Franklinsanity

A crank's musings on family, drink, travel, food & life

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  • Packing

    Packing

    8:30 am, Philadelphia, PA.  We’re getting good at this packing thing.

    Have I mentioned the Sher-Pak (TM)? Yes, I think I have. It’s great, if you want to have the option of moving pieces of luggage around, independent of the whole.  You can’t lock it, but when its fully battened down, short of taking a knife to it, it would be pretty hard to get something out.

    Any rate, getting the car ready every day makes me feel hilariously manly, in a 1950’s kind of way.  I feel like “packing up the car,” in fact, is likely a entry somewhere in the awesome blog “The Art of Manliness.”  Arranging modules inside a large module; standing delicately on a wheel well; messing around – and instructing an interested Teddy – with all the straps, etc.

    Fitting in laundry – and odd-shaped things like a Vita-Mix, coloring books and cowboy boots.

    Old fashioned fun.

  • The Mysterious East

    5:12 pm – outside Philadelphia, PA – arrived at Great Aunt/Uncle and cousins’ house.

    Oonagh promptly pooped in the laundry room.

    It seemed like a good time for a yeuengling.

    Kids getting reacquainted with relatives. Kelly chatting with cousins. I am processing the fact we’ve covered a couple of thousand miles in a car with two animals and two kids. We’ve got a few hundred miles still to go, to get to CT, but, well, wow.

    Two immediate takeaways:  Ohio, at least this summer along I-70 and around Colombus, sort of blows. (Sorry, Ohio people.)

    And: man there is a lot of water in the Eastern parts of this country vs California.

    I think I will go finish my beer and run some taps

  • Back on the road

    9:42 am, somewhere outside Columbus OH – listening to Pitbull. Oonagh pooped outside this am.

    Feeling optimistic.

  • State 9

    State 9

    8:26 am, Columbus, OH – Waiting for room service in a Sheraton overcrowded by a high school softball and baseball tournament.  Tensions running high.

    Or at least they are with Awesome Wife.  The dogs are staring mournfully at themselves in a mirror.  The kids are watching Mickey Mouse.  I am writing.

    Full hotel + B-grade hotel + reality = the requested time ranges on the breakfast card are kind of a joke.  But Kelly travels less than I do, so this is likely not ingrained.  Also, my bad last night for not forecasting it.

    Oonagh crapped in the room last night, though – we were all a little distracted.

    On a side note:  Columbus, OH appears to be fixing literally every major road all at the same time.  I was joking last night when I said it reminded me of my youth.  But seriously, this puts the BQE to shame.  You’d think they had the Big Dig going or something.  Total nightmare.

    Brings to mind the idea that it might be smart to use Waze/Google not just for real-time nav, but also pre-navigation/planning!

    (I have the feeling I am suddenly discovering something – like running water from a faucet – that hundreds of thousands of people take for granted.)

    Traffic on the blog is down, though page views per person are way up.  Go loyal readers!  That person in Denmark still hasn’t returned, darn them.

    Today, Pennsylvania.  Might as well be Transylvania, from the way Kelly talks about driving through it.  Actually, Transylvania is probably a lot more beautiful.  Still, Philly and relatives at the end of it.

    Onward!

  • States

    States

    9:55 pm, near Spiceland, OH. We’re on our 5th state of the day, with 144 miles to go.

    Columbus and our Sheraton there can’t come fast enough.

    And, increasingly, the picturesque and picaresque Interstates of the far West and Further Midwest are looking – to me anyway – like the blah highways of my youth.  Like, you know, the Jersey Turnpike.

    Indiana and Ohio should take better care of their roads, man  Waze is a sea of pothole icons.

    Kelly is in the zone.  She’s even exchanged her contacts for her glasses.  Let’s call them her driving glasses, since she never ordinarily wears them, even though they look great.

    Kids and dogs asleep.  The Farm seems far away and longer ago than just this morning.

    But, like the Eagles said, we’re taking it easy.

  • Bar(n)

    Bar(n)

    8:42 pm, somewhere near Fontana, KS: Ella on the stereo, Great Pyrenees barking at squirrels, Kingsley and Oonagh passed out.

