by Quillen Bradlee
Ratios
Today in class we learned about ratios. A ratio is a comparison between two quantities. You can compare numbers, side lengths, fruits to vegetables, you name it. Bottom line is that if it compares to quantities, its a ratio. An example of a ratio would be if you had five bananas and three apples, it would be a five to three ration or 5:3. You can also put ratios in fraction or decimal form. if you were comparing the numbers 7.3 and 9, you could write it as 7.3/9. Also, you can put that fraction into a decimal. 7.3/9 as a decimal is .81. sometimes you can't tell if a ratio is similar with another ratio unless you put it in decimal form. It's hard to tell if the ratios 11/13.5 and 18.3/22.5 are similar just by looking at them but if you put them into decimals they both equal .81.
Day 3, Sunday August 16
We set off in the morning for Rainbow Row, a row of colorful historic homes that sit near the water. Our walk takes us past more perfect brick and stucco homes nestled snugly together. Always a green thumb wanna-be, I realize every plant I try in vain to grow at home grows wild here. Hibiscus, ivies of every kind, ficus, and sweet potato adorn every wall and garden in great abundance. It’s sweltering hot today, but we’re told that for Charleston, it’s rather cool. Oh. Okay. We alternate walking in shade and sun, and I realize that, unlike the rest of my family, I’m comfortable. Maybe I do belong here. I’ll take this over cold any day.
Our walk along the water toward Rainbow Row yields a wonderful surprise. Rowan (of course, Rowan) spots a fin in the water which he insists is a shark, which the rest of us then spot, which we eventually determine is a dolphin. We watch and watch and enjoy Dolphin frolicking in the waves. Click, click, click goes the camera. We find the area we’re looking for and it’s breathtaking—the colors, the architecture, the gardens. At the end of the street there’s a small art gallery with a dog napping outside. We talk to the owner who’s the artist, an elderly gentleman, with ponytail, beard, and straw hat. The boys happily play with the dog. The artist tells us so much about Charleston, the homes, the history. I venture out back to the courtyard and meet the artist’s girlfriend. His gallery is located in the oldest commercial building in America.
After lunching on yet more grouper (Quill and Gardner) and salads (Asia and Tiff), and IBC root beer (Rowe), we take an hour-long carriage tour. Our carriage fits a group of about 25 people and is horse drawn by Henry, a handsome horse with a blond braided mane. Our horse better be pretty, Rowan had said before we left, and Henry indeed was a beauty. Our tour guide told us everything historical to trivial to amusing, to all combined. Even the kids seemed to be paying attention and enjoying the info.
Everywhere there are men, women, and boys making and selling baskets and roses from sweet grass and palmetto leaves. I decline as I pass by, but always compliment them on their craftsmanship. Always, they smile, nod, thank me, and tell me to have a nice day.
We have yet to encounter a rude local, any litter, any noise, or an aggressive driver. In fact, we decide anyone rude around here is not a local. We decided by afternoon that we’d discovered perhaps a utopia in Charleston. A place that’s called a city, but is really a big town, easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing in every way, so immaculately clean, temperate, affordable, and ultimately filled with the most pleasant and polite people, must certainly be described as a utopia. I decide if you took the best features of Newport, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Nantucket, Bermuda, and the Caribbean, and sewed them all together, you’d get a really cool quilt called Charleston. It’s that fabric thing again.
Dinner tonight was at Hyman’s Seafood, a popular and apparently famous eatery where the celebs go. We didn’t know the latter until we sat down and we were all sitting at a table marked with plaques showing where various celebs sat and ate their meals. At our table were Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Michael Phelps, and ?. Eli Hyman, the owner (4th generation) who was about our age, came over and introduced himself and surprised us with some rather personal questions like how long we’d been married, where we’d met, etc. I asked why he wanted to know all this and he said we reminded him of he and his wife who’d also met in college, dated for seven years, then married and have four kids, roughly our kids’ ages. He was a friendly host, for sure, and his restaurant’s food was delicious. I had their signature crispy flounder, Gardner had grilled oysters with grits and alfredo, Asia had the buffalo shrimp, Quill opted for his new fave she crab chowder, and Rowe went with the ol’ PB & J.
Part of the reason for our journey here is, I think, to see if we could live here. I could definitely, and I think once Gardner got used to the humidity, he could too.
