Brian had to work at 6 on Friday morning, so he was up and around at 5:15 AM. If you know Brian, you know this was both monumental and painful. He worked all day with no break, eating pretzel chips and gummi bears for lunch. He got home late and needed some time to rest up before we headed out. We got all cleaned up from our respective gunky days, packed the car, grabbed some dinner, and set off for West-by-God Virginia. It's about a 6 hour trip to Baileys Mountain from here, and we usually leave around 6 PM. Here's what it looks like:
Yeah, it's a long trip through tiny towns, up and down mountains, with stretches where you can't get gas for miles. And we do it in the dark most of the time. Fun. Actually, we travel very well together, so it is fun. But tiring.
Apparently especially tiring when you've been awake since 5 AM and worked all day. I tend to nap throughout the trip because I'm not driving. Brian's Jetta is a standard, and I don't drive stick. We hadn't made it terribly far (halfway?) before Brian needed to stop for a break. And I don't mean to pee or buy a drink. I mean for a forty-five minute nap. The first of many. Sometimes we'd just stop for him to get out of the car and walk a bit, and other times it was asleep and snoring. Thank God for cell phone alarm clocks! At one point, I desperately needed sleep as well and Brian was feeling pretty good. So I kicked my seat back, snuggled my pillow, and let the MP3 player put me to sleep. Suddenly, I was convinced that the top had ripped off the car and we were going to fly out, a la some bad plane-crash movie. Brian had opened the window to try to wake up. I, meanwhile, will now die a year or so earlier than otherwise planned. We arrived on Baileys Mountain (which does involve crossing running water without benefit of a bridge as some of Brian's friends like to say) shortly before 5. 5 AM. In the morning. As in 24 hours after Brian woke up and 8 1/2 hours after we left the house. OUCH. We met Brian's Dad as he was leaving for work.... Needless to say, we slept till noon on Saturday and still felt like death.
Upon waking up on Baileys Mountain, a full breakfast is always called for. Full as in eggs, bacon, gravy, biscuits, juice, milk, and coffee. Regardless of time, as demonstrated by our fixing it at noon.... Immediately thereafter, Brian's Mom started planning dinner. We had somehow neglected to let her know that we had dinner plans. So she moved her dinner plans to 5:00, and we planned to go out at 7 with friends and cousins and their resepective others. I headed off to take a shower, Brian headed to the car to get his phone and try to call others. Forget that we have no, I repeat NO cell service on the Mountain. No 3G. No 1G. Barely a land line, folks. Incommunicado at its bestest. When I finished with my shower we headed across the road to take a look at Brian's Grandmother's old house, which his Mom and Dad had just finished cleaning up and making somewhat liveable. Brian asked if I had seen his car key. Nope, sure hadn't. But he had just been to the car within the hour, and always lays his keys on the entryway table, so I wasn't worried. Until we got back to the house 20 minutes later and realized that we seriously could not find the car key. At all. Our only car key, at that point. We established that it had been on the table, had been seen by nearly everyone in the house, and was now gone. We turned that house up. Side. Down. Literally, as we turned sofas and chairs upsidedown to look inside them in hopes that the key was there. We looked in the trash, tore up beds, looked under things that weren't even in the house. We checked the yard, under the car, peered in windows, and interrogated small children who were in the vicinity of the key. Because Jetta keys don't look like keys. They look like this:
You know, like a toy. So we honestly thought (and think still) that some small hand grabbed it and ran off with it. Meanwhile, we needed to get in the car to get things that we desperately needed for the day, and in case we had to take the Baileys' car home instead of ours. Which necessitated calling a locksmith. We were currently 22 miles from Elizabeth, the nearest town. So we called someone up and ran to Elizabeth to guide them in. It took the locksmith all of 2.5 minutes to pop our lock and head on his way. The key was not in the car, but at least we had our stuff. We headed off to Buffalo Wild Wings for fun time with some cool folks like Ford Maverick, Ford's Sister, Cousin Clarence and His Wife, Nate the Great, and several others. We had a great time and it was wonderful to get everyone together. I could tell you tons of funny stories, but this post is already a novel.... Suffice it to say that we got back to Baileys Mountain at 3:30 AM. Yeah. As we crawled into bed, we located one missing Jetta key laying squarely in the middle of our bed, under the sheets. The bed which was made before Brian used his key to go to the car. The bed which we had torn to pieces to check for the key. The bed on which I had lain while Brian checked under it. Yeah, we'd checked the bed. I'm not even going to speculate as to how that key got there, but we spent quite literally 5 hours looking for it, interrogated small children, and spent $80 on a locksmith. Fun times on Baileys Mountain, ya'll.
We got up Sunday, fixed breakfast (see above) and got ready to head out. Our goal was to be on the road by 1, and we were ready by 2:15. Not bad when you're running on Baileys Standard Time. We headed over to The Bum and Cousin Mike's new house to hang out and catch up. Around 4:00 we headed to Morgantown to see Nurse Baileys and Coach Jimmy. We left there at 7:15...and had the absolute repeat of our trip on Friday night. Complete with naps and much anxiety over staying awake. Except that we had detoured through Morgantown/Fairmont, so the route looked like this:
We got home at 2:30. I worked today at 7......
Is it nap time yet? Oh, wait. It is, it is! I'm going to crash!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment