BOMBER goes to Florida

Here's the deal I have 9 nephews and 4 nieces.. not all by the same sibling of course.. But my sister has 3 boys and a girl... Blake, a/k/a Bomber is the youngest boy in my sisters family. He's 29, and has been working for years. He decided 6 months back that he wanted to attend Motorcycle Mechanic school in Orlando. A mere 18 hours away by car. The commute might be tough so he decided to pack up his belongings and head to the Sunshine State. This past Saturday (Feb 14th), he was driving down. I offered my services, because I'm a good uncle and I can always use a day off.. Of course sitting in a car for 18 hours isn't the best day off. But helping relocate my nephew makes up for it.

So as you know I live in NJ and work in CT, Friday the 13th, (scary thought I know), I head back to NJ after we closed so I can feed my cats. By the time I get home, feed the feline crew and get to bed it's usually late, I got a total of 4 1/2 hours sleep before I arose, fed the cats again and got to work by 10 am. It was a good Saturday, we were busy, and after working 14 hours straight I drove around the corner to my sisters and picked up Bomber and my brother-in-law Wayne and we started our trip.

We're heading to florida, the land of sand and sunshine and foreclosures... So of course at 2 am the night before I am rummaging thru my drawers to fine the perfect summer attire. Lo and behold, my all time favorite shorts were there neatly folded and waiting to be worn. I don't remember when I bought them, but by the comments that my staff mentioned it could have been when big hair and louvers sunglasses were in style... Yea know 20 years before any of them were born... I pack up the shorts because the contrast of my lilly white legs will look great. Heck... I'm going to Florida I gotta look the part.

Anyways back to the story. We head out at exactly 11:37pm in Bomber's Envoy with a 10 foot Uhaul attached to the back. I figure I'll drive first as I've been working and usually drive to NJ late at night I'm prepared for it. Anytime you get three people together, especially family for a long drive sometimes in the cramped up arrangements you tend to get on someones nerves, we fought like cats and dogs, and we got to Stratford, 10 miles into our 1200 mile trip... No I'm just kidding, Bomber was snoozing in the back, and Wayne was alert and talking to me during the first leg. We made it thru New York and NJ hitting only 4,786 potholes along the way, not bad actually, we expected to hit 12,000 of them, so obviously we were off to a good start.

By the time we hit Delaware it was 4:20am, I was starting to get tired. So we pulled into a rest stop to pass water, (that's take a piss to you crude folks), as soon as we get out of the car, a ragged woman walks up to me and asks for help, you see she was 112 miles from home, and was out of gas.. A certain scam, but I gave her money nonetheless, Bomber and Wayne walked past her, snickering at the gullible Uncle...

Wayne asked what a Roy Rogers Hamburger tasted like, I told him it tatsed like a hamburger, but he had to find for himself. After he shoved it in ..he said.. "that was good"... Then we headed back to the car. At this point, I knew I'd be resting for a while, so I decided to change my socks, after all I had been in them since 8:30am on Saturday morning. But because I'm a thoughtful person I put them in a plastic bag and tied them up and stuffed them under the car seat. Apparently after 49 years of sweaty feet I've become immune to the scent. It didn't bother me... but Wayne and Bomber immediately started choking and coughing, and as I fell into a restfull nap I just assumed they were both catching a cold. Twenty minutes or so later, I awoke to a slight chill, you know the one, when you have a bad dream or when every window in the car is wide open and it's 32 degrees outside. I thought maybe they were just looking for a little fresh air to keep them awake, and I drifted back into sleep. At one point, Wayne pulled off an exit and found a 24 hour drug store so he could buy smelling salts, Bomber had passed out cold in the back seat due to my socks. Once again, it didn't seem to faze me... A couple of hours later, Bomber passed out again, Wayne was driving and then I awoke to the sounds of rumble ramps. What are rumble ramps you ask?? They are the safety bumps on the side of highways that are to awake a sleeping driver if he drifts off the road.

Let me digress here at bit... did you ever see National Lampoons Vacation with Chevy Chase , there's that one scene where the entire family, first the kids, then Beverly DeAngelo are sleeping, then they pan to Chevy behind the wheel of the "TRUCKSTER" and he's sleeping too..

Okay, so I wake up to the rumble ramp noise and I ask Wayne if he's all right.. "Yeah he says, I just closed my eyes for a minute".. THAT's IT...PULL OVER...BLAKE, you're driving!!

I'm not sure how long his eyes were closed but I swear we did a 360 with the trailer intact...

Bomber drove for a while and we decided to stop and eat breakfast, by this point we had seen 786 "South of the Border" billboards, so we decide to get off at that exit, it's on the NC/SC border. It's there we see a big Waffle House sign, what a perfect place to stop for breakfast. I was going to put on those great shorts but the temperture hadn't risen fast enough, I guess I'll wait for the FLA border for that. Truth be told, this particular location might have made me stand out like a sore thumb. We park the car, and head in for breakfast. I am assuming that the Waffle House criteria for employees are as followed, Old, overweight and wearing too tight clothing. Well their regional manager would be proud, they were dressed perfectly for that code.

