I’m back! Once more Jessica and I have ventured out into the world and I return to this blog of old to regail the three people who read this with tales from our travels! Technically, Jess and I have done some traveling that I didn’t record because I just didn’t think those trips counted as us traveling of our own accord as the last two trips we took last year were regarding our brother’s wedding. We went to our now sister-in-law Cait’s bachelorette party at a cabin in Maine and that was fun, very chill! It was a stupid cool little VRBO, a cabin on a lake that had a progetion TV with a firepit and waterfront access and Jess and I got to use a canoe and go looking for that moose the owner told us had been spotted around the area. The owner told us this in the HOURS he was at the VRBO after we arrived because … No idea. He hadn’t finished getting it ready or something? Anyway, we all had quite a laugh about that when he finally left and had a lovely weekend. Jess and I didn’t know anyone there except Cait prior to the weekend and we did, initially, feel like we were traipsing on their territory, but everyone was nice and I think we all had a good time!
Then we took our second trip of 2022 and went to the wedding in Connecticut and we got to stay with the wedding party at this amazing AirBnB. Mike and Cait rented basically a whole manor with all these awesome season themed rooms and a tea room that Jess and I LOVED so much! There wasn’t enough rooms for everyone so Mike and Cait had warned us in advance that we might not get a bedroom but we said as long as we had a door we were perfectly fine with it. They ended up setting up a roll-up bed in the study and we were OBSESSED! We’d just finished watching the CBS Nancy Drew series so were were all over staying in a study! The wedding was lovely too, it was a nice outdoor wedding and the reception was right next to it and though Jess and I, because of our thin Floridian blood, ended up by the firepit most of the evening, we had a great time! We also had a WILD experience at the firepit that has haunted my mind tot his day. It was Jess, Ian, Whitney, Amber, and I around that pit, having a casual chat when some man came up to the fire, stuck his hand in and said “Hm, not even hot.” We went back to our conversation without mention until Ian randomly went “So, are we gonna talk about that guy? The one who stuck his hand in the fire? I didn’t hallucinate that right, like he did that?” and we all went “Yeah, and you could smell the hair burning off his hand!” It was wild. We couldn’t get over it. Was that man a ghost? None of us recognized him from either side of the family and friends and we all just called him Old Man Red Hand. He returned though, some time later, and briefly blessed us with his presence. Ian went “Hey, how did you stick your hand in the fire? Is there a trick to it?” and Old Man Red Hand stuck his hand back into the fire, picked up one of the stones in there and held it, the smell of burnt flesh filling the air and said “The trick is to tell yourself it doesn’t hurt”, and then he walked away. No idea who he was or where he came from but we will all remember Old Man Red Hand until the end of our days. Talked to a bunch of people, saw some relatives we haven’t seen in a while, and it was a really beautiful ceremony and reception. We also went to CTRF with our friend Amy right afterwards and that was super fun too! Got to wear a variation of the Magpie cosplay I’ve had in my house for forever but have never worn! So there’s that!
So, those we counted as our Two Trips for the year of 2022 as we only wish to travel twice in one year for reasons of money and also our own personal energy reserve for travel, which is debhilitatingly limited. This year we had planned for our Spring/Summer trip to be several days in Colorado. We had it all planned and all the time off requested and whatnot and then bad news came right before the trip. Our grandfather had passed away suddenly and the funeral would be shortly after. There had been a good chance the funeral would happen before the Colorado trip but only by a few days, and as we weren’t going to fly to Massachusetts, then fly back to Florida, then fly to Colorado, we considered just canceling the Colorado trip until later, perhaps making it out Fall/Winter trip for the year. But our Aunt Eileen was very considerate of our travel plans, as we had the furthest of most of the relatives to travel, and she planned the funeral around us being able to fly out of Massachusetts right to Colorado. It wasn’t a huge wait, she ended up only pushing everything back one day later than the earliest date it could have been, so the wake for Poppy was Tuesday the 18th, the funeral Wednesday, then we had Thursday as a recovery day before flying out on Friday the 21st to Colorado.
We ended up spending the Thursday we had set aside as a recovery day seeing local friends who we hadn’t seen in some time. We went to breakfast at The 50’s Diner with Amy, then went shopping and got coffees, cause who doesn’t love a Girl’s Shopping Spree, before going swimming at the hotel pool. Then we took the train into Providence and met up with another friend Alex who took us on a walking tour of Providence to show us the pedestrian bridge and a couple interesting sights, before taking us to Pizza Marvin for dinner and then the Newport Creamery for desert. We absolutely lost our minds at the Newport Creamery for no good reason and had sporadic fits of laughter the entire time. As should be, among friends. We then took the 10:15pm train back to Dedham, MA and got to sleep around midnight to wake up at 7:30am to catch the train to South Station.
