (use it wisely)!

Alas, there was no such time zone announcing sign and when we pulled out our cell phones about 10 minutes from the Indiana-Illinois border, they already showed the time as if we were in Central Daylight Time.

Sigh.

As it turns out, Indiana is a perplexing state and I am not sure if anybody really knows what time it is, or if anybody really cares (about time). The six northwestern-most counties (Chicago area) and the six southwestern counties (Evansville area) are in the Central Time Zone, while the rest of Indiana celebrates Eastern Time. No wonder we missed the signs and missed the dramatic time change on the cell phones.

Anyway, as we drove through Gary, Indiana, thinking it was like 2:30 when it was really only 1:30, we pulled out my Zune and played “Gary, Indiana” from the original cast recording of “The Music Man”. It seemed like a fitting song to play, for some reason, and besides, Rosa and I auditioned for The Music Man just last weekend and are awaiting word on if we got parts; assuming I got either the part of Mrs. Paroo or Wynthrop Paroo, I figured it was a good idea for me to start learning the song (yes, Mrs. Paroo sings the town’s name once…at least in the Matthew Broderick movie version).

The first real traffic we had was right as we crossed the border into Illinois. It kept moving, but it was heavier than we’d seen all day. But we could sense that we were getting close to our destination so even the traffic and the terrible drivers couldn’t make us unhappy. So we drove the last bit on Route 80 before getting off onto a local Illinois road.

It was exciting to see corn fields and soy fields. As vegetarians, these are wonderful things to see. And as I said, it was exciting.

For the first 5 miles, at least.

27 miles of nothing but corn and soy fields, though? That was a bit much. And wow, is the land flat!

We eventually arrived at our resort, the Silverleaf Fox River Resort in beautiful Sheridan, Illinois. The directions became rather unclear at this point and after stopping at a stop sign that appeared to serve no purpose whatsoever, we continued up the street to the Welcome Center. We went in and were welcomed by the staff behind the desk who were more than happy to help us check in… until they learned that we were members of RCI (our timeshare company). “Oh,” they said, “RCI members have to register at the registration desk by the outdoor pool.”

“Okay,” I said, “so where is that?”

“Do you know where the outdoor pool is?”

“Um, no, we just arrived.”

“Oh, well, it’s over that way, to the left. Registration is next door.”

Right. I mean, left. I mean… we dragged our travel-weary butts back into the car and headed left, coming to the registration building around a couple of turns. We went in and I registered while the wife and kids grabbed themselves some free drinks and snacks. Note, they did not grab any for me. I had to get my own.

I tried to ask the desk for directions to the train station, since we’re going to need it tomorrow, but they really didn’t seem to have a clue how to tell me to get there. Someone in line behind me told me directions, but they were somewhat locally flavored. “Oh, turn left at 71, then turn left on 34 then go… a while until you see the big bridge, then turn… oh, left or right, I don’t remember…”

As I was signing the papers that will allow them to take my first born if I damage their property, one of the ladies behind the desk whispered “Is that him?” as she pointed at me. “Yeah,” said the other lady, “I think it is.” Then they smiled. I was looking behind me to see if Eric Estrada or Barry Manilow had suddenly walked in or something, but there was no one there. I felt almost like a celebrity as they came up to me and said “Sir, are you Rob Diaz?” Looking at the paperwork they had helped me fill out, my credit card sitting on the desk and the information on the reservatiion sheet, I felt safe that they actually knew the answer to this question already, so I nodded. “This is for you,” the first lady said, handing me a water bottle. “The lady who left it said you’d know who it was from.” I thought about it and realized it must be from our friend June, who was actually at this resort last week.

So, thanks, June! The water bottle was a nice surprise and welcoming gift!

Sigh. I figured at that point I’d come back later to use the internet which is only available in the registration lobby and recreation center areas, and only during their business hours. But first, we needed to go grocery shopping and grab some dinner.

We followed directions to the area of a Super WalMart, figuring we’d find a place to eat at that point since no one would agree on what to go eat. On the way to the store, the skies opened. The wind whipped. We could barely see out of the car, the rain was coming down so hard. It looked like the wind was spinning, so I told Ginny to get the camera ready to take pictures of tornadoes, since in the Midwest every storm comes with tornadoes (free of charge!). She took it out and had it ready, but somehow managed to be unable to get pictures of Grumpee’s Weenie Wagon, stationed on the right side of the road, at the intersection of Route 80 and Route 71. So, dear readers, I’m sorry I don’t have pictures of the most exciting Weenie Wagon we saw on our travels. But I do have some pictures of the storm:

(Note: This picture is blurry because of the wind whipping the trees, not because of my driving, as we were stopped when this was taken.)

At the area of the Super WalMart, we looked for food. And there was nothing for vegetarian freaks like us. There was a Quiznos, so we figured we’d give that a try, though we’ve never eaten at one before. We parked and walked up… to find it was closed. I assume it was out of business, as deliveries were being directed elsewhere.

So, we decided to go toward a different shopping center to look for food. We found traffic lights to be out or malfunctioning. We found the shopping center to be darkened due to power loss. We found a light post down on a car:

Note the car that is partially in the picture, all the way to the right. They were also taking a picture of this situation. I assume they are blogging about it too.

We continued around the parking lot and found a Chinese Buffet. We’ve had little luck at these in the past but it was the only thing we could (almost) agree on checking out so we went ahead in. It was… disappointing. Mostly because of our vegetarian requirements, which were met by only a couple of dishes in the buffet (a veggie-lo mein, some white rice, French fries, roasted potatoes and garlic string beans). Oh, there was garlic bread, too. The food we could eat was pretty good and I made sure to eat my share of it, given the fact that I was sure it was going to cost far more than it was worth. I then made sure to sample a lot of deserts. And I mean a lot of deserts. But seriously, why is it that Chinese buffets don’t have vegetable dishes as a regular thing? Why is the fried rice “pork fried rice” and not vegetable? Why aren’t there just plain tofu dishes? I could rant for hours and many pages on this, but in the end we did get fed so I think I’ll stop.

The bill paying was exciting, too, given that the storm had knocked out their credit card machines. So, we scrounged together enough cash to pay for the meal and headed out to shop at the Super WalMart, where we got lots of food, some Illinois wines and some tennis balls. I got carded at the checkout because of the wine, which is an interesting thing to have happen when you’re going gray and travelling with kids and all but it is what it is, I suppose.

On the way out of the parking lot for the power-less shopping center, we took these pictures of the traffic lights:

Note here that the lights were on blinking red for all directions. Some are upside down or at least sideways. They are dangling and broken. That might be more visible here, where you can see one of the light pieces dangling below the main light mechanism:

Anyway, this was the majority of our day. We got back to our villa and unloaded the car, then I decided to go search for directions to the train station for tomorrow. So, I sat in the lobby of the registration area and searched the internet using my feeble abilities. The internet came and went in terms of connectivity, but eventually I got directions. It took about an hour and a half to accomplish this, but I got them.

But not before being subjected to some strange drama or prime time soap opera on Univision HD. The HD, of course, is important, because life requires HD anymore. I was most impressed by this show, not for the dialogue (which was in Spanish – and I could understand a good bit of it, I think, though when I understood them to be talking about strange alien invaders eating in a diner in a small Mexican town in Wisconsin, I was pretty sure I had missed something important). Anyway, the best part of this Univision HD experience for me was when they zoomed in on some old lady after her passionate plea to some dork and his ignorant and insensitive refusal to acquiesce to her heartfelt request for understanding and humane treatment for aliens enjoying gyros and all-day breakfast at Mexican diners in Wisconsin. They stayed focused on her, zoomed in so that her face was the size of the harvest moon over corn and soy fields in Illinois. Then, after what felt like several minutes, she squeezed a single tear out of her left eye. The camera focused in even a little further and watched the tear trickle down her wrinkly face. The droplet was so amazing, so dramatically wet – an experience one could only get from a high definition broadcast such as this. I felt moved, fulfilled even. The whole vacation will seem dull now in comparison to this.

Sigh (contentment).

I trudged back to our villa without incident, unless you count the dude in the golf cart at 9:45 at night who screamed at me to slow down. I’m amazed that he could tell I was going 13 miles per hour in a 10 mile per hour zone. But I slowed down. Because I care.

All in all, the travelling part of the beginning of vacation went pretty well and had few, if any, troubles. And after last summer’s tornado and floods and downed trees, a little rain and wind in Illinois is almost relaxing! Of course, the ease of the drive probably means terrible things to come, like malfunctioning DVD players or not enough forks or something. But I guess we’ll see tomorrow, on Day 1 of our vacation.

What is Day Zero, you ask? Well, clearly, it is the travel day you spend going away TO vacation. Most people, being less aware of the intricacies and sneaky ways of the Travel Gods, would call this Day One, because, they’d say, “You’re already ON vacation when you start GOING on vacation.” “Horsepuckey!” I say. “Vacation starts after you’ve calmed down from the extreme, inconceivable horror which is the travelling.”