Our walk along the water toward Rainbow Row yields a wonderful surprise. Rowan (of course, Rowan) spots a fin in the water which he insists is a shark, which the rest of us then spot, which we eventually determine is a dolphin. We watch and watch and enjoy Dolphin frolicking in the waves. Click, click, click goes the camera. We find the area we’re looking for and it’s breathtaking—the colors, the architecture, the gardens. At the end of the street there’s a small art gallery with a dog napping outside. We talk to the owner who’s the artist, an elderly gentleman, with ponytail, beard, and straw hat. The boys happily play with the dog. The artist tells us so much about Charleston, the homes, the history. I venture out back to the courtyard and meet the artist’s girlfriend. His gallery is located in the oldest commercial building in America.
After lunching on yet more grouper (Quill and Gardner) and salads (Asia and Tiff), and IBC root beer (Rowe), we take an hour-long carriage tour. Our carriage fits a group of about 25 people and is horse drawn by Henry, a handsome horse with a blond braided mane. Our horse better be pretty, Rowan had said before we left, and Henry indeed was a beauty. Our tour guide told us everything historical to trivial to amusing, to all combined. Even the kids seemed to be paying attention and enjoying the info.
Everywhere there are men, women, and boys making and selling baskets and roses from sweet grass and palmetto leaves. I decline as I pass by, but always compliment them on their craftsmanship. Always, they smile, nod, thank me, and tell me to have a nice day.
We have yet to encounter a rude local, any litter, any noise, or an aggressive driver. In fact, we decide anyone rude around here is not a local. We decided by afternoon that we’d discovered perhaps a utopia in Charleston. A place that’s called a city, but is really a big town, easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing in every way, so immaculately clean, temperate, affordable, and ultimately filled with the most pleasant and polite people, must certainly be described as a utopia. I decide if you took the best features of Newport, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Nantucket, Bermuda, and the Caribbean, and sewed them all together, you’d get a really cool quilt called Charleston. It’s that fabric thing again.
Dinner tonight was at Hyman’s Seafood, a popular and apparently famous eatery where the celebs go. We didn’t know the latter until we sat down and we were all sitting at a table marked with plaques showing where various celebs sat and ate their meals. At our table were Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Michael Phelps, and ?. Eli Hyman, the owner (4th generation) who was about our age, came over and introduced himself and surprised us with some rather personal questions like how long we’d been married, where we’d met, etc. I asked why he wanted to know all this and he said we reminded him of he and his wife who’d also met in college, dated for seven years, then married and have four kids, roughly our kids’ ages. He was a friendly host, for sure, and his restaurant’s food was delicious. I had their signature crispy flounder, Gardner had grilled oysters with grits and alfredo, Asia had the buffalo shrimp, Quill opted for his new fave she crab chowder, and Rowe went with the ol’ PB & J.
Part of the reason for our journey here is, I think, to see if we could live here. I could definitely, and I think once Gardner got used to the humidity, he could too.
Day 2, Aug 15
A new day and a fresh start. Subs and salads from Subway back in the hotel room and a brief swim at the pool last night did wonders for us all. A sound sleep on one of the most comfortable mattresses I’ve slept ever on last night made me happy. (Captain’s Blog: If you are in Chester, VA, stay at the Hyatt Place. Truly the best hotel I’ve ever stayed at for $85 which covered a spotless room with 2 double beds, a pull-out couch and a 46” flat screen!) We backed out of the parking lot and saw the only Massachusetts license plate we’ve seen since we left New Jersey.
I tell my kids that sure, it would be nice to jump on a plane and be there in a couple of hours, but what I also tell them is that it’s so exciting and fascinating to drive around our own country. I don’t tell them that I think it’s educational, or they really wouldn’t look at anything but the DVD player. To observe the change in landscape, climate, fast food signs, license plates, road conditions, and accents from state to state to state is all part of the expedition. What an effective way to show kids the feeling of connections and that our country really is a weaving of intricate threads. If you get on a plane in Boston and land in Charleston, you miss an awful lot of fabric in between.
