![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimorene1. Alarums at Arrivals and the Sleep-Deprived Queasy Roadtrips That Nightmares are Made of
Our flight from Chicago to Atlanta was stuck about an hour waiting to take off. They never told us on the plane that it was late or going to be late at all, but apparently they eventually told the Atlanta airport. Our itinerary said we were meant to get there at 6:30 pm in black and white, but the baggage carousel said "FLIGHT # - 7:30 PM - ON TIME".
Not sure if we'd have phone service in the US, I had told my parents in advance to contact us on email or Whatsapp if anything was not as expected, because we would be able to check these using wifi if nothing else. After we got our baggage and couldn't see my parents anywhere we grabbed some free wifi and found NO MESSAGES of any kind from any parents, which caused me to doubt my grip on reality. WEREN'T we an hour late??? Why would my parents not say ANYTHING about us being an entire hour delayed??? Was every clock around wrong about the time zone? Had I copy-pasted wrong from the email?? Misread the itinerary printed by the airline at check-in????
So we walked all the way down to the end of the terminal to call my mom from the first place that wasn't too loud to talk on the phone, only to find out that she had in fact been waiting in a lounge near baggage claim for an hour, but the airport had led her to believe we weren't getting in until 9 pm! (We still have no idea what was up with that.) She just hadn't seen us and we hadn't seen her. At this point we had been awake well over 24 hours. My mom drove our sleep-deprived, woozy, queasy-with-hunger selves home.
NOTABLE FACTS ABOUT MY MOM AND DRIVING:
My mom's car also doesn't have cruise control, so we were queasy, sleep-deprived and going at high speed down a freeway that was under construction, with one lane being closed at several points, and my mom was having problems (a) staying awake ("Uh-oh, I'm starting to get sleepy again!") and (b) keeping the car's speed up (which shows up as jerky acceleration and deceleration... just... very jerky, but also with the car swerving a lot, sometimes into the other lane? That part isn't exactly new, it's just scarier on the freeway). It's even scarier when you are continually maybe-nodding off yourself, because what if she falls asleep when you're not looking (or goes into the other lane)(That only happened a couple of times, but it's memorable)?
2. Arrival at Cloudland Canyon & a Severe Lack of Flashlights
We had two days to recover from our jetlag and take care of any necessary errands before driving to Georgia for our family reunion. The main ones were getting flip-flops for me and Wax and prescription sunglasses for Wax, because she discovered too late how little shade there was. She had her current prescription, but the store couldn't sell her lenses because there's a law in Alabama that your prescription has to be less than a year old to buy glasses and an eye exam would've cost a couple hundred bucks.
My mom's and sister's dogs were crammed in the wheelchair van with my parents and my sister drove me and Wax in her car. My aunts with their husbands met us there. Valerie brought her two dogs and Jenny her 13-year-old child, my cousin, Perrin. And my step-grandmother was there too. So with the whole family we had rented 3 cabins, 2 of which needed to contain 2 dogs each.
After we got there, there were 3 people who urgently needed to use the bathroom, 2 dogs who urgently wanted out of the car and my dad trapped in the van... and there was miscommunication on many points
Eventually they arrived and let us into the cabin, where Jenny's family's stuff had already been unpacked, and we had a brief conversation. Everyone else had had dinner, but all of us except Dad needed a snack (he has a very small appetite these days). After a bit of conversation Jenny & her husband had packed their stuff and said they were going to carry it to their cabin and then come back, so the other aunt & uncle offered to help them carry it. They set off, leaving just my cousin Perrin and step-grandmother Debby with us, but were gone for so long they decided maybe the aunt/uncles weren't coming back after all.
So Debby wanted to go to bed. She set out alone, but came back a minute later saying it was too dark outside to find her way without a flashlight. We had no flashlights, so Wax loaned her her phone. Debby was going to walk to her cabin withthe aid of the flashlight app, get her own flashlight and use it to walk back to ours and return Wax's phone.
But a few minutes later she stumbled back in: "It turned off!" The whole phone was turned off, so it must've crashed and she'd had to stumble back down the path in the pitch black.