Okay, so I would never actually say “Horsepuckey!” because I’m just not that kind of guy. I wouldn’t say “sweet niblets” either. Or “shiver me timbers”. I might say “great googly moogly”, though.

Where was I?

Oh, right. I was performing a numerical calendarization of the first day away from home. Day Zero. The only calendar day I wish could contain fewer than 24 hours, because I just. Want. It. To. Be. Over.

So, this year, we decided to extend the joy of Day Zero by splitting the travelling into two days. Isn’t that exciting? I know I’m excited.

This year, the family decided we should go somewhere we haven’t gone before, someplace new and different and exciting. Usually we head south, toward Massanutten or Williamsburg, both in Virginia. So, in looking for a new and different location, a voice, perhaps that of a cat or an evil ferret-elf from the planet Zorgon, said, “Head west, my friends.”

And so, we decided to head west. Our two-day trek will end up with us arriving in sunny, beautiful, Sheridan, Illinois, about 78 miles southwest of Chicago. This will be the first time my children are outside of the Eastern time zone as well as their first chance to inspect the restrooms in three new states! The restrooms along Route 80 through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois won’t know what hit them!

The day started with a haircut for The Boy. His head had gotten so unmanageable, he looked like a crazy mop with eyes, legs and arms. When he was done, there was enough hair on the floor to make a wig. I considered sweeping it up and taking it home… you know, to save it for when he’s balding later in life.

Baldness… a gift to my son’s future from my wife.

Because she cares.

Anyway, I resisted that urge because we really have no space to store that much hair. I also considered a stop at Starbucks and/or Dunkin’ Donuts to try to ensure that I received my recommended daily allowance of coffee and coffee-related condiments such as donuts, muffins and pumpkin bread, but I was in a hurry so I resisted that urge, too. You know how excited I get about travelling and I didn’t want anything, not even something as amazingly awesome as coffee, to delay the fantastic wonderfulness of the drive.

So we went back home, hairless and coffee-free and I began the job of getting the car packed. At a harried pace I worked, slaving away over the hot pavement as I dragged bag after bag out of the house, narrowly preventing Mr. Bear, the great Houdini cat, from slipping through. I’m sure he’d have loved to be a stowaway in the car for about 13 seconds, after which he’d have started crying and whining, much like the voices in my head do when I’m travelling. No wonder he and I get along better than I’ve gotten along with any cat in the past. He hates traveling, too.

Anyway, as always, I packed the car up with little distress, finding a space for each bag and putting each bag in its space, ensuring that bags we’d need sooner were easily accessible, that bags with food were inside the passenger cabin and that my peppermint tea was within reach.

“Peppermint tea?” you ask?

Why yes, peppermint tea. I figured that travelling is such a miserable thing to do, I might as well skip the coffee, too. Not that I don’t like peppermint tea – I love me the peppermint tea. But usually I follow the strict rule of no peppermint tea before noon, so this was clearly a violation of normal and accepted protocol. I made it acceptable by reminding myself that it was noon somewhere and so the peppermint-y travel extravaganza began.

Don’t tell my wife or kids, but we left almost exactly when I wanted to leave. I told them we needed to leave at 9:00 am, but the reality was that I was shooting for 9:30. We left at 9:32, so I count that as a win. I should probably give them audacious departure times like 6:13am from now on, just to make sure we leave when I really want to. Probably best not to tell them about my amazing plan. Thanks.

Anyway, today’s trek included the tiny bit of New Jersey we needed to go through and then the full width of the state of Pennsylvania. A few minutes into Ohio, we arrived at our hotel in North Lima, Ohio. I must admit that while I despise EZ Pass, it has been helpful on this trip so far, though it’s frustrating to be in the high-speed EZ Pass lane behind a couple of vehicles who slow down to 10 miles-per-hour in front of you despite the “maintain highway speeds” signs. “Get off my road if you don’t know how to drive!” I say. Imagine… if all the people who don’t know how to drive would just get off the road… there’d never be any traffic jams. Driving might be fun again. Travelling might become pleasant—

Alright… I must be tired… that last sentence is pure fantasy fiction –travel is and forevermore will be a horrific invention of an evil, mad society.

But I digress.

The drive across the Pennsylvania Turnpike was amazingly uneventful. We waved to our friends and family as we passed their respective exits. The kids watched and the grownups listened to many, many episodes of iCarly. We stopped at many restrooms.

Well, being fully honest, we stopped at fewer restrooms than I feared we would. Our first stop was somewhat east of Harrisburg, at the Lawn service area. We stopped for lunch and, of course, one or more restroom inspections. The food available at this rest area was Burger King and some pizza, along with Starbucks and an ice cream or pastry thing (I can’t remember). Clearly, Burger King is not the most vegetarian-friendly fare on the planet, but most of them have the “BK Veggie”, a veggie burger with “special sauce” and lettuce I might have mentioned once or twice before. This one had the BK Veggie listed on the nutrition information poster, but they didn’t have it on the menu. This, of course, bummed me out, but I pulled it together and trudged 30 feet west to the pizza counter, where the single-tasking woman behind the counter rolled her eyes and grunted as I requested 4 cheese pizzas (she had already put out four pepperoni pizzas in boxes under the heat lamps and was clearly wondering why I wouldn’t just take those). About seven minutes later, I sat down with the family to enjoy our freshly-made pizza. It was amazing how bad this pizza was. I mean, it was fine as far as pre-fab cardboard pizza goes, but for six dollars per individual pie, it was pretty crummy. But it was food and we were hungry, so we ate it (seriously, have you ever known me to back away from eating something that never had a face? I don’t think so.)

Another restroom inspection (in case we missed anything the first time) and we were ready to get back on the road again. But not before looking at the little map of the Pennsylvania Turnpike that was conveniently displayed on the wall. This, perhaps, was the most helpful map I’ve ever seen in a rest stop.

One of the things that irritates me about driving on a long trip is that you never can be sure where there are rest areas. I despise leaving the highway to trek cross-country to a McDonalds or other restroom facility that has a food service counter. If I’m on the highway, especially if it is a toll road, I want to stay on it and keep moving toward my destination rather than taking a bunch of sideways steps to Nowhereville, with no guarantee of an easy way of getting back onto the highway after completing the restroom inspection. But, you can never know when there’s a rest area coming up or how far away they are. But here, in the Lawn Service Area of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, was a chart of all of the rest areas! I heard angels playing harps and choirs singing joyous songs as I wrote all of the important information down in the handy-dandy notebook I never leave home without. Now, with this information in hand, I would be able to tell my children just how long they’d need to wait until inspecting the next restroom. A lot of travelling stress melted away in that very instant.

As a public service, I am providing the locations of the rest areas on the Pennsylvania Turnpike here. I may come back and add more details later, as I remember them:

Wow, isn’t that chart exciting? I added the greenish color to make it look fresh and new. Because I care about your visual experiences as you labor through my blog.

As I said, a lot of travelling stress melted away just from the existence of this chart. That said, it all came back when we hit the next construction zone. The first signs showed that one lane was closing in about a mile and it was at that spot that the traffic essentially stopped moving. It was as if everyone decided to move to the right lane a mile early. Eventually some folks saw the foolishness of this and shifted lanes to snake around some of the traffic, only to be thwarted by a truck who, apparently, decided to be an enforcer of the single lane traffic strategy. The truck, a big flatbed with a bright orange commercial dumpster on it, drove down the Pennsylvania Turnpike at about 25 miles per hour, straddling both lanes. With no shoulder space, there was no way for cars to get around him. I looked beyond the truck and saw the wide-open lanes of the construction zones and I felt sad for the lost opportunity of travelling at somewhere closer to the speed limit.

Eventually we reached the actual construction zone and the single-lane area. All told, there were three miles of closed lane for this construction zone. There were six or seven trucks idling with the big flashing arrow signs telling us to move right, as if the big orange cones and the big orange dumpster truck weren’t enough. Eventually, about two miles into the zone, we came upon a single pickup truck with a worker using a shovel to fill in a pothole. How exciting to see our tax and toll dollars at work improving the travel experience.

There were several of these construction zones along the Turnpike. Luckily the traffic wasn’t too bad at any of them, though I hate any slowdowns at all on my journey. There was only the one lane-enforcing dumpster truck, so even though most of the traffic approaching the construction zones shifted to the single lane immediately upon seeing the “lane closed one mile ahead” sign, the smarter ones among us could stay in the other lane and keep the traffic flowing as best as possible.

Our second stop of the trip was at the Sidling rest area. This was simply a bathroom break, but the family convinced me to break my coffee fast by stopping into the Starbucks conveniently located in the building. I got in line and waited. And waited. And then, for fun, I waited some more. It was quite possibly the slowest Starbucks I’ve ever been in. “How You Love Me Now” by Hey Monday was playing on the radio. Luckily I like that song. Eventually I was able to get my coffee in my personal travel mug (unlike the last time I stopped at a Starbucks along the Pennsylvania Turnpike when I handed them my mug and they handed it back to me, empty, with a paper cup filled with coffee and allowed me to pour it into my mug myself).