We had packed everything up when we’d gotten home the night before so getting up wasn’t any kind of ordeal. We woke up, brushed our teeth, got dressed, packed our phones and chargers and were out the door at 7:50am to walk to the train station to catch the 8:14am train. Our Aunt Eileen arrived around 7:35am to our room to say good-bye and see us off to the train station. She walked the quick 8ish minute walk with us and waiting until the train arrived. Then off we were on the first of many rides to our final destination! We took that train to South Station where we then figured out how to buy tickets for the Silver Line subway and somehow managed to find the right elevator that took us to the pick-up zone. I don’t know what it is about terminals that confuses me so much but this was a prelude to our troubles at the airport. We caught the 9ish Silver line subway to the airport and it was PACKED with people and their suitcases and we got off at Terminal C, which we didn’t think was going to be the problem it was.
I assume the subway stops at every terminal but we didn’t know that and just got off at the first airport stop only to find out Southwest is in Terminal B. So we figured we’ll walk there, can’t be too much trouble. Wrong. The only terminal we could get to from C was apparently E, but once there we had to walk a full circle past A to get to B and it ended up being nearly 20-30 minutes of walking in this airport because we found Terminal B and got to the TSA. We were sweaty and somewhat exhausted from the walk by the time we finally located and got in line for the correct TSA for our gate (B34) but we were just glad to have made it with a whole hour to spare. TSA wasn't as fast as it is in Orlando but that makes sense as the Orlando airport has so many TSA agents for folks to go through, since it's such a popular airport. While we were loading up our trays some guy got sent back through because he left a full water bottle in his bag. He didn't get sent all the way back, just to the trays to redeposit his trays to go through the scanner. He was told he had to wait until the people who'd just loaded their trays went through and he was like "Ok, but my flight boards at 10:20am". Uh, ok? Guess you should have considered that before you left a water bottle in your bag. This is on you my dude. Also Jess and my flight boarded at 10:20am too, it was still about 50 or so minutes until then, it's all good my dude. The TSA agent told him as much just professionally and with fewer words and he let it go.
We found our gate pretty quick after that and settled in for the half hour we had left to wait. Longer, actually, because we were in group C for boarding as I completely forgot to check in for our flight while we were wandering Dedham with Amy and only remembered when we were at the pool. I gasped and went "Our flight!" and Jess was so confused about the days she thought I meant we were, at that moment, supposed to be on a flight somewhere. Hilarious. When we boarded most of the end seats were taken and Jess and I like to sit in parallel end seats so we don't have to trouble anyone if we get up to use the bathroom, but I found a middle seat and an aisle seat one row back and decided to take those. The woman in the aisle seat next to the middle seat I was joining however said one aisle seat is much the same as another and switched with Jess so she could sit next to me! Score! The flight was ok. I continued to listen to my audiobooks "The Sun and the Moon" and Jess listened to her iPod or my Music/Alarm phone which only does those two things at this point but I take it traveling with me anyway because I like my tunes.
We had a layover in Chicago and the descent has made me a little woozy which I figured had to do with the lack of food in my system so we went to find something appealing. We found Big & Little tacos and they were. Hm, they were not awesome but they did the trick. They have the tacos made in front of you to add ingredients. The person doing the order was talking with a friend who I assume was just off their shift at the airport and they did not get some of the order right even with Jess telling them exactly what we wanted right in front of them making it. But they were fine, it was food. I stopped into a cafe place to ask about a mocha latte and after standing in line before asking the person at the counter went "We don't have any lattes, nothing but regular coffee today". Uh, ok. Can we write that somewhere before people stand in line? I'm not paying airport prices for one airport coffee. I didn't say that though, of course, just went "Oh ok, then no thank you" and we found some mini-mart that sold one of those cold Dunkin' coffees in bottles. It was one of those places where you swipe your card before entering and then just grab what you want and leave. It was wild!
Our Denver flight was supposed to be B24 but as we were sitting it got moved to B26 which was fine, but I guess a different flight to Denver was supposed to be B26 and it got switched to B24 so that was confusing to a lot of folks and it got messy in that neck of the airport. But ours wasn't a full flight so even as B37 and B38 we got a whole row to ourselves on the way back and it was a very nice flight! We both did as we'd done on the flight to Chicago and all was well. When we got to the airport Jess and I took a minute to refresh ourselves. Brushed our hair, put on fresh deodorant, hit ourselves with a little perfume, because a full day of planes, trains, and subways had not been kind to us and we were off to see friends. Then we headed towards where Dave and Frank said they'd meet us, Level 4. But we didn't see numbers, we saw letters. Signs pointing for A, B, or C. We followed those and confused ourselves into ending up back where we started in some insane carousel of confusion. Finally we figured out the trams run to A, B, C, /and/ a place called Terminal as the last stop that isn't labeled, like, anywhere correctly. So we did manage to get to that place called Terminal and we find the baggage check area so we figure we're in the right spot. We didn't have any checked luggage, just the two suitcases and purses for us, so we worked out that we were currently on level 5. Dave and Frank said level 4 was where they would meet us so down we went to find their car.