I am typing this is in the car. Captain is driving, listening to satellite radio, and feeling calm as there is less commuting traffic since it’s Saturday. Quill is sitting shotgun listening to his iPod, making randomly whimsical comments, chatting with Captain, and texting as per most of yesterday. Asia and Rowe sit in the way back listening to iPods and watching movies. Asia dotes on Rowe with an occasional smooch on the cheek, much to Rowe’s annoyance, while Rowe comments often on how much fun he’s having. I’m in the second row, flanked by luggage, with the flexibility of enjoying a movie too. Sam is busy doing her thing, less a novel part of the family, more a familiar presence, sometimes even an annoyance—a true family member. After getting on I-95 leaving Chester, we drive through the rest of Virginia, a lot of green littered with small brick ranches beside tidy yards.
After about an hour, we cross into North Carolina, my birth state. We take a pee stop at a small gas station 20 minutes into our border-cross and three men are chatting in very heavy southern accents. I realize I’m barely understanding them. The snacks inside the store are different and called catchy things like Hunkey Dorey and Stuckey’s Pecan Log. Feeling a bit nostalgic, I buy a cheesy North Carolina refrigerator magnet that has a few towns on it, including my birth town of Jacksonville. We get in the car and continue on. The signs become noticeably different at this point, advertising fireworks, more fireworks, then cigarettes, then CHEAP cigarettes, then scratch biscuits, then gun shops, then South of the Border, which we decide to forego. (Captains Blog: Driving past South of The Border reminds me of the scene from The Holy Grail where the knights approach Camelot with excitement in their eyes, only to forego visitiing there because "Its a rather silly place".)
We enter South Carolina and we pass our first palm tree (Tiff lets out a squeal of delight) and drive past tobacco fields and billboards advertising peach products, peach wine, pecans, and cherries . . . and “Clean Restrooms.” Truck stops are plenty as are the native roadkill: turtles and an armadillo. As we pass Providence, Dorchester, and Summerville, I realize I could be well on my way back to Reading were it not for the spelling of the last town, but instead we’re getting closer to Charleston! Yay!
We pull into Charleston at 3pm, a collection of hot, tired, excited, hungry bunch of weary travelers. Showers and a brief rest in the room and we’re venturing out to explore our surroundings. Wow! Location, location, location! We’re in the heart of the city at Market Street, adjacent to the covered markets and amidst restaurants, bars, shops, galleries. My camera is clicking away madly as we roam street after street and end up at the waterfront. Each house we pass seems to have been purposefully placed and precisely painted. We’re on a stage set. Palm trees line the streets, courtyards flaunting exotic plantings hide behind lavish wrought iron gates. There is little traffic, no horns beeping, and not one skyscraper. The latter we later learn is because there is a law in this city that states no building may be higher than the highest steeple. That steeple is not very high. On the waterfront, we walk through gardens, past fountains suitable for ankle-wading and running through, but we’re overdressed for that at the moment. We circle up to where the center of the city is.
For dinner, we choose Aw, Shucks. It’s exotic and garden-like outside; inside it’s big, open, high ceilinged, and air conditioned! For starters we choose the appropriate fried green tomatoes with Jamaican relish and Asia is sold on them. The boys, both of whom dislike tomatoes, pass altogether. I’m really down here for the grouper, so I go with a grilled grouper and mango salsa, Gardner enjoys a crawfish and shrimp etouffee, Asia has the grouper with an orange teriyaki sauce, Quill opts for the seafood alfredo, (hold the tomatoes), Rowe has the chicken tenders, and we’re all delightfully satiated. The locally brewed Palmetto Lager is refreshing and the service is southern—friendly and warm.
To aid in digestion, an evening stroll is in order, so we head up beyond our hotel and find what we think must be the Newbury Street of Charleston: Meeting Street—trendy shops, galleries, restaurants, and that, you know, energy. We pop into a tourist office, of which there are many along the street, and enjoy a conversation with one of the employees, a perky, blond girl who’s a native of Portland, Maine, She tells us of her college time here and her move to NYC for her first job. She lasted there a few months and hated that city only to return here. This girl was a perfect PR rep for this city. She looks at Asia and tells her she should think about going to school down here. I silently agree.