Oh, this was also the rest stop where an old man came up to me and asked me for the time. I gladly gave him the time, and then he proceeded to tell me how much better the next rest area was than the one we were currently at. And he kept talking about it. For like 30 minutes.

Okay, it was more like 30 seconds before my wife and daughter managed to scare him away. And by “scare him away”, I mean they walked up and asked me why I wasn’t in line at Starbucks yet and he left. Clearly, he was either scared of them or not interested in my coffee drinking habits. I vote “scared”. Because I can.

Our final stop along the Pennsylvania Turnpike was at the New Stanton rest area. As restrooms go, this one was pretty much standard. Water, soap, smelly air…. What was really standout about this rest stop was the reserved parking spaces. Obviously, we’ve all experienced the big blue handicapped parking space signs in the closest spots. This rest area had those, of course, but right next to these were spots marked with big green signs which said “Green Parking Space for Low-emitting, fuel efficient vehicles only”. Again there were angels playing harps and choirs singing. We need to see more of these spots, everywhere! At the mall, at the movie theater, at gas station convenience stores… This was almost better than that rest area map in the Lawn Service Area; it would have actually trounced the bathroom map if there had been cars parked in the green spots. I guess progress has to start somewhere…

Anyway, soon we were waving to the last exit in Pennsylvania and cheering the big sign welcoming us to Ohio. Our journey for the day was almost through as we only had to drive another 20 or so minutes into Ohio to get to our hotel. We checked into the Holiday Inn Express and carried in the one bag we needed, packed so efficiently into the most accessible part of the trunk because I just rock that much.

Then the fun debate about dinner could begin. We pulled out the list of area restaurants to find there weren’t directions. So, I connected to the internet to get directions, but of course we couldn’t agree on any restaurants. I did use the internet to narrow our choices down, since restaurants which served nothing made of vegetables could be easily ignored. This narrowed it down to a ‘breakfast for dinner’ diner-style establishment, a pizza joint, an Italian place and a Subway. Debate ensued and the meal was put to a vote. As you can guess, every place got one vote. I can’t remember how we did it, but we eventually decided on Subway and trekked back out to the car.

The Subway shop was nice enough from a visual perspective. But they didn’t have veggie patties. And they didn’t have carrots. And they didn’t have spinach. And they didn’t have mozzarella cheese. And they only gave two half-slices of cheese for each six-inch sandwich. And if you wanted a mix of cheese… that would be an extra charge. (Note: back home, it’s four half-slices of cheese per six inch sandwich and they never look down on us for mixing our cheeses.) But we had decided on it so we ordered our slightly-less-delightful-than-normal veggie delights and brought them back to the hotel. I sat down to eat but got occularly scolded by my wife, who was frantically moving furniture around to make a makeshift dining room table, rather than allowing us to just eat on the beds. Sigh. Even in a hotel that was so barbaric that it didn’t have the SyFy channel or Nickelodeon, we have to eat like we are civilized.

The kids went to the pool after dinner (waiting the required 40 minutes after eating, of course) and came back a little while later complaining about how cold the water was. Being a good father, I told them to grow from the pain and go to bed, because we were leaving at 4:13 in the morning (don’t tell them I really meant 8:00). We made some tea, but it was pretty nasty so we couldn’t drink it. I gave it a good try, of course, since tea never had a face, but even I, with my tastebuds of steel, could not do it. I swear there is something about hotel water that makes any coffee or tea horrifically bad.

So, I went to bed too, knowing I was going to struggle to fall asleep – you know how excited I get when there’s more travelling to do in the morning. Not to mention the continental breakfast—you know how I love breakfast!

But I digress. Again.

Actually, is it called digressing when you’re foreshadowing? Or should I have said, “But I foreshadow”? Or “But I foregress?” Hmmm. Microsoft Word doesn’t have ‘foregress’ in its dictionary – does that mean I’ve just invented a new word? What does it take to make a new word anyway? Three separate usages in print? Is that what it is? I think it has to be three uses by different bloggers, so the fact that I’ve now typed ‘foregress’ three times does not mean that the word will show up in the dictionary any time soon.

Since I am a planning fool, here’s my proposed dictionary entry for my newly coined word:

fore·gress
[fawr-gres, fohr-]
–verb (used without object)
1.
to deviate or wander away from the main topic or purpose in speaking or writing in a way that foreshadows things that are to come; to predict a departure from the principal line of argument, plot, study, etc. in a forward-thinking manner
Origin:
2010; <Rob Diaz, travel blogger extraordinaire, first use: http://13exits.wordpress.com>

—Related forms
fore·gress·er, noun
fore·gress·ing·ly, adverb
re·fore·gress, verb (used without object)

So, if any honorable, well-written bloggers or other writerly types would like to use my new word and help with the petition to get it added to the dictionary, please feel free to do so.

Alright, enough self-marketing. I should get to the actual point.

The actual point is: I AM GOING HOME TODAY!!!!!!

Before you mistake my italicized, bolded, shout—let me remind you: I hate travel. So, even though I’m looking forward to getting home, sleeping in my own bed and making some actual, honest to goodness coffee, I really hate the fact that I’m required to travel in order to get to those good bits. (Oh, and I guess, I’m looking forward to seeing the wife and kids and dogs and cats and fish and even the weeds in the garden, too, but don’t tell them – they might get big heads about it.)

Anyway, before I could go home, I had to do several things. First, of course, was get up and get ready for the day. Today, at least, I didn’t have to wear the same lemon-scented logo shirt I’d worn all week. In fact, I was able to give it back, unlaundered, to Atlanta Colleague #1. Today I got to wear my shirt that’s made out of dirt. I think it is red dirt from around the Grand Canyon and was a gift to me from my neighbors when they went to the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago, around Easter. It feels odd around the neck, but I like it anyway.

Breakfast was agreed on last night as a return visit to the concierge lounge. So, around 8:00 we converged on the lounge and found it swarming with people. It was really loud. It was really crowded. The dude who was working the room and keeping things filled up seemed a bit overwhelmed. My roommate and I found a table that we could squeeze into and did so. Some lady came over to ask if she could take our chairs and at first I thought she wanted the ones we were sitting in, then I realized that while she might also want the ones we were in, she actually was asking about the ones that were not currently occupied. Now, these were reserved for our other colleagues, but I figured that since they weren’t there, it was their own fault if all of the chairs were taken. Eventually, the crowd cleared out and the room was plunged into a not quite as deafening silence. The rest of our group joined us and breakfast was eaten by all. I had more grits (everybody cheer! It’s okay, no one is really looking at you like you’re weird for cheering about grits). Breakfast was essentially a replay of the day before: eggs, grits, bagel, fruit… but today the bagel was a blueberry bagel. Yesterday it was just a boring plain one.

I looked over and found that today there wasn’t some sweating dude in a dress shirt and tie hogging up the courtesy computer to prepare a presentation, so I wandered over and printed my boarding pass for tonight’s flight and paid the requisite baggage fee. Then it was time to check out of the room and head up to the 25^th floor for our first official company meeting. As we came out of the elevator, loud, obnoxious and male as we are, we found that the crowd of people who were taking up all the oxygen in the Concierge Lounge were up on the 25^th floor, holding a meeting in the open lobby area there. Meaning, of course, that our cackling and inappropriate commentary interrupted their meeting nicely. Whatever. If you don’t want to be interrupted or observed by passersby, GET A ROOM! That’s what I say.

I could tell you about our company meeting but then, as they say, I’d have to kill you. I’m not feeling particularly stabby today, despite the fact that I’m writing this while on the way to the airport, so I think I’ll just not tell you about the meeting. Instead, I’ll mention that the aforementioned meeting taking place in the open area on the floor actually had TWO areas in that open area, one all the way in the corner (which is where they were when we first went up to the 25^th floor) and one right outside the elevator. And they kept moving between the two areas, like every hour or so. It was the weirdest thing. They were talking about tax law or something like that and about how the most important thing involved with being good at taxing folks is to be compassionate. Seriously, the speaker who was talking during one of the times I wandered through was giving a passionate dissertation on the importance of compassion. I thought she was going to start crying, that’s how hard she was working to convince everyone of her point.

We broke for lunch and headed back to the place that used to be called The Spotted Dog but is no longer called The Spotted Dog. This is the place we went to on Friday night, the place with the heckling guitar player who left after goading us into stopping there for drinks and food. He wasn’t there this afternoon and, in fact, I think we were the first customers of the day. I had the same Spicy Black Bean Burger I had on Friday night. It was a bit more on the “well done” side today but it was alright anyway. No dessert, unfortunately. Guess I’ll have to eat one of the extra apples we rescued from the dining hall at the conference yesterday.

I had to leave the afternoon session of our first ever annual meeting at just before 3:00. I am sure that they spent the rest of the meeting talking about me and making fun of my lemony scent. I know that’s what I would have done.

