Sep 062017
 

Let me tell you something about our road trips: they are woefully on-the-fly and stressful to the max. This wasn’t some last minute trip by any means, yet it still seemed like I was the only one packed and ready to go.

Because I was.

I took the day off work and everything, thinking we would leave as soon as Chooch was done with school, probably we would even swing by and throw him in the car on the way to Chicago rather than wait for him to walk the whole three blocks home.

But here’s what happened: Henry came home from work around 1pm and took a billion hour nap (even though I never let him sleep according to some people who apparently camp out in our bedroom closet and count his zzzzzz’s), and then Chooch came home from school and we just sat here wondering if we were ever going to leave or if we should just take an Uber to the airport and wing it.

Wing it, oh haha.

Henry eventually woke up and we left the house sometime around 4:30 (sigh) and then got swept up in some intense Labor Day traffic and it took us TWO HOURS just to get out of the dumb state. I was so fucking pissed.

But I was listening to Korean radio and that kept me from flipping my lid. And Chooch was reading some lame book for school so he was all nice and quiet too.

But then came the part of the trip that we all loathe: Food Foraging.

It shouldn’t be this hard! There are so many idiotic apps to help keep couples from splitting up/murdering each other over hunger wars. But every time Henry is like, “Find somewhere for us to eat” and I give him a dozen options, he’s always like, “WE’RE ON A TOLL ROAD! I CAN’T JUST TURN OFF ANYWHERE! THERE IS NO EXIT FOR ME TO TAKE!” and I’m like, “HELLO WHEN YOU TELL ME TO LOOK FOR A RESTAURANT, THAT IS LITERALLY JUST ONE THING TO CONSIDER: LOOKING FOR A PLACE THAT SERVES FOOD.” Now I’m supposed to read his mind (and a map!?) and find the most convenient grub shack for him to drive to? This is a lot of pressure. So then we had a huge fight about how demanding he is and how I need to learn to read a map and Chooch was like, “Oh, get over yourselves” and then we were going to just eat at a travel plaza but I threw a silent hissy fit inside and Henry was like, “LET’S ALL JUST STARVE! FUCKING STARVE!”

Luckily, I found some joint in some Trump-lovin’ town in Ohio, where a potato festival was going on and everyone was dressed for a rodeo, but Henry was all, “WE ARE NOT EATING HERE” because just a quick drive-by determined that it was some shady dive bar with an obligatory cigarette-smoking farmhand-looking son of a bitch slinking in the doorway. But just around the block was option #2: Jake’s.

Everyone inside knew each other of course, but I didn’t give a fuck because of all things for this rural shit-town in Ohio to have, there was a veggie burger on the menu. And not just any pre-packaged Boca Burger bullshit, but a HOMEMADE VEGGIE BURGER. Chooch and I both ordered that and the waitress was shocked because I guess it’s weird for someone to order something and then the next person to say, “Same”? Whatevs.

“You having the same thing too?” she asked Henry, tone slightly elevated.

But then Henry bucked the trend by ordering a plate of meat.

Anyway, the veggie burger was SO GOOD AND HOMEMADE-Y, but Chooch and I deducted points when we saw it was served on a fucking sandwich thin, like who does that? Henry’s burger was all snug inside a cushiony dough cloud and we were like, “WOW, THAT’S NICE. FUCKING VEGETARIAN PREJUDISTS!”

I might be inclined to stop back at Jake’s sometime to try their HOMEMADE PEANUT BUTTER PIE on for size.

After dinner I took some cliché pictures of the sunset because there was nothing else to do aside from talking to Henry and that’s just ew. I also played with filters on Snow, because I’m 15.

I wish my eyeballs were really that big, but I am already told occasionally that I look like a cartoon so why gild the lily, I guess.

Here is where shit gets really exciting: the sky was getting darker and darker and Henry STILL DID NOT HAVE A PLACE FOR US TO STAY. The plan was to drive to Indiana and get a hotel and then continue on to Chicago the next morning, but I guess Henry didn’t think to follow through with that plan by booking a hotel, so that’s cool, because you know—LABOR DAY WEEKEND. Finally, it was nearly midnight when Henry booked a “hotel” called the American Inn or something generic like that, right along the border of Indiana and Michigan. I don’t think I ever knew the name of the town but now Henry is saying, “Oh you know….um…uh, and the biker thing is always there…”

Sturgis.

Nope, I don’t know that, Henry.

Anyway, we get to the dumpy American Inn and Henry is told that they have NO VACANCY and that they “told booking.com as such” so they don’t know why we were able to book a room there. Henry came back out and called Booking.com, who looked up the information and laughed because they had NO RECORD of this asshole innkeeper ever calling them or logging into the account to mark it as sold out. So that’s great. But the lady on the phone was so nice and said that she was going to try and get permission from her manager to comp us a stay at another hotel in the area. She wanted to put us up at some nearly-$200/a night Best Western but Henry was hesitant to take her up on that because she wanted him to p at up front and then email them the receipt, at which point we’d be credited. Henry was like, “Fuck that” and found a Super 8 down the street with one room left, and it was only like $79, and bitch please, we don’t want to be spending a ton of money at a place that’s literally a pit-stop. Even I, Erin Rachelle Kelly, am capable of sucking it up for one night. However, the Super 8 ended up being very clean and pleasant! I was very impressed. We had two “doubles” though, which were more like twins, and that was not great, but whatever.

It’s a good thing that Henry didn’t take that booking bitch up on her Best Western offer because he woke up the next to an email from her saying that she was able to “comp the difference” if he emailed the receipt, so we still would have had to pay about $150!

I was so irritated about that. And at Henry for not planning ahead.

But here is where he would say something patronizing, such as, “YOU’RE WELCOME TO HANDLE IT ALL NEXT TIME!” And ew, I only handle the Roadside America portion of our road trips, thanks.

And this concludes a very boring post about our Friday Night Forever Drive.

Say it don't spray it.

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