Our walk takes us along to very intriguing wine galleries where one goes to sip wines, sit and relax, and browse the art. We strike up a conversation with one of the owners, a woman who paints all the art and was walking around sipping her glass of white something. Her husband tends the bar at the back and the walls are covered with art and gas lanterns, which we learn are designed by the young woman outside with the dog inviting us in. While the kids enjoy the dog outside, Gardner and I go in for a quick peek as I decide this place needs an onsite babysitting service too. I leave, nudging Gardner, saying THAT’S the perfect retirement job for us!
Deciding it’s too early to go back to the hotel, we venture back to the waterfront and head out to an enormous covered pier lined with small benches, and about six gigantic porch swings wide enough to seat five. We sit at the very end of the pier, look out at the ocean, and take in a warm breeze that cools us off. As we stroll back on the pier, headed for our hotel, one of the swings becomes vacant, and the five of us sit, swing, and joke around in darkness overlooking the water for a good twenty minutes. I could be wrong, but I’m not sure it gets any better than this.
I tell my kids that sure, it would be nice to jump on a plane and be there in a couple of hours, but what I also tell them is that it’s so exciting and fascinating to drive around our own country. I don’t tell them that I think it’s educational, or they really wouldn’t look at anything but the DVD player. To observe the change in landscape, climate, fast food signs, license plates, road conditions, and accents from state to state to state is all part of the expedition. What an effective way to show kids the feeling of connections and that our country really is a weaving of intricate threads. If you get on a plane in Boston and land in Charleston, you miss an awful lot of fabric in between.
I am typing this is in the car. Captain is driving, listening to satellite radio, and feeling calm as there is less commuting traffic since it’s Saturday. Quill is sitting shotgun listening to his iPod, making randomly whimsical comments, chatting with Captain, and texting as per most of yesterday. Asia and Rowe sit in the way back listening to iPods and watching movies. Asia dotes on Rowe with an occasional smooch on the cheek, much to Rowe’s annoyance, while Rowe comments often on how much fun he’s having. I’m in the second row, flanked by luggage, with the flexibility of enjoying a movie too. Sam is busy doing her thing, less a novel part of the family, more a familiar presence, sometimes even an annoyance—a true family member. After getting on I-95 leaving Chester, we drive through the rest of Virginia, a lot of green littered with small brick ranches beside tidy yards.
After about an hour, we cross into North Carolina, my birth state. We take a pee stop at a small gas station 20 minutes into our border-cross and three men are chatting in very heavy southern accents. I realize I’m barely understanding them. The snacks inside the store are different and called catchy things like Hunkey Dorey and Stuckey’s Pecan Log. Feeling a bit nostalgic, I buy a cheesy North Carolina refrigerator magnet that has a few towns on it, including my birth town of Jacksonville. We get in the car and continue on. The signs become noticeably different at this point, advertising fireworks, more fireworks, then cigarettes, then CHEAP cigarettes, then scratch biscuits, then gun shops, then South of the Border, which we decide to forego. (Captains Blog: Driving past South of The Border reminds me of the scene from The Holy Grail where the knights approach Camelot with excitement in their eyes, only to forego visitiing there because "Its a rather silly place".)
We enter South Carolina and we pass our first palm tree (Tiff lets out a squeal of delight) and drive past tobacco fields and billboards advertising peach products, peach wine, pecans, and cherries . . . and “Clean Restrooms.” Truck stops are plenty as are the native roadkill: turtles and an armadillo. As we pass Providence, Dorchester, and Summerville, I realize I could be well on my way back to Reading were it not for the spelling of the last town, but instead we’re getting closer to Charleston! Yay!
We pull into Charleston at 3pm, a collection of hot, tired, excited, hungry bunch of weary travelers. Showers and a brief rest in the room and we’re venturing out to explore our surroundings. Wow! Location, location, location! We’re in the heart of the city at Market Street, adjacent to the covered markets and amidst restaurants, bars, shops, galleries. My camera is clicking away madly as we roam street after street and end up at the waterfront. Each house we pass seems to have been purposefully placed and precisely painted. We’re on a stage set. Palm trees line the streets, courtyards flaunting exotic plantings hide behind lavish wrought iron gates. There is little traffic, no horns beeping, and not one skyscraper. The latter we later learn is because there is a law in this city that states no building may be higher than the highest steeple. That steeple is not very high. On the waterfront, we walk through gardens, past fountains suitable for ankle-wading and running through, but we’re overdressed for that at the moment. We circle up to where the center of the city is.