So, the rest of this story will be about the actual act of travelling home. As I said, I left the hotel a little before 3:00 (like 2:53) to get to the airport for my 5:00 flight which a traveler’s alert email implied was delayed, but Continental said was still on time. I’m going to attempt to write down the rest of my observations and anecdotes in real time. Clearly this can only happen when I’m not walking, since it’s hard to walk, drag a suitcase, hold a notebook and a pen and actually write. Oh, and doing all that while paying attention to where I’m going might prove difficult, too. I know, excuses, excuses… but I promise to do my best to accomplish this. What this means right now is that I’m sitting here in the Marta train to the airport with a notebook and pen in my hands, writing as the train bounces and rocks. Moments ago, a few people came on board and sat next to me, bringing an awful smell of cigarette smoke with them. I assumed it was the big fat dude who sweated his way into the seat right next to me, but it turns out that it was the little old lady with the short magenta-striped gray and black hair who was wearing the expensive Eau de Cigarette perfume. I especially enjoyed it when the train jerked funny as she was getting up to leave and she reached out to grab my shoulder to steady herself – I might need to burn my dirt shirt now, thank you very much. The point is, my first impression was wrong and so I want to formally apologize to the fat man whom I falsely imagined was the one who stank up the train. I am truly sorry for making such a silent accusation in your general direction, sir.

The train ride was uneventful aside from the smell and the old lady’s hand on my shoulder. I disembarked at the airport and headed inside. What struck me first was that there was absolutely no visible signage telling me where to go. Usually, there’s no shortage of people or signs that want to tell me where to go, but in this case I felt completely lost. I finally found a sign that pointed to check-in and baggage drop off and headed toward it. Turns out, this was for a different airline. I eventually found a uniformed person and asked him to tell me where to go. He gestured and pointed back the way I came, so I went that way again. No signs were visible in the main hall, so I splintered off into a side path. There I saw a sign, but for other airlines. Considering this a good, um, sign, I continued walking further. Another sign for other airlines. More walking and then the sign for Continental was there, shining like a beacon. I followed the arrow and found where I had to go to check in. At least here there was someone willing to help me right away and the bag drop off was quick and easy, though he made fun of my inability to figure out how to get the computer to recognize who I was. Of course, that meant I had to find the security checkpoint but that seemed to go alright once the guy pointed me in the general direction. Unlike in Newark, there were virtually no lines and I was through security in about 5 minutes.

I wandered to the gate, largely because I wanted to see if there was an update in the argument between the travel alert I received and the Continental website. As it turns out, the traveler alert was correct; the glowing sign at the gate stated that the 5:00 flight to Newark Liberty International Airport was delayed to 6:14. I started to walk away from the gate to get some food, since I was going to be here a while and the person behind the gate made an announcement: “The flight to Newark is delayed until 6:16, not 6:14. This delay is due to Air Traffic Control activity and as a result it may be lifted at any time, so stay near the gate as we may still leave on time.”

So, I headed over to the local Burger King establishment on the concourse. As you know, I am a vegetarian. As such, I wasn’t in the mood for a sitdown meal in a seafood place or the little “diner” thing they had there which had no veggie dishes on the menu. Not that Burger King is all that healthy for vegetarians, but at least they have the BK Veggie, which is essentially a gardenburger with “special sauce”. So, I ordered a BK Veggie and brought it back to the gate so that I’d be nearby when they got us in the air on time (look at me, the travelling optimist!). The BK Veggie smelled so incredibly good and wonderful as I unwrapped it. Perhaps it was the ten minute wait it took while they figured out how to make it. Perhaps I was hungry. Whatever it was, the thing smelled great and I couldn’t wait to eat it. I took a bite and let the flavor consume me. I savored that bite for thirteen whole seconds before taking my second bite. It was this second bite that allowed me to realize that the burger was still partially frozen. Apparently, the fine people who figured out that lettuce, ketchup and what I think was ranch dressing go on the BK Veggie forgot that it was also supposed to be cooked. Ahh, well, chin up Burger King folks – you’ll get that part right next time, I’m sure.

Note: I ate the burger anyway. One of the benefits of being vegetarian is that you don’t really have to worry about thoroughly cooking things. And I guess it settles the argument: I was hungry.

Anyway, my optimism was wasted earlier when I hoped that the plane would still go on time; we boarded the plane just before 6:00. Let me tell you: this has got to be the smallest plane I have ever been on! It has two seats on one side of the aisle, one seat on the other side (I am in the one-seat side). I can’t even stand up straight in the aisle. I think my children might have toys that are larger than this plane. It is really small! The overhead bins were tiny, so nearly all bags had to be gate checked. I wonder if these folks had to pay $25 or not. I think they should have to!

So, I think I’m going to bullet point the rest of this post as a Top 10 list. Of course, seeing as I am me, it will be a Top 13 list, since 13 is a far better number than that stupid number 10. So the following is a Top 13 shout-out list of events that happened once I was strapped in on the plane in seat 14A, which is really row 13 as I’ve discussed before. Clearly, since I’m in the 13^th row, a top 13 list is appropriate. Funny how the universe conspires to make things happen organically, isn’t it?

1. I thought the extra 15 minute delay we had once we were on board the plane was awesome. This delay wasn’t due to Air Traffic Control activity; it was due to “the lost sheep for our flight” as the pilot called them. Apparently, some folks decided it would be awesome to grab some airport seafood before boarding the plane and decided that the “stay close to the gate” statement was more of a guideline that only applied to the rest of us. I know I enjoyed the fact that they shared the wonderful scent of blackened goldfish or mullet (or whatever it was) with the entire plane. I guess they were star students in kindergarten and learned all about the importance of sharing.
2. I’ll break with my tradition of changing people’s names in this week’s blog entries. What? You hadn’t noticed I was doing this? Well, I assure you, the name “Airport Colleague #1″ is not the person’s real name. That said, I am going to call out Candy, the lady in seat 12B. Candy (yes, it’s her real name – she was wearing her ID badge) decided to share her music with us. (This flight so far is all about sharing! I guess people really are nicer in the south). Anyway, Candy’s iPod was playing some awesome hip-hop hits and she was dancing like a night club star – arms waving all over, head shaking to the rhythm, hair flying everywhere. I must say that I do wish she’d have sung a bit more, as I was not catching all of the words so I didn’t get the complete experience. I really should have thanked her because I got to save my Zune’s battery since I could hear her music over my own anyway. My one disappointment was that she didn’t share her chocolate muffin with the rest of us. She did, however, take off her shoes and share her sweet, sweet Candy feet with us. I felt loved.
3. I wish I could record the creaking, moaning and whining sound of the airplane as it rolls slowly along the tarmac – it sounds and feels as if the tires are flat or the wheels and their supports are loose. Every bump, every crack in the pavement, caused more rattling and shaking. Oh, it also is causing dust and debris to fall from the ceiling above me. Several other passengers have been looking around, laughing uncomfortably, so I know this isn’t just me being a bad traveler and imagining it. The dude behind me in seat 15A just told us all to relax – the wheels are absolutely fine. “It’s only a loose wing,” he said. Thank goodness this issue is settled.
4. The next victory was the 47 minute bonus delay we received at no additional charge as we sat, helpless, in the airplane on the runway as we awaited our turn to depart. Thank goodness air travel isn’t billed like taxi rides where there’s a fee to get in the vehicle, a fee for the trip, a fee for time, more fees for time stuck in traffic, etc. Wow. Thinking about taxi fees makes the baggage fee seem less bizarre. Almost.
5. Another shout-out to Miss Candy in 12B: Typically you wipe the chocolate from your hands on a napkin, not on the clean and sanitary cushion of seat 12C, even if no one is sitting in 12C. No, you don’t get points for sharing this time.
6. I thought the flight’s only passenger-cabin crew member was doing a good job overall and I want to commend her for making jokes as she tried to help us bide our time waiting to take off. I don’t think I’ve ever had a more entertaining demonstration of the safety features of a plane before. I wonder if there’s a two-drink minimum here.
7. Oh, Candy girl, you are taking up too much of my list! Did you really need to run (and I mean run) to the restroom with your chocolate muffin just as we got to the front of the departure queue? I’m curious, though: You were only gone for a few seconds, but when you came back, the muffin was gone (except for the bits you saved on seat 12C) – what did you do with it? And yes, I could still hear your music, thanks for turning it up for me instead of turning it off as you had been instructed before takeoff.
8. You know how awesome it is when you’re on a train and they announce information about the next station or the reason for the train stopping in the middle of nowhere in the dark of night… only the sound is so muted and muffled and garbled that you can’t hear the message over the racket of the train or the hip-hop music from another passenger’s iPod? That’s awesome, I’m sure you’ll agree. But let me tell you – it’s even more awesome when you can’t hear the airplane pilot as he’s announcing details about why the plane is shaking and bouncing, 35,000 feet above the nowhere below. Mostly the inability to hear the pilot was due to the noise of the engines and the creaking and shaking of the plane itself. But a little bit of the trouble was the noise from Candy’s Night Club in row 12.
9. Did I mention that Candy started drinking margaritas mid-flight? Before that, all of the in-flight entertainment was while completely sober.
10. I wonder why the crewmember double-cupped my coffee when she gave it to me, first in Styrofoam and then in plastic. I wonder if I was charged an extra fee for that. I’ll have to check on that one. I’m pretty sure the stand-up comedy routine she was continuing to give was complimentary, though.
11. Just a question: should I consider it a bad thing that the best coffee I’ve had all week is this coffee I’m drinking out of a mix of Styrofoam and plastic? Don’t get me wrong, this coffee is horrifically bad… but at least I recognize it as coffee, which is why it warrants its own shout-out in this list.
12. Yes, Candy, when they announce that the portable electronic devices need to be turned off for the landing, they mean your iPod, too. Thanks.
13. I wonder what prompted the lady in seat 10B to move back to seat 11B and start making out with the dude in seat 11C just as we started to descend into Newark. Maybe I’ll ask them once we deplane. They’re a little busy right now or I’d ask them here; besides, they wouldn’t hear me anyway since the plane is rattling way too much now. Oh, and now that we’ve landed and are taxiing to the gate, she’s moving back to seat 10B… I guess Candy in 12B isn’t the only one who thinks the “stay strapped in your seat” rule doesn’t apply to her.

