road trip snippets

~ California, she is big.

~ We rented a PT Cruiser, accidentally, because it seemed the lesser of the two evils presented to us at the time. And, you know, cross that baby off the list of potential cars to own. Yeccch. The seats are weirdly contoured and paralyzed MB’s left butt cheek and we both remain somewhat bitter about it.

~ The buttons that control the windows in the PT Cruiser are in the middle of the dashboard. Very counter-intuitive and annoying. You basically flail about as if on fire just to open the windows because you cannot remember where the buttons are.

~ Somehow, “alcoholic midsection” became a very popular phrase during our 52,379-hour road trip:

“She’s normal from the front, but sideways? Uh, there’s a real alcoholic midsection.”

“That minimart is just overrun with alcoholic midsections.”

“Uhm, where are we??”

“I think we are now in the alcoholic midsection of California.”

~ “Drunken slattern” also had a regular guest spot in our conversations. It did not matter if a person was actually a drunken slattern; anyone was potentially a drunken slattern. Really, the less likely it was that the person could have been a drunken slattern, the more likely it suddenly seemed to us that, yes, of course, they MUST have been a drunken slattern. That explained everything. Your beloved Gammie? Guess what? Drunken slattern. The only teacher who ever believed in you? Drunken slattern. That nun from your neighborhood? Drunken Slattern. Smoky, your beloved childhood kitty? Total drunken slattern.

~ Obviously, it’s really hard to predict just what will strike your fancy on a 63,591-hour road trip.

~ We did not discuss 50,000-hand piles, but we did discuss — at length, actually — the who’s, why’s, and how’s of the stand-alone mustache. On men, pippa! Don’t be silly. Ladies who have them are, clearly, drunken slatterns.

~ We drove past James Dean Memorial Junction. It was so desolate and empty. That poor guy died in the middle of the most yawning godforsaken nowhere I’ve ever seen. There were no other cars around in either direction but for about ten minutes after seeing that, I swear I was bracing myself for a head-on collision. It was that creepy.

~ Along one stretch of narrow highway, there seemed to be some kind of roadside cherry stand competition. Every hundred yards, on both sides of the road, a couple of rickety tables filled with baskets of overpriced cherries, a handmade sign, maybe an old man, maybe an old lady, waiting for someone to buy a basket of their obviously superior yet strangely identical cherries. Suddenly, we needed cherries, stat. We pulled up to a stand and this 50-something woman bounced up to our car, began rattling off descriptions of the various cherries — even though to me they seemed to be either “red” or “yellow” — and when she was done with that, she said, wiggling all around, “Ohh! This is my first day! I am SO excited!” Well, SOLD, Peaches! I mean, how can you not buy overpriced cherries from someone that excited to sell you overpriced cherries? She just made me happy and I loved that I could eat a cherry and think of how she had nothing but sheer joy about standing behind a rickety table on the side of a lonely highway selling baskets of overpriced cherries.

~ You know, after you’ve been on the road for 77,693 hours, it might be easy to become a real crankypants — or worse — and yell at your beloved. Although your beloved may well deserve it, ahem, it’s best to just avoid potential trap by taking your emotions out on random road signs, like so:

ROCK SLIDE AREA
USE CAUTION

“Shut UP! Don’t boss me!”

REDUCE SPEED
CONSTRUCTION ZONE

“Seriously, shut up. You are so controlling.”

REST AREA AHEAD

“Shut UP. I am fine. How dare you imply that I need rest.”

Ad nauseum, until it bored us, which it didn’t.

~ So “She’s a Bad Mamma Jamma” is basically on continuous play on every radio station we found across this humongous and bankrupt state. Do not even try to find another song. You will fail. You simply will. So you really have no choice but to surrender to its charms, you drunken slatterns, and just sing along. You must decide, within the suffocating confines of your rental car with the torturous seats and the stupid window buttons, that being a bad mamma jamma is now your only goal in life and you must be okay with that. You must believe, pippa, that you have now become foxy classy oh sexy sassy. Believe it, slatterns. You ARE a bad mamma jamma and that’s all there is to it. And the other person in the car with you will love you even more after your louder and louder renditions performed every 33.62 miles. Oh, that is a guaranTEE, Crackie.

~ Uhm, yes, there is more to tell than this. I have to gear up to tell it all and I’m just finding myself more exhausted than I thought I’d be. So expect the story of the trip to come out in parts, pieces, scraps, whatever measly-ness I’m capable of right now. So, woo-hoo, stay tuned for all THAT, peaches!