For dinner, we choose Aw, Shucks. It’s exotic and garden-like outside; inside it’s big, open, high ceilinged, and air conditioned! For starters we choose the appropriate fried green tomatoes with Jamaican relish and Asia is sold on them. The boys, both of whom dislike tomatoes, pass altogether. I’m really down here for the grouper, so I go with a grilled grouper and mango salsa, Gardner enjoys a crawfish and shrimp etouffee, Asia has the grouper with an orange teriyaki sauce, Quill opts for the seafood alfredo, (hold the tomatoes), Rowe has the chicken tenders, and we’re all delightfully satiated. The locally brewed Palmetto Lager is refreshing and the service is southern—friendly and warm.
To aid in digestion, an evening stroll is in order, so we head up beyond our hotel and find what we think must be the Newbury Street of Charleston: Meeting Street—trendy shops, galleries, restaurants, and that, you know, energy. We pop into a tourist office, of which there are many along the street, and enjoy a conversation with one of the employees, a perky, blond girl who’s a native of Portland, Maine, She tells us of her college time here and her move to NYC for her first job. She lasted there a few months and hated that city only to return here. This girl was a perfect PR rep for this city. She looks at Asia and tells her she should think about going to school down here. I silently agree.
Our walk takes us along to very intriguing wine galleries where one goes to sip wines, sit and relax, and browse the art. We strike up a conversation with one of the owners, a woman who paints all the art and was walking around sipping her glass of white something. Her husband tends the bar at the back and the walls are covered with art and gas lanterns, which we learn are designed by the young woman outside with the dog inviting us in. While the kids enjoy the dog outside, Gardner and I go in for a quick peek as I decide this place needs an onsite babysitting service too. I leave, nudging Gardner, saying THAT’S the perfect retirement job for us!
Deciding it’s too early to go back to the hotel, we venture back to the waterfront and head out to an enormous covered pier lined with small benches, and about six gigantic porch swings wide enough to seat five. We sit at the very end of the pier, look out at the ocean, and take in a warm breeze that cools us off. As we stroll back on the pier, headed for our hotel, one of the swings becomes vacant, and the five of us sit, swing, and joke around in darkness overlooking the water for a good twenty minutes. I could be wrong, but I’m not sure it gets any better than this.
The ride down (As told by Miss T)
Friday, August 14, 2009
Sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned, and that can sometimes be the stuff of the fondest and funniest of memories. So when on August 14, 2009, the Bradlees got a two-hour late start from Reading, Massachusetts for Charleston, South Carolina, the tone for the day was set.
With three children sitting in the packed car in the driveway patiently waiting while Gardner and I ran about doing all those last minute things, the
excitement—and underlying worry was huge. We closed up the house and yard, we set the alarm, checked and re-checked things we’d already checked--you know, all those OCD tendencies we all occasionally get as we prep a house for a 10-day departure. Backing out of the driveway, we tried not to think of things we’d forgotten, tried to remember what we’d remembered, and went over our once-over last-time checklist of retainers, inhalers, contact lenses, eyeglasses, portable DVD player, portable satellite radio, cameras of varying sizes and types, phones and iPods of varying colors, chargers of varying shapes, and laptops of varying brands. Could we live without lifelines like Facebook and email for the week? Apparently not.
Our worries were traffic, time, and Gardner’s ability to handle bad drivers . . . or ANY drivers. Our excitement was wrapped up in taking a LONG road trip for the first time in three summers. There’s something delightfully cozy in the six of us being forced to cohabitate for hours on end in the claustrophobia of a moving capsule. I was curious to see how relationship skills had developed in my children (and in myself!) and in their ability to get along since our last journey. After all, kids ages 15, 12 and 7 are quite different from kids ages 12, 9, and 4.