So, we landed around 8:45 or so. Luckily, since no one could bring their oversized carry-on bags on board, there were few delays in getting off the plane. As an update on the kissing bandit in row 10B, I followed her and her… friend… in row 11B out (just how it happened, I wasn’t stalking them). Through the airport they seemed to not communicate at all. They got to the ground transportation area and took separate cabs. I guess they must have had a fight or something.

Anyway, I got my bag once I figured out which carrousel it was coming out on and headed out to the train station. There was a moment of panic when I couldn’t find my return train ticket, but I eventually remembered that I put it in my suitcase. Thank goodness they didn’t lose my bag. Anyway, the tram ride was fine and we got into the train terminal. In here, there was a lot of confusion as people were trying to figure out the odd schedule that was posted on the fancy electronic signs. None of the trains were going to the right places, it seemed and the times were all weird. I noticed the note on it that said “Signs are in testing; information here is not accurate.” Of course, people weren’t reading that bit. Apparently, the staff at the train station wasn’t aware of this, either, as they were all trying to figure it out. I went to the paper schedule that was on the wall, figured out when the train was and plunged forward. I waited for a while and got the train, a double-decker. An hour later, I was in Hamilton. Thankfully, I didn’t fall asleep and end up in Trenton like the last time I was on the train. That was embarrassing, especially since my kid was with me and it was nearly midnight that time… at least this time it was only about 10:40 pm.

Anyway, my sister-in-law picked me up from the train and handed me a nice, big coffee! Yes, real, actual coffee! It was a little bit of heaven, let me tell you. She also gave me a piece of coffee cake. So, I got a coffee AND a dessert out of the deal. She can pick me up any time she wants! This is real service!

So now I’m home. I think the trip was successful (though success is a hard thing to define for a trip like this). It was certainly eventful. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I did, or maybe even more than I did. Here are my requisite statistics for today:

Total steps for today: 8,513

Total desserts for today: 1. Well, 2. I guess the apple was, once again, my dessert at lunch. I’m counting the coffee cake as a desert, though it’s more like a meal.

Total number of times I thought Candy in 12B was going to punch someone while she was gyrating and flailing: 11. Yes, she’s a violent dancer, especially when drunk.

Total number of actual smacks given by Candy in 12B:  1.  She hit the crew member as the margaritta was being delivered. Luckily, it was still closed.

Total coffees for today: 2! Well, one and a half, since the one on the airplane was small and not full. Of course, if we’re counting the physical cups that were used, then it would have to be three. Either way, I’m back on the coffee cart!

Take a deep breath. Yes, the point is, in fact, to inhale. That smell, my friends, is the scent of Day Five. Day Five – the penultimate day of my trip to Atlanta.

Today started much like the first four days – I woke up. Well, I guess this is not unique to a day away from home in any way, but it’s always best to start a story from the beginning, right? So, I woke up, got ready and put on my lemon-scented shirt again. So far, no one has complained about a vile stench around me, though I had a dream last night in which someone in a dark robe came into our booth and said in a high-pitched, feisty, asthmatic voice “You…. Yoooouuuuu… have a vile, unpleasant aura about you…. Be afraid!” In the dream, I responded, “You go five days without coffee and see if you can avoid an unpleasant aura.” And then I woke up, sweating bullets, afraid that it was a premonition that I’d have to go five days without any real coffee. I’m not convinced that the junk I had a couple days ago was actually coffee, so I’m already at like three days without coffee and a fourth day would be today if I can’t find any real coffee.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that either the dish soap is working well enough or folks simply are not inhaling around me. Either way, I want a good cup of coffee and some dessert; if my shirt is starting to smell like ripe lemons, that’s the least of my concerns.

So, dressed and (hopefully) fresh and lemony, I headed downstairs and bribed the barrista for a slip of paper with the free WiFi code. As I write this, the lyric from an old song has popped into my head: “There’s a card game in the corner, and the barmaid smiles at me. Well, I slipped her a silver dollar and she brought me a drink for free.” It’s like the perfect lyric for this situation. Except that in the corner there wasn’t a card game, there was a computer and some hoodlumskids were trying to hack their way out of the business portal on it. And the barrista was male and just kind of glowered darkly in my general direction. Oh, and I didn’t give him any money. But he did give me that slip of paper for free. So, it’s like totally the same thing. My ticket for the information superhighway in hand, I plopped down to check email and make sure that no one had sent me any hate mail for not getting back to them for a few days. I was waiting for the rest of my crew to come downstairs anyway, so it was a good use of my time I thought. My roommate joined me a few minutes later and we waited. Eventually, he called upstairs to the rest of them and learned that we were skipping breakfast at the conference and instead having breakfast in the concierge lounge. So, I finished checking email and ordering a birthday gift for my daughter (don’t tell her – it’s a surprise!) and headed back upstairs to the 24^th floor.

Here in the concierge lounge, I found eggs and bagels and muffins and yogurt and fruit. There were juices. There was more of that stuff they’re calling coffee. And then I saw it – like the bright sun burning through a thick fog or a bright beacon in the night guiding me to the promised land. There were angelic harps playing and lots of winged creatures crying out with a joyful noise. For, in a humble yet shiny stainless steel tray above a modest Sterno cup – there were grits! Yes, finally, on Day Five of my trip, there was an actual grits sighting! I threw down my bag and raced over to grab a plate, knocking over a little old lady in the process and getting—

Okay, I made that last sentence up.

I was trying to make this story more exciting than it really was, and since television has taught me that exciting things seem to happen when little old ladies get knocked over by someone rushing to get grits, I threw that in there. It was pure fiction, and I apologize for sliding off the path of truth and righteousness in an effort to use a one-time gimmick to make my story more compelling. I hope you’ll forgive me.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I threw my bag down and walked, calmly, over to get a plate. There was no one else in line, so there was no need for me to knock anyone over, old or otherwise. I set a bagel in to toast and filled my plate with eggs, fruit and several large spoonfuls of grits. I know this may sound corny (get it?), but my heart was pounding in anticipation of eating the one thing I had been looking forward to eating all week, so I focused on the other items on my plate. First the eggs, then the fruit, then the toasted bagel. Then, finally, I ate the grits. They were a-maize-ing, ahem, I mean amazing and all was right in the world, at least for a few minutes. For dessert (yes, I have now progressed to having dessert with breakfast, too), I had a cranberry muffin of some sort and that extended the bliss. I toyed with the idea of having more grits as a second dessert, but I needed a plan such that I wouldn’t look too gluttonous. I was making progress until I was derailed in my Grits Acquisition Roadmap planning efforts by my cell phone, which decided to take that moment to start blowing up.

In this case, the phrase “blowing up” has nothing to do with actual explosiveness and everything to do with ringing. It’s the lingo we use in the biz, ya dig?

Anyway, I answered the phone and really couldn’t hear the caller at all aside from figuring out that it was the guy from the body shop calling about my car. I don’t think I mentioned that on Friday, before catching the train to the plane, I dropped off my car so that it could go through a water test to try to determine why water was leaking into it during rain storms. I had isolated the leak to the region of the trunk around the driver’s side taillight, but I couldn’t figure it out any further myself and every time I climbed into the trunk during a rain storm carrying towels and a flashlight, I was getting more worried that someone would be videotaping me. So, I admitted defeat and dropped it off since I knew I wouldn’t need it for a few days, seeing as I was going to be in another state and all.

I abruptly left the concierge lounge and went down to my room, where I knew the cell worked, and I called him back. Except he didn’t answer. I called again, no answer. Third time turned out to be the charm when a receptionist answered and transferred me to him. They found the problem – a seal between two of the body panels had deteriorated and cracked and was allowing water to seep in. The fix is to rip out the seal, clean it all up, re-seal it, let it dry and then re-test it. Total cost: $340. I approved it and he said he’d only call again if the re-test showed that there were still problems. Here’s hoping I don’t get another call.

