(no subject)
Been meaning to write this update ever since I got back last Tuesday, but the time just really hasn't presented itself until now. I've started it five or six times, but something always happened. Well, hopefully I'll be able to get it done, now.
Had an interesting time over the Memorial Day weekend. As I mentioned in my last entry, I was heading up to an island on one of the Great Lakes, where Dave's family has a lakefront summer cottage. Dave's family was there, because Memorial Day weekend is when they "open" it. (They "close" it for the winter around Labor Day.) Dave and I took Tim, the other Dave, and Danielle.
Friday prior to Memorial Day, I took off from work early. Not too early, and as we found out once we got on the road, certainly not early enough. Traffic was some serious kind of hell. Actually, I should back up and mention... Dave switched his shift around on Friday and worked early, starting at 6:00am. That was after he got off at 9:00pm the night before and then we were up until around midnight packing. We got up at around 4:30am and were exhausted!
So, we left work at around 3pm, ran home to pick up baggage, directions and such, then picked up the other Dave, Danielle, and Tim. Stuffed everyones belongings into the trunk of my car, packed our three guests into the back, and we were off.
Let me take a moment to say that my car is a 2003 Ford Focus SE, 4 door sedan. I purchased it new, and it's served me well... until I tried to load five adults and their gear into it. You see... its wimpy little V4 really can't quite handle all that weight so well. Acceleration was quite entertaining for the first five minutes, then it just got old. Stopping was also a bit touchy. We learned the trick of accelerating until we got it up to about 65mph ... then it would start to struggle. We'd turn overdrive off manually and force it up to whatever the cruising velocity was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (Usually about 85 or so, heh.), and then turn it back on. My poor, poor car.
Anyhow, the "six hour trip plus stops" turned out to be quite longer, considering the holiday weekend. We had hotel reservations in Ohio because we knew we'd be arriving much too late to get over to the island from Port Clinton. Well, it took over nine hours from start to finish, and we hardly made it to the hotel before it was too late for check-in. I was sitting up front, so my job was to force myself to stay awake so that I could keep Dave awake for the duration of the drive. See above when I reference how much sleep we'd gotten the night before. That was not fun, and everyone was both exhausted and thrilled to reach the hotel at about 1:30am, a mere half hour before check-in was closed.
Next day, we lugged our stuff over to the ferry and finally were there! Middle Bass Island, Ohio. Yay, and stuff.
Highlights include the fact that we were silly enough to go out on the cold water and get dragged around behind the speedboat on a tube, I sprained my ankle the first night there and hobbled around for the duration of our visit, eight people successfully shared one bathroom with little to no problems, and other things that I'd probably remember if I hadn't waited almost a week before posting it.
Hoping Dave's dad sends the pictures that he took with his digital camera. I'll see about posting them, if so.
Oh, yeah. I forgot the fireworks. You see, right over the state line, there is a fireworks shop in Pennsylvania. Fireworks are not legal in either Pennsylvania, or Maryland. This shop is in Pennsylvania, but will only sell to you if you have an out of state driver's license. There is a minimum purchase of $50. On top of that, they were running buy-one, get-one-free on everything. Everything.
Of course, we stopped and loaded the already overstuffed car with over $100 worth of fireworks to play with. We had a hard time setting off all the hundreds of bottle rockets and M-98s that we had to entertain us over the long weekend, but they managed! Mostly because I decreed that NO fireworks would be returning to Maryland. Considering we all live about 5 minutes from the Germantown Police Department, that was deemed to be a reasonable demand.
We saw a male peacock on the island. He came as close as about 10 feet from us. He didn't show off, though, which was unfortunate. He had two ladies with him, who were following at a distance. What a pimp. =P
Later that night, setting off the M-98s... each bang elicited a loud screech from the peacock, who had run off somewhere, but we didn't know where. I stated that we could probably track him down if someone stayed behind and continued to set off M-98s while the rest of us followed the noise, but we didn't bother.
The trip home was much faster, because we went as straight through as we could. This displeased our guests, who are freakin' chain smokers. I kinda felt bad for them, but I really would not care for my car to smell like cigarette smoke. Still, it got annoying after a while of them complaining about how badly they needed to stop so they could fill their lungs. Especially the second leg of the trip, which was shorter than the first, but they whined to stop more.
Great trip, but was glad to be home.