So if you’re really paying attention to this blog, you’ll notice I mention in aforementioned text that there were indeed six of us in this moving capsule. Nah, it’s not what you’re thinking. Three’s enough, trust me. With the installation the night before of a brand new GPS system in our car, we suddenly had a new family remember with us whom Quillen affectionately christened “Chives”—a male. Part of the fun in getting to know Chives was determining if he was really a she or if she was a he, and then if we liked his given name, or if his name could be better, or what was more fitting for him. It became the norm that when Quillen was sitting shotgun, there were many personality changes to Chives, a result of Quill’s profuse inability to sit still. When Chives was a German man he was Hans. When Chives became a British woman, we named her Fiona. Then we killed the early hours of the drive determining her counterparts’ nationalities, names, and accents. After running her through the Asian and European language tests, we decided she was best remaining a she and perhaps most helpful for us all if speaking in English. Afterall, who knows where we’d end up if we listened to her directions in Flemish. But English can’t be just English—there’s Australian English, British English, well, you get the point. I requested Southern Drawl English, but I was outta luck. Our schizophrenic GPS, Chives, eventually seemed best understood by Gardner (aka our Captain, oh Captain) as an American woman named Samantha. So my husband came to develop a threateningly close relationship with another woman who affectionately became known as Sam.
Our journey down to our first destination, Chester, Virginia, was filled with nothing but some of the most horrendous traffic I’ve seen in my life—and I’ve seen a LOT of traffic. With top speeds at times no more than 10 or 15 miles per hour, there were stretches of 20 miles of traffic jams. True, Friday was not the best day to begin our expedition as we competed with Jersey Shore-goers and city dwellers escaping the heat from NYC, Baltimore, and DC. In short, our estimated journey of eight hours, turned into a thirteen hour trip. Sam’s presence was enormous as we juggled the nagging questions of whether or not she was in fact being true to us. She re-routed us often and at times even re-routed our re-routes giving us that frustrating sensation that we were chasing out tails. Some of us started to see the humor in much of this (not our Captain, as you can well imagine). We had our traditional, good ol’ fashioned AAA TripTik route, and vintage items called “maps.” But when Sam spoke, we sometimes didn’t listen, tried to outsmart her, and then paid dearly. By the time we got to Baltimore, Gardner determined that Sam had always been right, even in those moments when it felt we were back tracking. It came down to trusting her, our Captain said. Okay, I reluctantly said, feeling a bit jealous of the other woman as I fumbled around in the backseat with the folds and creases of my vintage map. I’m a visual person, remember?
So we pulled in to our hotel in Chester at 9:12 pm, having logged 28 commands from Sam, 17 screams of frustration from our Captain, 10.35 hours of satellite radio, nine text message exchanges with our college pal Marc, eight pee stop requests from Asia, seven outbursts of anger from Asia about the quality of library DVDs, six waters, four granola bars, two doses of Tylenol Cold for Quill’s doozy of a cold, two Capri Sun juice bags, one request for Craisins from Tiff, one viewing of a partial moon by Rowe, one lunch break, one viewing each of High School Musical, Speed, and Flushed Away, one bag of lime chips, one fill-up, one top-off (gasoline, I mean), a partridge in a pear tree, and zero (count ‘em: ZERO) meltdowns from a child.
Two things of note:
1. No meltdowns in a 13-hour car ride (okay, so Captain had a couple) equals maturing kids.
2. When events go unplanned and perhaps not so perfectly, the memory can be even bigger. We had some great laughs, occasionally at Captain’s (or Sam’s) expense, saw license plates from faraway places, and enjoyed amusing exchanges and conversation while stuck in literally miles and hours of traffic.
Goodnight Moon!
Sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned, and that can sometimes be the stuff of the fondest and funniest of memories. So when on August 14, 2009, the Bradlees got a two-hour late start from Reading, Massachusetts for Charleston, South Carolina, the tone for the day was set.
With three children sitting in the packed car in the driveway patiently waiting while Gardner and I ran about doing all those last minute things, the
excitement—and underlying worry was huge. We closed up the house and yard, we set the alarm, checked and re-checked things we’d already checked--you know, all those OCD tendencies we all occasionally get as we prep a house for a 10-day departure. Backing out of the driveway, we tried not to think of things we’d forgotten, tried to remember what we’d remembered, and went over our once-over last-time checklist of retainers, inhalers, contact lenses, eyeglasses, portable DVD player, portable satellite radio, cameras of varying sizes and types, phones and iPods of varying colors, chargers of varying shapes, and laptops of varying brands. Could we live without lifelines like Facebook and email for the week? Apparently not.