Next up was the daily trek to the conference center. Today we reverted to our tried-and-true path from the Marta train to the conference center – no shortcuts or alternate routes allowed. Once again I was going to be rooted firmly in the booth and so I headed straight to it, but today’s sentence was only from 10:30 to 1:30. Traffic was a lot lighter today; I suspect a lot of people had flights today and left. Nevertheless, we got a few good leads and some people who threw their cards in the fishbowl just to get a chance at free consulting for a product they don’t have. Or maybe they’re hoping to win the camera. I guess it could be that.

I’d love to relay some kind of amusing anecdote about the booth time, but it was really kind of dull today. Sorry.

Lunch today ended up being boxed. They brought in vegetarian boxed lunches, so I figured I’d just go that route rather than trekking to the dining hall. Mostly, I wanted the cookie that was in the boxes my colleagues had. So, I grabbed a veggie box, opened it up and…

There was no cookie.

There was an apple.

Now, I like apples. I love apples, really (though the store bought apples have been knocked down a notch after the two amazing harvests of apples we got from our own tree before it collapsed a few years ago). But no matter how much I love apples, they’re not cookies. Why do the flesh eaters get cookies when I get a conventionally grown apple? It’s not fair! I mean, why is it that if you order a veggie burger in a restaurant, by default you get pasta salad while if you order some cow matter on a bun, you get French fries? Aren’t I allowed to want French fries? Last time I checked, French fries resembled potatoes and potatoes are vegetarian-friendly.

But I digress. Good thing I don’t digress too often, right?

Internal, silent tantrum over, I grabbed the sandwich and took a bite. It was all bread. I took another bite and it, too, was all bread. I opened the sandwich and found that there were, in fact, veggies on the bun, but it was just a few strips of roasted red and yellow peppers and some onions. I think there was one little piece of squash, too. But the entirety of the veggies didn’t even cover the bun. Shrugging, I put the lid back on the sandwich and finished consuming it. There was a pasta salad cup in there, too, so I ate that. Note that in the meat-eater boxes, they had potato salad… Then I ate the bitter, Red Apple of Cookielessness. It got stuck between my teeth and, as luck would have it, I forgot my handy-dandy dental floss that I never leave home with. I wandered back to the booth, trying to dig the bits of apple out with my tongue, my thumbnail, a bit of notebook paper, a golf pencil I found near the restroom – whatever I could find that might be able to be wedged up into and around my gum to release the Red Apple of Cookielessness from its Perch of Doom between my teeth.

That’s when I noticed the person waiting for me to give her a demo. I extracted the pencil, paper and my fist from my mouth and launched directly and smoothly into a demo. It soon became clear that she really didn’t care about the demo as I had already hooked her on the benefits of the product. She asked about who we were and I explained. “Oh,” she said, eyes widening. “You’re one of the 5000!” It was almost as if she was honored to meet one of us lucky losers who were honored with a layoff, as if we’re somehow celebrities. She was not the first – probably a dozen or more people reached that light bulb moment in the middle of a conversation with one of us, where they realized they were in the presence of Greatness, I mean, in the presence of one of the five thousand. It was kind of weird, I’m not sure if it was weird in a good or bad way, though. She dropped her card in the fishbowl and left. I pulled her card and wrote notes about the demo and dropped it back in. Because that’s what we Fivethousanders (the lingo for us in the biz) do.

This interaction left me thinking that we should try to setup a world tour or something – kind of like the American Idol tour they have all the time where all the show’s losers go around and sing bad songs to people who don’t want to hear the music but hope to get on TV – we could have the Microsoft 5000 tour. That might be awesome, so long as I can do it in slippers, sitting in my living room. Have I mentioned, that I hate travel? No? Well, let’s just say that it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t become a major league baseball player or a rock star, and that interstellar astronauts are not currently a highly-needed profession; my top three career choices would have required a lot of travel and clearly that means those jobs would have taken my soul.

Now’s the time I should admit that I finally broke down and tried some of the liquid that was in a brown, fabric-covered container in the exhibitors lounge. I think my grandmother had a couch covered in this same brown fabric. It had a little sign on it that said “coffee” and it, or something like it, had been there, ignored by me for the past day or two. So, I figured I’d give it a try. I poured a small amount into a cup and put in some non-dairy creamer to whiten it up. I put it to my lips and tipped it back… and nearly choked as the swill reached my tongue! It was more of that brown food color infused water. Maybe it was chicory, though I’ve had chicory “coffee” before and it was better than this. Maybe they brewed three or four pots from one set of old, stale Postum grounds. I don’t know. But it was certainly not coffee and I was certainly not happy. Well, I guess I was happy that I only poured a little bit into the cup – you know how much I hate to waste things.

At 1:30 everyone was kicked out of the expo hall. I mean, literally, right at 1:30, security guards started coming around, demanding to see badges to make sure that the people still in the room were authorized to be there. It took us a half hour or so to break down the booth and pack it all back up in the little oval carrying box thing (I’m still impressed at how well these things are designed). If you are keeping track, the swilly taste of that faux coffee was still in my mouth despite a couple the couple of cans of Coke I used to try to wash it down.

Next up: Taco Mac. Airport Colleague #3 needed to get three more beers in order to earn bragging rights (and a $5 tee shirt) as an official Taco Mac Brewniversity Pledge. He ordered some dark lager thing that tasted like chocolate. It had no chocolate in it at all, but somehow the thing tasted just like chocolate. I took one tiny sip, just to see… and I was full. That beer was heavy! So, I washed it down with a couple of Cokes.

I’ll tell you, the day shift at this bar was very, very different from the night shift. Each of the nights we were there, we were waited on promptly and efficiently. Our waiter interacted with us, made fun of us and made sure we didn’t get hungry or thirsty. This waiter on the day shift basically didn’t pay any attention to us at all. It was, err, like night and day! Eventually we got the third beer and then a long eventually later, the tee shirt came out rather unceremoniously. I think Airport Colleague #3 was relieved that this was finally over and that we’d stop making fun of him for losing to some Former Colleague We Had Not Previously Met in the great race to pledgehood bliss. Ha! No mere tee shirt will stop us from making fun of him over this, that’s for sure!

For dinner tonight, one of our local colleagues, Atlanta Colleague #1 (the one who loaned me the company shirt I’ve been wearing all week), invited us over to his house for a barbecue. We headed back to the hotel to change out of our logo-wear before heading to his house. In the meantime, storms blew in, cooling the air and wetting the ground. Winds were whipping again.

Have I mentioned that I travelled all the way to Georgia and not only did it take me five days to find grits but also the weather was cool, almost chilly? It has been windy much of the week and on one day it was dark, stormy and downright yucky (as we call it in the biz). I think the weather forecast is calling for it to get warm the day after tomorrow here in Georgia; of course, I’ll be in New Jersey by then. Hopefully it will be nice there, too, though dreary and yucky is just better in New Jersey than it is anywhere else.

So, we took the Marta to the stop near his house. There were some interesting passengers on the train at rush hour, that’s for sure. This one dude kept holding his shiny, bald head in his hand and shaking his head. Then he’d draw something in the dust and grime on the floor of the train with his finger, look at me and laugh. Then he’d repeat the ritual. The voices in my head told me not to worry, for they were talking to him, too. So, I ignored it despite my jealous rage. But I couldn’t help but wonder what he was drawing. I assume it was a caricature, since we celebrities are often caricatured by our fans. Anyway, we got off the train at the correct stop (thankfully) and our host (eventually) came and picked us up. We were getting to the point where we were considering walking, but Airport Colleague #3 couldn’t get the silly iPhone GPS App to work due to “interference” (this is the same App that wanted to lead us past our destination on Friday night). But no harm or foul on this one as our ride showed up in a sporty mini-van, complete with car seats. We all climbed in and headed back to his house.

The house was very nice and it was an honor to be welcomed there! There were plenty of drinks and chips and snacks. The gracious host made shish kebabs and had a set of them specially set aside for me with lots of veggies on them. Probably the healthiest meal I have eaten since breakfast on Friday! So, if you’re reading this Atlanta Colleague #1, thanks again! Veggie kebabs finished, it was time for dessert (of course). Two homemade pies were available and it clearly would have been rude to only try one of them, so I had some of both. One of the pies had been targeted for attack by some Camponotus pennsylvanicus; well, I cannot be certain that it was Camponotus pennsylvanicus as this is just one of the more than 12,000 species in the family Formicidae. Plus, Camponotus pennsylvanicus is a large species and the species on the pie was small. I just like typing Camponotus pennsylvanicus because it needs to be in italics.

I <3 italics.

In any event, the tiny little things don’t eat much so that didn’t stop anyone. As a vegetarian, I clearly couldn’t eat them, so any I found were removed and placed on the plate of whichever meatie was sitting next to me. What? It’s not like they’d notice – ants are just meat anyway, right?

