The Drive There.

Did I mention, we decided to rent an E-150 8 passenger van to get us up there? Well, that was the transportation idea. It seemed like a good idea at the time. There were 6 of us going up there from Melissa’s immediate family (parents, sister, sister’s boyfriend, and us). 

We left Thursday evening, around 6:30 from Altamonte Springs, heading to Savannah, GA for an overnight stay on the way up to NC. That was probably the most fun the drive was the entire time. We played the alphabet game on the way, and that’s always awesome (Thanks Molly for introducing me to it). 

Friday morning, we were up bright and early. We gassed up the van, to the tune of $90+ for three quarters a tank. The price of gas right now is a real bummer. I’m not waiting on our irresponsible government to figure that out. I’m staying home .

So, we got back on I-95 and headed north. We had the occasional pit-stop along the way, but we made decent time to NC. All was great until we got near where we were supposed to exit. I’d been relying on Mike (Melissa’s dad) for directions. Mike and Gail (Melissa’s mom) had been to our destination a lot. It’s one of Gail’s childhood homes. So I figured relying on them for directions was a sound idea.

Well, maybe …

First of all, Mike is a brilliant man. He can talk in depth about topics with the best of folks. He’s a really smart guy, who I have a lot of respect for (even if he does vote for democrats). However, when it comes to directions, locations, and driving; not so much. It’s weird too, since Mike’s been all over the world. If anyone should have a good idea on how to get around, you’d think it’d be him. Nope.

So, after we got turned around a little bit on our way to where some of Melissa’s family was staying in NC, outside of our final destination, we stopped for a late lunch. While they were eating, I did the sensible thing: I bought a map. After a bit of researching, I’d figured out the how and where of what we needed to do.

The First Stop

So, we showed up at where Glenn & Judie were staying, just outside of Bath, NC. It’s a small town along part of the innumerable miles of interior coastline of NC. The place itself was pretty awesome, built up on stilts with huge panel windows overlooking the sound. It’s the kind of place a writer or artist (or me) would go for months to work on some masterpiece.

When we got there, I noticed something wrong with my stomach. I had emergency surgery a few years back to repair my intestines, and because of that I have a pretty large scar on my abdomen, which crosses my belly-button. Well, I noticed a large inflammation of scar tissue surrounding my belly-button. It hurt pretty bad, and I chalked it up to the long hours inside of the van.

The entire Clausing side of Melissa’s family was there. The Clausings are a branch of the Raburns, for whom the reunion is dedicated. It’s a lot to explain, so just follow me here.

Gordon (the patriarch of the Clausings) & Carmen, Gary & Maria, Jeff & Gina, Glenn & Judie, Joe & Gloria, and of course Mike & Gail and all of their associated kids, Jenna & Evan, CJ & Austin & Cassidy, Brian & Allison, Sara & Josh, Melissa & Megan, were all there. It turns out it was Allison’s birthday too. I think she turned 14. She also freakin grew up a whole lot. The last I remember seeing her, she was 4′-6″. She’s about 5′-7″ now. Geez…

As the day faded to night, and the mosquitos started to begin their assault, we all got back the van and followed the caravan of cars to our final destination. We were staying in a double-wide trailer in Fairfield, NC. 

Now, I’m sure the sound of a double-wide doesn’t sound appealing, especially in such a remote area of the world. However, I grew up pretty honky, so I’m generally cool with stuff like that. 

Until I got there …

The Living Quarters.

We showed up at the Hyde-Away Motel around 10:00pm that night. We’d had a pretty long day, leaving from Savannah that morning, staying around Bath, NC for a few hours, and after a 90 minute additional drive, we were at our lodging location. When we finally got inside of the trailer, it was a quick disappointment. The trailer itself was muggy, and everything seemed generally dirty. Not dirty like grime everywhere, but dirty like, this stuff probably had more residual human skin lying around that I care to think of.

Melissa and I had the option to sleep in separate twin beds, or share one. Since she’s pretty squeamish, she made the decision we’d share a twin bed. We picked the one against a corner in the room, so I wouldn’t have to worry about falling off in the middle of the night. 

One of the other things keeping us up at night, was gunfire. It wasn’t hunting season, so I didn’t understand why we’d hear the sound of shotguns about every minute or two. It turns out, that a local farmer had the idea to build a contraption that fires blank gunshots when anything gets close to his crop. The idea is to scare away geese and deer. The result, is that it sounds like your in a war zone.