So my mom said she thought she had a flashlight in the car. She and Debby went out to look for it and we could hear them talking for a minute, and then Perrin said "Maybe I don't want to wait after all. I could walk back with Debby." Just then Mom came back in and said Debby had already left with her flashlight.
Wax said "I can take him." She and Perrin set out using her phone as a flashlight.
And a minute later Jenny and Taum burst in looking for Perrin. "Wax just left to take him to your cabin," we said, "Why didn't you pass each other in the woods?" They hadn't met Wax and Perrin because they had instead met Debby and escorted her to the other cabin because Mom's flashlight was so weak, and then come back to our cabin.
So they left again to look for Wax and Perrin, but then Wax and Perrin popped up again saying they had arrived to find the cabin locked. They stood around for a while before Jenny and Taum came back again and retrieved their child.
3. The Lookout That Didn't Look Out + Finnish Delicacies
The next day we went on the wheelchair-accessible (paved) segment at the top of Overlook Trail, otherwise known as the overlook point. The mountain itself on which Cloudland Canyon State Park is located is called Lookout Mountain and there are a bunch of other mountains around it; the lookout point looks over a canyon containing several waterfalls, but at no point on the trail - amply supplied with lookout points - is the water of the falls or the river visible. To see that you have to hike down the trails, but none of us did that, although my aunts and uncles started down them a bit. Jenny & Taum brought their food, because it was easily portable, over to eat with us, and the others came over after they finished eating, and they all got to try archipelago bread, Snaps, and a couple of flavors of Fazer chocolate (one with candy-coated salt licquorice).
4. Worrying symptoms
Our departure from Georgia was excited Sunday morning by dad throwing up several times in the morning. Nobody knew why he was sick, except maybe a delayed reaction to heat. We did manage to leave on time though, and we stopped (alone, because the aunts/uncles had a schedule to meet for work the next day) at a potter's studio a few miles from the park. My parents bought a piece pottery for us, one for my sister and one for my dad, and we made it home in reasonable time, although we did have to stop and let Mom nap in the car once. Then we got back and it was hot in the house because Dad'd turned up the thermostat while we were gone and all the ceiling fans were off. I went around and turned them all on (7/8 rooms) and we adjusted the thermostat back down, but Wax was just completely pink and weak and barely able to speak. I was like, "Are you sick???" And she said "IT'S JUST SO HOT" and we gave her icewater and then me & Mom dragged a dresser from on top of the floor vent in the guest bedroom and set up two fans aimed at the bed to help her until the ac did its thing. But the rest of us were like "Huh, weird... it's not that hot?" My poor little frost flower.
5. Bae's First American Speeding Ticket
After two days of rest and packing, it was time to drive to the airport for our return journey, but Mom had forgotten to plan in advance for an attendant to arrive early so we could leave at 5 am ish. Instead we left at 5:40, which was the earliest Dad's regular attendant could make it, and started an exciting drive: Mom was sleepy! The car was kinda swerving!
Our nerves were so wracked that we begged her to let Wax drive even though it's not legal, we don't think, because she doesn't have an International Driver's License, just her Finnish one. She had also never driven automatic before, but she gave mom a chance to rest for a few hours. We argued that the odds of getting pulled over were small - it hasn't happened to mom in years, and on a crowded freeway you're generally going the same speed as everyone around you. "Plus," I argued, "if we get pulled over, we're already going to miss the flight, so getting a ticket will be a smaller worry and a smaller expense for everyone and we can just say we didn't know you weren't allowed!"
WELL.
We DID get pulled over and Wax DID get a ticket!
And we WERE going the same speed as everyone around us at the time!
However, the officer just gave us a warning citation, addressed to Mom's address, and let us go again... with no mention of the illegal driving. We can only conclude he didn't know.
And WE STILL MADE IT TO THE AIRPORT ON TIME!
The flights back all made it more or less on time and they were as awful as any transoceanic flight, but not any more awful than usual.