Dessert finished, we headed down to the basement and spent some time making fun of each other, reminiscing about the conference and going through the business cards. First we drew the winners of our three prizes (two consulting sessions and the camera). That was exciting, as I’m sure you can imagine. There were lights flashing and celebratory drinks being passed around. There were pictures taken. There might have been some high fives. It was clear that we were all quite tired so the evening wound down relatively early so that we could get back to the train before it stopped running. Besides, our stupid noises and laughter were probably freaking out the kids upstairs who were trying to sleep on a school night, so departing was clearly the right thing to do.

Back in the hotel, we all headed back to our own rooms and called it a night. At least that’s how it happened so far as I know. Perhaps the other folks went and partied, but if they did, they were on their own and will have to write about the shenanigans on their own travel blogs. I pride myself on my journalistic integrity and so I cannot undermine the trust I have built with you, dear reader, by making assumptions or fabricating stories about what other people were doing outside of my presence. If they were out there visiting seedy night clubs or buying fancy clothing and shoes, or singing karaoke to Culture Club songs, that’s their right. So, stop being so judgmental of them, okay?

I will close tonight as I have each of the other nights, with valuable statistics:

Total steps for today: 9,138

Total desserts for today: 3. Well, 4. I guess the apple was my dessert at lunch.

Total number of members of the family Formicidae eaten: 0, though I’m pretty sure Airport Colleague #3 ate some of them.

Total coffees for today: 0. Well, one-sixteenth of a cup. Sort of. If you consider that swill I tried this afternoon to be coffee. I don’t.

What is it about Monday that makes it so painful and untrustworthy? Why hasn’t Monday been tagged by Congress or the CIA or FBI as an enemy combatant? Clearly, it attacks us without warning, kicks us when we’re down and unrelentingly points and laughs at us as we whimper and whine our way through it. Mondays should be illegal. In fact, the word “Monday” should be one of those words that can’t be said on television. Monday’s are cruel and unusual punishment for whatever we might have done on the weekend. Mondays are…

But I digress.

Today may be Mon The Day That Shall Not Be Named but it is really the middle of my week away from home, so later today the downward spiral toward the actual act of travelling will begin (it’s still uphill for a few hours today as I’m writing this beginning before breakfast). But even though the weekend was spent working and therefore it doesn’t really feel like… “That” day… the certain je ne sais quoi that makes this day of the week, um, special, is still present and having an impact on the day. (Note how awesome I am, getting all international with my not quite valid French grammar? I think the right grammar (or the more correct grammar at least) would be je ne sais pas quoi, but since when have I been one to quibble over silly grammar details? The point is, my wife should be impressed at my ability to use the French language so powerfully. Note also that I said she should be impressed; she won’t be.)

Last night was such a late night (for a darkness wimp like me) that I ended up sleeping until the alarm went off. Well, “sleeping” is a term I have used very loosely for my whole life. It’s more like a vertically-challenged wakefulness for me in that I’m just on the less-fully-conscious side of things for a few hours or minutes, a state of being that is generally safer when one is stuck in the middle of a hotel bed than it is when one is driving a car, brewing a pot of coffee or writing a travel blog. So, I completed my slightly-lower-power recharge cycle around 6:15 am, got ready for the day and put on my shiny, lemon-scented company logo shirt which had dried nicely on the fantastic hide-a-line technology I mentioned yesterday or on Saturday. I toyed with the idea of paying for the internet service again, since it had been so successful when I paid $13.99 for a day of internet and used 1 whole hour of my purchased time the other night, but luckily I thought better of it this time since I wouldn’t even have an hour today. I then thought about going down to the hotel bar and bribing someone for the code for the free WiFi in the lobby, but by that point it was time to go.

Our party walked on out to our new favorite transportation hub, the Marta station, and followed the path that we were now expertly familiar with. Climbing up from the catacombs in which the train discharged us beneath the Phillips Arena, we took a deep breath and started our well-travelled path to the entrance to the Georgia World Congress Center. But before we went very far, one member of our party, whom I shall call Airport Colleague #2 because he was one of the people I met at the airport on Friday night (and because I’d get in trouble with another of the folks I met at the airport that night if I didn’t make her Airport Colleague #1), proclaimed, “We should go this way today. I think it’s a shortcut!”

Anyone who knows me knows how much I hate change, and I argued feebly about it but in the end I went along with the plan anyway because that’s the kind of team player I am. So we walked the opposite way out of the Marta station. And we walked some more. And then we walked a bit more. Eventually we came to a street, meaning we finally got to an edge of the building complex we were trying to circumnavigate in order to fully realize the potentiality of a shortcut (see, I threw in some lingo – this is a business trip after all). We hung a left and started walking somewhat downhill (there might have been some stairs involved, I can’t remember now as all I really recognized was how much my feet hurt and how much I hated change and how much I was convinced that this shortcut wasn’t actually shorter and did I mention my feet hurt?). And we kept walking. With the shortcut now two hundred times longer than the original path (alright, maybe it was just twice as long as the original path), we walked some more. Past the CNN building on our left. Past some other buildings I didn’t recognize but may very well have been part of the CNN building, too. We saw Centennial Olympic Park across the street. And we hung another left, keeping the CNN building to our left so that we had a static reference point to use if we decided to argue about where we were. It is probably important to note here that our group of travelers was all men; if we ended up in a situation where certain folks might think we were lost, there was no way we’d be asking for directions. I just wanted that to be clear for you. Because we weren’t lost. Not at any point. All we needed to do was find the right sidewalk to go such that we’d make three lefts which means we had ultimately turned right. Then we’d be going in the correct direction. So, to that end, we climbed up another set of stairs and we found ourselves in a more familiar area, one in which we could turn left again (note – this is the third left turn). Up ahead we could see Building A of the Georgia World Congress Center. And our friendly bar, Taco Mac. Too bad we needed Building B. So we kept walking. 362.5 hours later (or maybe it was 15 minutes in total), we were at the entrance that was 5 minutes away from the train station. The point I am trying to make is: we were not lost.

We headed down to the breakfast that was being served in the dining hall, 4 stories deep and hundreds of steps away in Building B. It was a similar setup to the prior day’s lunch in that we were greeted by cheering folks and hounded by smiling , armed (so far as I could tell, they all had two arms) guards to ensure that we walked to the furthest buffet station possible. Once again, there were no grits to be found in all of Atlanta, at least not in the places I was haunting. I swallowed my disappointed cry and instead had some fruit and a greasy, cold egg and cheese sandwich on an English muffin; most of the cheese stuck to the foil wrapper, so it was essentially an egg patty on a not-quite-toasted muffin. Yum. Alas, there was nothing for dessert. And there was no indication or hint of coffee. So I grabbed an orange juice instead.

After breakfast, we headed over to building A (via a real shortcut this time) to prepare for our various presentations. I think I mentioned that I was going to help out in a discussion session about my former product by being a microphone monkey. Well, this grew into a larger role (and may, in fact, have been a larger role all along and I was just blocking that fact out). So now I was co-presenting the product and session with one of my colleagues. This was supposed to be an interactive discussion, but just in case no one would be brave enough to talk, we decided to prepare some demo materials ahead of time. Many folks know how much I despise public speaking, despite all evidence that indicates that I might not completely suck at it. I suppose on a scale of 1 to travel where 1 is something tolerable, and travel is, well, travel… public speaking comes in closer to 1 than to travel. But still, I’m not a fan. If you’re having trouble imagining this 1 to travel scale, it might look something like this:

I hope that helps explain the complexity of my thoughts on the matter.

Anyway, we got our slide ready and got the demo data setup and we headed into the room. This actually went smoothly. I was expecting the security guard to prevent us from going in because our badges were purple instead of yellow. But, apparently, we were on the list so the bouncer the security guard let us in. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the projector we requested was there, as was a whiteboard. People filed in leading up to the beginning of the session. And they kept coming in.

We were by no means the largest session or even one of the largest. For all I know, we could have been the smallest. I didn’t really care at that specific point in time as there were somewhere around 100 or maybe 75 people in the room. All I know for sure is that almost all the seats were full and there were people standing along the side and back of the room, too. I also know it was the largest room I had worked in a while, since I hadn’t worked a room since this product’s last user group meeting in 2007. I saw Airport Colleague #1 file in and stand in the back (if you refer to an earlier paragraph, you’ll recall why her name is Airport Colleague #1 in the credits. She is totally #1 in my book. She might have paid me to say that. Or maybe not. I’ll never tell.). She smiled and did her best to hide her desire to heckle me (don’t ask her about the heckling – she’ll deny it completely).

At 10:30, we were introduced. There were some audible gasps when I was introduced. Maybe my legend preceded me. Maybe my zipper was down. Maybe it was the fact that I was introduced as “the lead developer and architect of the product.” Maybe it was my fresh lemon scent. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I was impressed nonetheless at how much of my awesomeness was recognized. With my awesomeness glowing warmly, I headed to the podium and started my stand up routine.