We woke up the next morning, after a very bad night’s sleep, we got up and got ready for the actual family reunion. My stomach was hurting pretty bad, and it looked like the inflammation I noticed the day before had gotten significantly worse. I don’t have health insurance, so a mysterious medical problem while out in the middle of nowhere seemed pretty unnerving. 

The Reunion

We packed up everyone and headed out to Raburn family house. It’s located just outside of downtown Swan Quarter. Don’t get the wrong idea though, the house was also surrounded by corn fields, and not much else. It’s a very old house, dating back to 1840. The front of the house is an addition added sometime in the early 1900′s. It has that old house smell that’s both charming and unsettling. There’s a lot of history there, and it felt pretty good to see a little bit of it.

After everyone else arrived at the house, we spent the afternoon getting to know each other, catch up with those we already knew, and play a few games. 

One of those games was kickball. 

I’m a pretty big dude. I used to work out all the time, so I’m also a marginally athletic guy too. Playing kickball with the family seemed like something I could do pretty well, even if my stomach was hurting like hell. There was about 70 people there for the reunion, so the teams were split up into 4 different teams of generally equal caliber members.

I was the pitcher for our team, as well as a home-run kicker too. 

And then I got hurt. 

There’s not a lot of dignity in a family kickball injury. I’m not gonna mis-represent the incredible lameness of landing on an ankle and screwing it up. However, when I fell on my ankle, and head snaps, pops, and crackles, I was not amused. It hurt like hell. Compounded with an already bad abdomen infection, I was pretty much worthless. Brian and John were able to carry me to a chair, where I stayed for the rest of the time we were there. It sucked a lot.

We left after a few more hours and headed to the church for dinner. The dinner was catered by a local woman, who apparently knew how to cook very very well. I stayed in a chair the whole time, collecting pictures from people for use on the family website. It was a pretty good time.

Afterwards, we went back to the trailer. Melissa was pretty upset about staying there again. Because of this, she did the best thing she could think of, to get over it: She got hammered. After a while, she convinced me to hobble over to one of the family’s rooms there so we could play Taboo. 

If you’ve never played Taboo before, you ARE missing out. A drunken game of Taboo is about the best value fun you can possible imagine with your friends. 

The next morning, I woke up to considerable ankle and abdomen pain. I checked my stomach out, and the inflammation was black and blue, and leaking infection. I managed to drain a little of it, which was completely horrible. It was blood and infection mixed together, and it smelled horrible. Definitely an infection.

I was able to collect myself enough to make it to church though. We sat towards the back, and I didn’t stand for the hymns. I think some of the folks there took offense to that. To them: I’m very sorry. 

The Beach

Afterwards we drove out towards Nag’s Head, NC. I guess it’s customary for the family to go out there during a get together in Swan Quarter. Well, this time it was just the 6 of us in the van that made it out there. We stayed in a hotel on the beach, which was an amazing step up from the previous place we’d been sleeping at.

When we got there, everyone else went out to the sand dunes around the area. There are sand dunes out there, that are probably 50 to 60 feet high. They’re huge, so everyone drove out there to walk around. 

I didn’t go. I stayed behind, to drain the rest of the infection from my belly. This time, there was no smell (thank god), and much less to drain. I used a heaping amount of hydrogen peroxide to clean it. That turned into a routine which seems to have paid off.

The Drive to South Carolina

The next day we drove to Charleston, SC as a pit-stop on our way back home. The drive to I-95 from Nag’s head is down 64, a 2 lane road though the middle of nowhere. Mike had been driving, on account of my injuries, so it took about 4 hours to get to I-95. We stopped shortly after reaching the interstate for a bathroom break. I was feeling car-sick, so I took over the driving responsibilities.

Downtown Best Western – Charleston, SC

We got to Charleston pretty early, about 4:30pm. We checked in and carried our stuff to our hotel rooms. When we got in our hotel rooms, I think Melissa wanted to cry. They were awesome. It became apparent then, how bad our stay in Fairfield had really been. We were in a Best Western, which shouldn’t raise any eyebrows for quality of lodging. Still, it was the kind of room you’d be stoked to sleep in anytime. They even had granite countertops in the bathroom. 