    I am slowly assimilating a serious dinner of BBQ chicken, potato-egg salad, rice and watermelon, lubricated by a lot of wine and beer in the bar(n), beforehand.

    (I did mention that at this B&B, they’ve turned a working barn partly into a bar?)

    Nothing works up an appetite like playing darts with a 5 and 7 year old, in a barn.  What could go wrong?

    Teddy won.  I am pretty sure we were scoring wrong, although Ted’s arithmetic was far better than mine.

    Kudos to Awesome Wife for a) chilling while her children and husband played with sharp objects, surrounded by large animals, nails, splinters and other opportunities for death and dismemberment; and b) generously drinking the last of the Sauvingnon Blanc, including my glass, while I wasn’t looking.

    Thanks to the B&B owners for comforting me with Chardonnay.

    It’s cold comfort, but I never look a gift horse in the mouth.  I actually never look a horse in the mouth, period.

  • Cock

    Cock

    6:56 am, somewhere near Fontana, KS:  oh come on, people.  You know this is a post about chickens, right?

    Glad we cleared that up.

    What I was going to write:  this is a farm, there are roosters as well as chickens, and they DO crow at dawn.

    Not for the first time, I am thankful for the sound machine in the kids’ room.

    Still, not bad for Dad to wake up to a misty farmland sunrise.  Like something out of the Emberverse.

    Kelly, even minus a sound machine, still fast asleep.  Which is good – as Awesome Wife always does better after a sound sleep, and the food poisoning a few days ago wiped her out.

    Only 2 calls today!

    .farm

  • Moon

    Moon

    3 AM, somewhere near Fontana, KS, am awakened by a spotlight in my face.

    It’s the moon. Shining through the window of our bedroom.

    The darn thing has followed us all the way from Tahoe!

    (Ever since she was a baby, The Saucy Empress has been told the moon is “hers.”  Teddy gets the stars. This is already biting us in the ass at their school.)

    So I will blame Quinn at breakfast for waking me up. Fun!

    It’s quiet. Profoundly quiet.

    Too quiet?  Have the walkers got the dogs?  Tempted to wake Kelly and ask.

    Wisely decide not to.

    Moon behind a cloud. Back to sleep!

  • The Farm

    The Farm

    10:03 PM, somewhere near Fontana, KS.  Lying in big, old fashioned bed on second floor of a beautifully restored farmhouse B&B.  It has a swimming pool, a bar in the barn, a big open kitchen/dining/living room floorpan, cows, chickens, a turkey and two Great Pyrenees.  It’s awesome.

    It reminds me just a little of the farmhouse in season 2 of the Walking Dead.  Which I really liked, as a house. Kelly does not want to hear this.

    It’s ok.  The Pyrnenees together weigh around 500 lbs – and don’t appear to sleep.  They will stop the walkers.

    Fantastic beef taco dinner, some IPA, white wine and rye.  Kids stupid tired after doing farm chores and swimming twice in the pool.

    I am stupid tired too.  I legitimately tried to read a legitimately interesting article on the history of chickens, in Chicken Magazine, and couldn’t do it.  I guess I will not find out about how chickens got from Java to here – at least until tomorrow.

    (I do take comfort in knowing that when Marco Polo said he saw a chicken with fur in China, he wasn’t far off.  Check out the Silkie – the black ones also have black skin!)

    silkie

    Sleep beckons.  More farming adventures tomorrow, e.g., Oonagh vs. the french guard dogs 10x her weight, in Get The Chickens.

  • Freddy’s

    Freddy’s

    1:30-ish, Salinas, KS or thereabouts.  Kids are hungry.

    As Navigator, I am supposed to be finding a lunch place that a) is dog-friendly; b) has great salad; c) has food that the kids want to eat; d) has food that I want to eat.

    I have to switch between Yelp and two different apps to satisfy the family that I am being thorough on these fronts.

    We locate establishments that satisfy a few of these requirements.  They are all at least an hour out of our way.

    We settle for Freddy’s.  They give the dogs treats and the kids free ice cream.  Kelly has a steak sandwich.  The kids and I have hot dogs.  It’s all good.