“As Airport Colleague #2 implied,” I said, “I can talk about this product at great length and in great detail. I even used to sing lullabies to my kids which were lyrics about the features I was working on that day…”

There was laughter at my quip. Anyone texting my biography would have texted ‘LOL’ after documenting my gem. Clearly, the laughter was not worthy of an ROTFLOL, but certainly it was laughter worth an LOL. And I felt victorious.

My co-presenter probably did most of the talking but I did a good bit of it, too. I did all of the demoing. There was not a lack of people willing to speak up and ask questions, but in the end we were able to get to the majority of the things we had prepared for the session and answer their questions. I’m guessing this shows just how good we were at forecasting the needs and mood of the audience despite not having met them or seen a roster of attendees or anything and how great we were at budgeting the time it would take for each topic (note the additional financial software lingo referencing budgeting and forecasting in honor of the business trip). Airport Colleague #1 stepped in and answered a question at one point, which was good since I had only heard about the specific subject the day before. I suppose I really need to call her Airport Former Colleague #1 since I no longer work there, but the way I see it is that the team we had built over all those years was like a family and family is something that never goes away, much like a bad rash. Therefore, I see no need for the word ‘former’ because Airport Colleague #1 is part of the family.

Anyway, I’ll spare you the details of the demo/discussion session because, well, it was about budgeting and reporting software and that’s just not an exciting topic to read about. Plus, I’ve already dropped a couple bits of lingo and I wouldn’t want to bore overwhelm you with too much. Of course, this travel blog isn’t necessarily an exciting and compelling read, but trust me when I say: a detailed dissertation about a budgeting and reporting software demo script is probably just a little less exciting and compelling than anything else I might write. Please don’t tell me if you disagree with that statement. All I’ll say about the session is that we were simply awesome and awe-inspiring. Yeah. I’ll leave it at that.

After the session was over, a few people had questions and came forward to discuss them. It was good to have the one-on-one interaction afterwards because it showed that at least a few people were paying attention. I’ll add that from my perch at the podium in the front of the room I didn’t see anyone nodding off or seeming disinterested during the session, so either they were really good at sleeping with their eyes open, or we didn’t suck. I have to be able to sleepsuccessfuly have a lower-powered wakefulness at night so I’m going to assume that we really did do a good job.

Session over, we headed down to the dining hall for lunch. This time there was a baked vegetable terrine as well as a rice dish. I took both as well as some odd-looking salad and headed over to a table. Again, there was no coffee or even hot water for tea (though there were teabags again). I just went ahead with the meal, largely considering it to be an appetizer because dessert looked awesome. The vegetable terrine was tasty, but I am not certain I know what was in it. It was kind of yellowy and grainy. There were occasional bits of recognizable vegetable matter and nothing that looked like bacon or scrapple or cow tongue. I figure I’m not dead or delirious yet so there wasn’t anything poisonous in it, at least not in a large enough quantity for me to notice, so I’ll put that in the win column. For my entrée dessert I had a mini pumpkin pie thing and a “chocolate-cup-filled-with-a-cream-filling-that-reminded-me-a-little-of-something-not-quite-like-cannoli-filling” thing. They were as great as they looked. I toyed with the idea of doubling up on them, but I figured I should save some for other people. So, I split the difference and took a second pumpkin pie thing but not a second chocolate cup thingy and I pushed away. I’m a good team player like that.

We headed to the booth for our next round of booth hours. Booth hours ran from 11:30 to 5:30 today, but since our session ended at 11:30, we were late to it. This allowed my colleagues to get a feel for what it would be like without me around. Hopefully it didn’t make them realize that they liked not having me around. They didn’t act like they were happier when I was gone, so I’m just ignoring those voices much like I’m ignoring the chanting coffee beans at all of the (still) empty coffee carts in the hallways.

The booth was busy but not quite as busy as the past few days. Some of the more anticipated sessions were happening today and so a lot of people were out at those instead of loitering in the expo hall spending quality time with me. But those who did come to the booth were interested and the lower traffic meant that we could do some more in-depth demos for them. So in a way at least, it worked out. The fishbowl of business cards continued to get fuller, so that was a good sign, especially since I was unaware of any alcohol being involved with people throwing their cards into the bowl today. These people were, allegedly, in full possession of their inhibitions and still they put the cards in the bowl and talked to me – how amazing! Most people who spoke to me were gracious and seemed happier for the experience; I didn’t really notice anyone backing away slowly in fear like they do back at home. I guess people really are nicer in the south.

5:30 marked the end of the work day for the dedicated. Those of us who stuck it out until 5:30 wandered out of the booth and headed to Taco Mac, where we were meeting those of our colleagues who decided that 5:00 should mark the end of the work day. Along the way we made a secret pact not to talk about the exciting things that happened in that half hour the others missed. I’m not about to break that pact here, but let me tell you, those last 30 minutes of booth time on The Day That Shall Not Be Named were the most exciting of the entire conference!

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I seriously considered grabbing a handful of those tempting coffee beans as I walked out, but just before I did so I noticed some sweaty dude with his hands in the bowl, fishing around like a snot-nosed, flu-riddled kid at a party who is intent on taking every green M&M from the candy dish. While I have an immune system and am not afraid to use it, I saw no need to abuse it with whatever might be festering on the little brown nuggets I might throw into my mouth. So, I stared straight ahead, ignoring their feeble little pleas. I control the coffee beans, they do not control me!

Anyway, onward to Taco Mac we went. It ended up that this turned out to be dinner as well. For me that meant chips and queso and a gallon or two of full-fat Coke. No onion rings this time. I toyed with the idea of asking if they had coffee, but the idea of bar coffee scared me slightly more than the festering coffee beans in the conference center, so I passed on that notion. Airport Colleague #1 was there with us, as were a number of other Former Colleagues I had never met before this trip, along with the dude who fired me (whom I had never met before this trip, either). One of the Former Colleagues earned her $5 Taco Mac Brewniversity Pledge tee shirt for drinking 13 over-priced beers (over several days). We made fun of Airport Colleague #3 for getting beaten by her in the race to 13. He was visibly embarrassed but was committed to completing the journey to Brewniversity Pledgehood. And I should add:  we were all very proud to be able to say that we were there to see a Former Colleague We Had Never Met Before This Conference achieve such a great and tremendous honor.  I actually felt envious as I watcher her don the sparkly new shirt while I continued to wear my lemony-scented company logowear.

So, I suppose I should revise my statement from a few paragraphs ago about the most exciting part of the conference so far: watching the Brewniversity induction ceremony (the ceremonial putting on of the shirt over top of what she was wearing is something to behold) was far more exciting than the crazy, amazing things that happened in our booth at the end of the day. Woo hoo! Good times!

After a while, people grew bored of Taco Mac and talk began to happen related to moving to a different bar. Airport Colleague #1 decided to go back to her hotel since she’s leaving tomorrow, but the shuttles had stopped. My roommate and I didn’t want her walking to the hotel alone, so we excused ourselves from the bar hopping (bar hopping which turned out to be one bar, I believe) and walked her to the hotel. Along the way we met several folks who were seeking economic stimulus of one form or another, some others who might have been looking to provide stimulants of one form or another, and several people walking their weird-looking Southern dogs. I wondered silently if these dogs had grits for breakfast or not but stopped myself from asking since there was nothing I could do about it either way and I really didn’t think I could handle the truth nor the huge amount of jealousy I’d feel. Instead I tried to convince Airport Colleague #1 to stop by our booth in the morning before heading to the airport, just to brighten it up a bit like she had several times when she came over and introduced me to her new boss (she actually did that at the weird ‘living art’ reception on Sunday night, but she brought her boss over again one time and she brought a customer of hers over, too). I offered my condolences to the boss on inheriting such a troublemaker, but I think her boss thought I was kidding. I’m pretty sure I was kidding, too, but I can never be sure (and I’d never admit it one way or the other since I need to keep this air of suspense about me.

So, after parting ways with Airport Colleague #1 and wishing her safe travels back home, my roommate and I walked a couple blocks to the Marta station and headed back to the hotel, fully intent on finding some food. That said, we were too tired to bother with the food finding mission, so we just went to the room and watched TV and continued some research on the importance of computer video games in keeping our minds old and feeble, I mean young and vibrant. I could give more details about the different games of spider solitaire, minesweeper and chess I was playing, but now my internal battery’s power level is approaching critical which means that soon my eyelids will be rendered incapable of remaining open on a consistent basis. I need to close this post for tonight and wash my shirt one last time. Tonight, like each night thus far, I will leave you with several vital pieces of information:

Total steps for today: 11,757

Total desserts for today: 3 (such a shame that I couldn’t find more)

Total number of tortilla chips eaten for dinner: 437, with two bowls of queso dip.

Total coffees for today: 0. That’s right. ZERO. Two days in a row without coffee and I’m still able to write and function with as much skill and grace as ever. And to think, you all doubted I could do it. Nonbelievers!