After re-cleaning the infection and a shower, we headed out to downtown Charleston to do a little sight-seeing. Charleston is a pretty cool place. It’s not the type of downtown I’m used to living near Orlando. Still it’s a cool place, with a lot of history.  

I hobbled around with everyone for as long as I could. Toward the end of the night my ankle was really killing me. It started to rain, and that was the catalyst to get us off the streets and back to the hotel.

The Drive Home

The next day, we packed up and headed home. By this time, we’d all had enough of each other. That’s not to say we were yelling at each other, or rude at all. However, it was apparent that all of our individual personality quirks were starting to stretch thin with each other. Megan’s constant insisting we have the radio on, Mike’s constant direction giving, everyone’s insisting we listen to the lamest music imaginable; I was ready to be done.

We got back to Megan’s house around 3:00pm. It didn’t take long to unpack her’s and Mickey’s stuff. Afterwards, we headed to my place and unpacked Melissa and my stuff, in the rain. Mike and Gail couldn’t stay long, since they needed to return the rental van before 4:45pm that day or be charged an additional day’s worth of rental. 

The left our house around 3:30pm and headed to the Thrifty Rental Car by the airport. It’s about a 45 minute drive out there, so we figured they’d be fine.

Apparently not…

The Rental Car Debacle

It turns out there was a fairly serious accident on I-4, so it took them twice as long to get to the rental location. What’s worse, they waited to get gas until they were close to the drop off. The local gas station there charges $5.49 a gallon for gas. I guess the gas station has been the subject of a lot of controversy, since it’s basically akin to price gouging. Regardless, Mike and Gail paid the extra for gas, then got robbed the additional hundred bucks for not getting the van back in time.

For all of my character differences with Mike, my heart really goes out to him and Gail. They did their best to have a family vacation everyone could remember. I can’t thank them enough for all they did, even if I’m going to remember the trip largely, by how much of a pain in the ass it was. I don’t care, I love you guys.

Also a million thanks to the greater Raburns family. I’ve always been made to feel welcome among them, and I appreciate it a lot.

Melissa and I got away for the weekend to celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary. After some indecision on our part, we decided to go to Savannah, GA. It’s not too far of a drive, but it’s still far enough to feel like a vacation. We took off Friday from work (thanks dudes!) so we could spend as much time away as possible.

The drive was pretty uneventful. It was about three and a half hours up I-95. Not too much to talk about there.

We stayed at the Windham at Wingate. It’s a budget business hotel right off of 95. It wasn’t exceptionally nice, but the staff was really friendly. They also had free wireless internet, which always makes me smile.

We left the hotel shortly after arriving. We drove to Savannah, and scoped out River Street and the surrounding areas for parking. It turns out that parking on the streets is free after 5:00pm, and on Saturday and Sundays. After we parked, we walked straight to River Street.

We hit up ‘The Warehouse’, which advertised ‘The coldest, cheapest beer in town’. They might have been right. We ate dinner there too, which was pretty bad. I guess you get what you pay for.

We walked up River Street for a while before we went to the ‘Moon Something’ bar. They brew their own beer, of which I had a dark porter. Actually, I had 4 of them. They were really tasty. Melissa mixed it up with a few lagers too. I’m not really sure what they were though.

After that we went to another bar to meetup with a bar crawling ghost tour. Savannah is supposedly one of the most haunted cities in the country, so we were glad to hear some ghost stories. The tour guide was pretty cool. She even dressed like it was 1795. Good Times.

We spent the rest of the night drinking a whole lot. Too much even …

The next day, feeling a major hangover, we got up and drove back into town. Melissa had really wanted to do a Trolley tour of the town, but I was feeling the hangover very badly. Since I’m prone to motion-sickness anyways, there was no way we were going to do a Trolley tour with me a bumpy ride away from seeing breakfast again.

So instead, we walked, and we walked a whole lot. Basically, we walked all day long, trying to see as many different places as we could. We managed to hit Forsyth Park and get a picture by the big water fountain in there.

We also walked through Colonial Park Cemetary. That might sound creepy, except for the history there. I didn’t see any grave markers more recent than 1888. I did see a bunch from 1820, the year of a yellow fever outbreak which claimed more than 700 there. Some of the tombstones are amazlingly huge and elaborate, while some are the size of a dinner plate. It’s a eye-opening sort of place.

We walked through more ‘squares’ than you could count. Every few blocks there’s a ‘sqaure’ dedicated to someone. The story goes that one of these squares was the scene for Forrest Gump. So we found out which one, and took a few candid shots.