We found them in the pickup loop and did the meet and greet 'Hello, Hello' thing as we loaded up and took off. We had no idea where we were headed. We assumed we were going back to Dave's place but actually no. We found out as we were almost there that they were taking us to some giant comic book store in Denver. It looked like the kind of location you take someo e you're going to murder, just endless seemingly empty warehouses and then some BIG comic book posters on the wall of one of them and that was where we went. It was a cool enough place, Jess searched for the Friday The Thirteenth themed Archie comics that had just come out and I looked for the new Princess Amethyst graphic novels. Jess found, but didn't purchase the comic she was looking for and I didn't find my Amethyst. But it was cool to look around before we hit the road again, this time officially to Dave's place. We got there, unloaded our stuff, and saw Crixus! The best little goblin cat of all time! I say little in the loosest possible sense as he is rotund as far as cats go. But he does have the loveliest little snout so he is allowed to be a chonker.
At the house we got a little settled and did some casual chit-chatting around David’s kitchen island as we debated what to eat. Jess was told the name of a pizza restaurant, Smokin Oak, and was given free reign to decide what we ordered. She decided on three pizza’s all of varying weird flavours and one order of jalapeno stuffed cheesy bread, which Jessica has insisted on pronouncing for the entirety of this trip as Jal (like Gal with a J) - ap - enos. No accent on the ‘enos’ part. You know, like a regular, sane human being. We were going to order it for delivery but they didn’t offer delivery and I simply despise DoorDash and UberEats and all those apps because I think they’re hacks and cons. Never had a bad experience personally. I just don’t trust some rando with no qualifications besides a working car being trusted with my food. I do eat leftover food regularly at the hotel, but that’s a choice I make for myself because the food in that case is free. So, we all piled into Frank’s Jeep and sloshed around in that terrible vehicle the five minutes or so to the restaurant and then all jumbled back to Dave’s place to get ready for Fri-Yay Movie Workout Night!
Years ago Dave invited our groupchat to video join his Friday Night Movie Workout that he hosted at his local gym. It’s where you watch a movie but you pick 4-5 trigger words or visual cues and every time you hear or see those you do five reps of an exercise. I joined in and then kept joining in every other Friday for the next month and then started doing my own by myself on the weeks he didn’t host. He eventually stopped doing them entirely and I have continued to do my renamed, reclaimed Fri-Yay Movie Workout Night for the past two and a half years! This Friday, however, I was able to for the second time in known history do a movie workout with Dave in-person! I had previously done it on a trip to Massachusetts some years ago that I, shamefully, did not keep a log about for this blog. So, Frank, Dave and I got changed while Jess selected the movie. She selected ‘Jason X’, the 2001 Friday the 13th movie that for some reason takes place in space! It was preposterous, ridiculous, it felt like it was originally written as an Alien/Aliens parody film but someone, somewhere, thought it had merit so they decided to make it a real original slasher film but couldn’t get funding so they made it a Friday the 13th sequel cause they just keep making those bad boys.
We got an hour and nineteen minutes in before Dave paused it so we could go to the pool and hot tub as it closed at 10pm. So we all got changed again and tookt he short walk to his community pool thing. All we wanted to do was hang in the hot tub so we went to turn it on and… nothing happened. No bubbles. So we get in and it’s, like, lukewarm? It’s hot like a bath but not like a hot tub. But whatever, we walked there so we’re getting in. Then Frank had an idea that perhaps the emergency stop was pushed and wasn’t pulled out and that’s why the timer didn’t work. Dave didn’t think so and said as much, but Frank got out and tested it anyway and hey, he was right! The jets turned on. Except they clearly hadn’t been on in a while so it was initially just jets of cold water bubbling up, so for a while there he actually made it worse! The heat came eventually though and we all had a hollering hootenanny in there for about 40 minutes I’d say but no one kept track. Jess and I had brought towels, against Dave’s advice which was “Colorado is dry, you’ll be dry by the time we get home”, so upon exiting the hot tub we were nice and warm in our towels against the cool evening air. Frank was not and once again, Dave had led him wrong. Whomp whomp.
We got back to Dave’s place and it didn’t make sense to get changed so we finished the workout in our bathing suits and saw the most hilarious scene in the entire movie, where Jason kills two girls by using one girl in a sleeping bag to beat another girl in a sleeping bag, and overall declared the movie one of the finest pieces of cinema of our time. Jess showed while we finished that workout and then I took a shower and rejoined the crew in the living room. Frank peaced out shortly after as we watched some episodes of ‘Human Resources’ and tapered off to be around midnight Colorado time, but about 2am in Florida time. I wasn’t as tired as I thought I’d be, but we went to bed with an ominous warning from Dave to be ready to get up at 7am. No context, so we’ll see!
No comments:
Post a Comment