Our worries were traffic, time, and Gardner’s ability to handle bad drivers . . . or ANY drivers. Our excitement was wrapped up in taking a LONG road trip for the first time in three summers. There’s something delightfully cozy in the six of us being forced to cohabitate for hours on end in the claustrophobia of a moving capsule. I was curious to see how relationship skills had developed in my children (and in myself!) and in their ability to get along since our last journey. After all, kids ages 15, 12 and 7 are quite different from kids ages 12, 9, and 4.
So if you’re really paying attention to this blog, you’ll notice I mention in aforementioned text that there were indeed six of us in this moving capsule. Nah, it’s not what you’re thinking. Three’s enough, trust me. With the installation the night before of a brand new GPS system in our car, we suddenly had a new family remember with us whom Quillen affectionately christened “Chives”—a male. Part of the fun in getting to know Chives was determining if he was really a she or if she was a he, and then if we liked his given name, or if his name could be better, or what was more fitting for him. It became the norm that when Quillen was sitting shotgun, there were many personality changes to Chives, a result of Quill’s profuse inability to sit still. When Chives was a German man he was Hans. When Chives became a British woman, we named her Fiona. Then we killed the early hours of the drive determining her counterparts’ nationalities, names, and accents. After running her through the Asian and European language tests, we decided she was best remaining a she and perhaps most helpful for us all if speaking in English. Afterall, who knows where we’d end up if we listened to her directions in Flemish. But English can’t be just English—there’s Australian English, British English, well, you get the point. I requested Southern Drawl English, but I was outta luck. Our schizophrenic GPS, Chives, eventually seemed best understood by Gardner (aka our Captain, oh Captain) as an American woman named Samantha. So my husband came to develop a threateningly close relationship with another woman who affectionately became known as Sam.
Our journey down to our first destination, Chester, Virginia, was filled with nothing but some of the most horrendous traffic I’ve seen in my life—and I’ve seen a LOT of traffic. With top speeds at times no more than 10 or 15 miles per hour, there were stretches of 20 miles of traffic jams. True, Friday was not the best day to begin our expedition as we competed with Jersey Shore-goers and city dwellers escaping the heat from NYC, Baltimore, and DC. In short, our estimated journey of eight hours, turned into a thirteen hour trip. Sam’s presence was enormous as we juggled the nagging questions of whether or not she was in fact being true to us. She re-routed us often and at times even re-routed our re-routes giving us that frustrating sensation that we were chasing out tails. Some of us started to see the humor in much of this (not our Captain, as you can well imagine). We had our traditional, good ol’ fashioned AAA TripTik route, and vintage items called “maps.” But when Sam spoke, we sometimes didn’t listen, tried to outsmart her, and then paid dearly. By the time we got to Baltimore, Gardner determined that Sam had always been right, even in those moments when it felt we were back tracking. It came down to trusting her, our Captain said. Okay, I reluctantly said, feeling a bit jealous of the other woman as I fumbled around in the backseat with the folds and creases of my vintage map. I’m a visual person, remember?
So we pulled in to our hotel in Chester at 9:12 pm, having logged 28 commands from Sam, 17 screams of frustration from our Captain, 10.35 hours of satellite radio, nine text message exchanges with our college pal Marc, eight pee stop requests from Asia, seven outbursts of anger from Asia about the quality of library DVDs, six waters, four granola bars, two doses of Tylenol Cold for Quill’s doozy of a cold, two Capri Sun juice bags, one request for Craisins from Tiff, one viewing of a partial moon by Rowe, one lunch break, one viewing each of High School Musical, Speed, and Flushed Away, one bag of lime chips, one fill-up, one top-off (gasoline, I mean), a partridge in a pear tree, and zero (count ‘em: ZERO) meltdowns from a child.
Two things of note:
1. No meltdowns in a 13-hour car ride (okay, so Captain had a couple) equals maturing kids.
2. When events go unplanned and perhaps not so perfectly, the memory can be even bigger. We had some great laughs, occasionally at Captain’s (or Sam’s) expense, saw license plates from faraway places, and enjoyed amusing exchanges and conversation while stuck in literally miles and hours of traffic.
Goodnight Moon!
First attempt at a travelblog
In the spirit of keeping up with the times, I'm attempting to log our summer vacation this year in blog format. We will be driving from Reading, MA to Charleston, SC and then up to North Myrtle Beach. Check back for photos and updates.
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