That night we ate at the ‘Old Pink House’. The name is not decieving: it is an old pink house. I had the Pot Pie, and Melissa had the pecan crusted chicken. Both were very good. Anyone going to Savannah definitely owes it to themselves to check that place out. Make reservations though, as we heard people were told to wait over 2 hours to get in.

After the we hit up a couple more bars, and called it a night. Actually, I called it a night, much to the despair of Melissa who was feeling like SuperWoman after a few drinks. Still, we walked back to the car, and drove back to the hotel.

All in all, it was a good time. It would have been nicer to stay in a place that didn’t involve us driving back and forth, but our stay was cheap. More time would have been cool too, but I miss my dog.

A friend of ours drove us to the airport, after our flight was delayed an hour. We checked our bags with no problem headed to security. After we got in line in security, we noticed an ominous sound coming from the roof above us; hail. We rode the monorail to our terminal, and were amazed to see hail coming inside of our train car.

Of course, our plane was delayed even more, so we went to the bar. By night’s end, we had gone to the bar twice, and arrived in DC 5 hours late. To add insult to injury, there was a technical malfunction at DC and we were stuck on the plane for an additional hour.

Our friend there (who was an amazing host, she’s very gracious) drove us back to her house. It was a long day, and we were ready to get some much needed sleep.

The next morning Melissa and I got up, and was stunned to see that our friend didn’t have a computer. The only computer there was her roomate’s, which she gave permission to use. So I installed Apache and PHP on the machine, and started testing some of the ideas I had brainstormed while waiting to get to DC the night before.

That’s the sort of thing you do when you’re married. You spend countess hours waiting for the woman to get ready, so you might as well keep your mind busy.

After Melissa was ready, we headed out on our first full day on vacation! We went to Smithsonian first. Specifically, we went to the Museum of Science & Natural History. I didn’t realize how much that would be like going to Disney World, so we didn’t stay very long. Aftewards, we went walking around that area. The weather was nice, so it was good to be outside.

We checked out the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the WW2 Memorial. All of which are really awesome to see. There’s tons of history behind all of them, and it’s humbling to stand in front of the monument’s to our country’s greatest leaders and most somber times.

The next day, I was woken up by my phone. It was a company I consult for, and they were having issues with their Blackberry devices not being able to send. I tried to fix the issue with my phone, which I was able to do with a degree of success, but I needed a computer. My phone was almost out of battery life, so I really needed a phone charger too.

I looked all over for that computer I had used the day before, as well as the phone charger. I hesitantly peeked in the roomate’s room to see if it was in there, and sure enough, both the computer and the phone charger were in there. I grabbed both.

I started charging my phone, while I went to work on the Blackberry issue. I was almost done with the issue when the roomate came home, and began searching for her cell phone charger. I told her where it was, and she was apparently upset that I had entered her room.

My mistake. However, she was awfully rude about the issue.

I looked up hotels.com to see if I could get a good hotel room close by. I didn’t want to be uncomfortable on my vacation. Melissa had me wait to book anything, as not to make a rash decision. Ultimately, we didn’t get a hotel room, but the rest of the time in that house was awkward (at least it was for me). It’s funny how one person can ruin things for you. I should be bigger than that, but hey, I was pissed.

We did a bunch of hanging out after that. We did all the nightlife stuff . We drove up to Gettysburg. We met some really cool people. I don’t think there was anything left of DC that we still wanted to do. We even hit the International Spy Museum. I would have liked it more if I wasn’t so hungover when I was there.

The one thing that got to me though, was the amazing lack of manners by people there. I can’t count how many times I thought “The nerve!”. I guess that’s what happens to a city when it gets to be that big. All I can say is that I hope Orlando never gets that big.

To round out the trip, Southwest lost my luggage on the way back home. So I went to work the next day in an old pair of jeans and the sandals I had worn traveling home. After all of the nasty food and beer we had while on vacation, all I could think of was getting back to the gym. Too bad my gym shoes were with my luggage.

After we got home, I had to drive to Lakeland to get my dog. My buddy had generously watched her while I was on vacation. I can’t tell you how much it sucked to have to make a 2 hour drive after all of that.

Don’t get me wrong, it was good to get a vacation, but now I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. Perhaps that’s why it’s good to be home.