It's worth mentioning that my ankle, after more than a week, is still rather swolen. I'm somewhat worried by this.
Oh well. Must get to work, now. Much love!
Had an interesting time over the Memorial Day weekend. As I mentioned in my last entry, I was heading up to an island on one of the Great Lakes, where Dave's family has a lakefront summer cottage. Dave's family was there, because Memorial Day weekend is when they "open" it. (They "close" it for the winter around Labor Day.) Dave and I took Tim, the other Dave, and Danielle.
Friday prior to Memorial Day, I took off from work early. Not too early, and as we found out once we got on the road, certainly not early enough. Traffic was some serious kind of hell. Actually, I should back up and mention... Dave switched his shift around on Friday and worked early, starting at 6:00am. That was after he got off at 9:00pm the night before and then we were up until around midnight packing. We got up at around 4:30am and were exhausted!
So, we left work at around 3pm, ran home to pick up baggage, directions and such, then picked up the other Dave, Danielle, and Tim. Stuffed everyones belongings into the trunk of my car, packed our three guests into the back, and we were off.
Let me take a moment to say that my car is a 2003 Ford Focus SE, 4 door sedan. I purchased it new, and it's served me well... until I tried to load five adults and their gear into it. You see... its wimpy little V4 really can't quite handle all that weight so well. Acceleration was quite entertaining for the first five minutes, then it just got old. Stopping was also a bit touchy. We learned the trick of accelerating until we got it up to about 65mph ... then it would start to struggle. We'd turn overdrive off manually and force it up to whatever the cruising velocity was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (Usually about 85 or so, heh.), and then turn it back on. My poor, poor car.
Anyhow, the "six hour trip plus stops" turned out to be quite longer, considering the holiday weekend. We had hotel reservations in Ohio because we knew we'd be arriving much too late to get over to the island from Port Clinton. Well, it took over nine hours from start to finish, and we hardly made it to the hotel before it was too late for check-in. I was sitting up front, so my job was to force myself to stay awake so that I could keep Dave awake for the duration of the drive. See above when I reference how much sleep we'd gotten the night before. That was not fun, and everyone was both exhausted and thrilled to reach the hotel at about 1:30am, a mere half hour before check-in was closed.
Next day, we lugged our stuff over to the ferry and finally were there! Middle Bass Island, Ohio. Yay, and stuff.
Highlights include the fact that we were silly enough to go out on the cold water and get dragged around behind the speedboat on a tube, I sprained my ankle the first night there and hobbled around for the duration of our visit, eight people successfully shared one bathroom with little to no problems, and other things that I'd probably remember if I hadn't waited almost a week before posting it.
Hoping Dave's dad sends the pictures that he took with his digital camera. I'll see about posting them, if so.
Oh, yeah. I forgot the fireworks. You see, right over the state line, there is a fireworks shop in Pennsylvania. Fireworks are not legal in either Pennsylvania, or Maryland. This shop is in Pennsylvania, but will only sell to you if you have an out of state driver's license. There is a minimum purchase of $50. On top of that, they were running buy-one, get-one-free on everything. Everything.
Of course, we stopped and loaded the already overstuffed car with over $100 worth of fireworks to play with. We had a hard time setting off all the hundreds of bottle rockets and M-98s that we had to entertain us over the long weekend, but they managed! Mostly because I decreed that NO fireworks would be returning to Maryland. Considering we all live about 5 minutes from the Germantown Police Department, that was deemed to be a reasonable demand.
We saw a male peacock on the island. He came as close as about 10 feet from us. He didn't show off, though, which was unfortunate. He had two ladies with him, who were following at a distance. What a pimp. =P
Later that night, setting off the M-98s... each bang elicited a loud screech from the peacock, who had run off somewhere, but we didn't know where. I stated that we could probably track him down if someone stayed behind and continued to set off M-98s while the rest of us followed the noise, but we didn't bother.
The trip home was much faster, because we went as straight through as we could. This displeased our guests, who are freakin' chain smokers. I kinda felt bad for them, but I really would not care for my car to smell like cigarette smoke. Still, it got annoying after a while of them complaining about how badly they needed to stop so they could fill their lungs. Especially the second leg of the trip, which was shorter than the first, but they whined to stop more.
Great trip, but was glad to be home.
It's worth mentioning that my ankle, after more than a week, is still rather swolen. I'm somewhat worried by this.
Oh well. Must get to work, now. Much love!