The place was dreary, dirty and sticking at best... I over hear the table next to us say, "That's why we come to this Waffle House becuase they are cleaner than the other". WOW... no wonder they Easterners... The bathroom looked like something out of Creature Theatre.. I looked for a wire brush to scrape the skin off my hands before heading out for my breakfast. I've had better breakfast from a carnation instant packet. But, I love eggs, Bacon and sausage, so it wasn't a total loss. After we eat, I jump behind the wheel and head south, we are half way to our destination.

I live on Dunkin Donuts coffee, it's part of my routine to stay awake for 14 hours a day at work. I don't know why or how we didn't pass a DD from Delaware to Florida, to me that's mindboggling.

Driving farther south the temp rises slightly, still not warm enough for the shorts. Switching drivers again after gassing up we continue on our trek... I still don't know what their obession is with the windows down, I can't smell my socks at all.

We hit the Florida border and we are heading to stretch drive, another 2 1/2 hours from now we'll be in Orlando. I drive the last couple of hours, and proceed to get explicite instructions from Wayne concerning my speed, pulling the trailer, it reminded me of my Driver Training class in 1976. Wayne's getting cranky, and the socks are killing them, I still don't understand their plight.

We arrive in Orlando at 7pm Sunday night. All in all it wasn't bad. We decide to offload the trailer, yea smart choice, I've been in the same clothes for two days, I stink, (everywhere but my feet of course).. I'm tired, cranky, need a shower and real food. We unload it all up two flights of stairs into Bombers new pad. My sister and niece Briana who flew down a few days in advance are like ants, unpacking and movie things 1000 times their weight... By the time I get out of the shower I am a new man. The only thing left to do is book my flight home.. Piece of cake as they say...

I get to fly as a non revenue passenger, you know FREE. All I have to do is call an 800 number, enter in a few special numbers and book myself a flight. Sounds easy, doesn't it?? Well it started out easy, but when you do thing automated, every prompt asks for more detail, first the date of travel, February 16th, then the origin city, that's easy; ORLANDO. Destination city, once again easy, LaGuardia in New York. Flight number, easy again, #1484, now checking availability for another flight, not so easy. After the the fourth time with my octave a bit louder and my cadence a bit slower I recite F E B R U A R Y SiX-Teenth.. "Did you say January 3rd", NO.. February 16th. "I'm sorry we did not understand you please repeat the date, or say "Go Back".. Six more times or 15 I kind of lost count I say GO BACK, staring at my phone like the last gulp of my milk glass when I was 8 years old just fell on the floor. Start over... well this continues for another twenty minutes and by the time, my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew are sick of my temper tamtrum. Briana offers to help, "Maybe they will understand a womans voice better"... Yeah yeah whatever give it a try.. She has no luck either. Finally I hang up my cell phone whose batteries are about to die...

Screw this... lets eat, so off to Ruby Tuesday for late dinner, while waiting for the rest I try and call regular Delta scheduling, all I need to know is availability, amazingly I get a real nice operator who says I'll book the flight for you... AARRRGGGGHHHH why did I have to drive myself nuts, I could have dine that from the start...

We go and eat at Ruby's, and I have a salad bar and a burger, I tell my niece not to tell anyone that I actually ate healthy, I don't want to ruin my image.

We head back to Blakes new place and Wayne, Wendy & Bri head to the hotel. I'm sleeping over Bombers, and he's been telling me about his blow up mattress all week. If you seen one blow up bed, you've seen them all.... or so I thought. Leave it to Blake to buy the best. This was the Cadillac of blow up beds, most beds I've seen or slept on are approximately 3 to 5 inches thick. This thing was like a box spring and a mattress in one, it had to be 12 to 15 inches hugh, it took 10 minutes to fill (a very long time in blowup bed time), and instead of the standard cold plastic top it had a built in felt cover. very luxurious to say the least. We set up, er I mean Blake setup his new 200" LCD TV with accompanied blu-ray player and we started to watch Will Ferrell in "Step Brothers" I was excited to watch the movie and relax after such a long trip., 7 minutes later I was out cold. I woke up at around 4 am and looked around, the tV was off, the lights were off and Blake was in his bedroom sleeping, oops missed the movie. But I remembered that Blake had a candy jar, so I downed a few Sweet tarts and went back to sleep.

The next morning the crew came back over, the cable guy showed up to hook up his wares and Wayne drove me to the airport. I jumped on my flight, landed safely at LaGuardia (short runways and all) and caught a ride home with Ct Limo, I really didn't think that a van full of travelers could weave thru traffic that well. But our driver Acmed did a great job.

All in all it was a fun experience, and it was siomething we will remember for the rest of our lives, of course 20 years from now, the only reference that will be noted was how bad my socks smelt.. Oh well, that's the way of the world when you only have 9 toes...

As for the shorts, I never wore them, but they did make to and back from Florida.

I'm looking forward to visiting Bomber there again, but not looking forward to the drive when he eventually moves home. What the heck, he's got three other uncles, maybe they can do that!!