Wax's mom pulled up with our box'o'kitties exactly as we walked into the parking lot with our suitcases, so we carried them up in the same trip. Snookums started shouting in the box and didn't stop for a couple of hours after we got him inside.
PS: We brought Wax's mom a bottle of Southern Comfort, which neither of us has ever tasted, and a box of her favorite duty-free chocolates, to thank her for caring for the kitties and houseplants.
Our flight from Chicago to Atlanta was stuck about an hour waiting to take off. They never told us on the plane that it was late or going to be late at all, but apparently they eventually told the Atlanta airport. Our itinerary said we were meant to get there at 6:30 pm in black and white, but the baggage carousel said "FLIGHT # - 7:30 PM - ON TIME".
Not sure if we'd have phone service in the US, I had told my parents in advance to contact us on email or Whatsapp if anything was not as expected, because we would be able to check these using wifi if nothing else. After we got our baggage and couldn't see my parents anywhere we grabbed some free wifi and found NO MESSAGES of any kind from any parents, which caused me to doubt my grip on reality. WEREN'T we an hour late??? Why would my parents not say ANYTHING about us being an entire hour delayed??? Was every clock around wrong about the time zone? Had I copy-pasted wrong from the email?? Misread the itinerary printed by the airline at check-in????
So we walked all the way down to the end of the terminal to call my mom from the first place that wasn't too loud to talk on the phone, only to find out that she had in fact been waiting in a lounge near baggage claim for an hour, but the airport had led her to believe we weren't getting in until 9 pm! (We still have no idea what was up with that.) She just hadn't seen us and we hadn't seen her. At this point we had been awake well over 24 hours. My mom drove our sleep-deprived, woozy, queasy-with-hunger selves home.
NOTABLE FACTS ABOUT MY MOM AND DRIVING:
- My mom has narcolepsy - uncontrolledly falling asleep, that is - and after the Hellish Roadtrip to Texas, 2004, I did my best to keep her out from behind the wheel for a while
- It's been medicated for years now and everyone swore to us that it was under control and totally not a problem
- On my last trip home she drove me around town and it was more or less like when I was a kid - absent-minded but not apparently deadly
My mom's car also doesn't have cruise control, so we were queasy, sleep-deprived and going at high speed down a freeway that was under construction, with one lane being closed at several points, and my mom was having problems (a) staying awake ("Uh-oh, I'm starting to get sleepy again!") and (b) keeping the car's speed up (which shows up as jerky acceleration and deceleration... just... very jerky, but also with the car swerving a lot, sometimes into the other lane? That part isn't exactly new, it's just scarier on the freeway). It's even scarier when you are continually maybe-nodding off yourself, because what if she falls asleep when you're not looking (or goes into the other lane)(That only happened a couple of times, but it's memorable)?
2. Arrival at Cloudland Canyon & a Severe Lack of Flashlights
We had two days to recover from our jetlag and take care of any necessary errands before driving to Georgia for our family reunion. The main ones were getting flip-flops for me and Wax and prescription sunglasses for Wax, because she discovered too late how little shade there was. She had her current prescription, but the store couldn't sell her lenses because there's a law in Alabama that your prescription has to be less than a year old to buy glasses and an eye exam would've cost a couple hundred bucks.
My mom's and sister's dogs were crammed in the wheelchair van with my parents and my sister drove me and Wax in her car. My aunts with their husbands met us there. Valerie brought her two dogs and Jenny her 13-year-old child, my cousin, Perrin. And my step-grandmother was there too. So with the whole family we had rented 3 cabins, 2 of which needed to contain 2 dogs each.
After we got there, there were 3 people who urgently needed to use the bathroom, 2 dogs who urgently wanted out of the car and my dad trapped in the van... and there was miscommunication on many points
- my parents never got the memo that there was one "handicapped accessible" cabin of the 3, and were planning to just take a random one, having received specific measurements so they knew it would meet their needs
- my parents were told the front office closed at 7 but it was actually 8
- the front office sent us to a dog cabin, but our aunts and uncles thought we would take the accessible cabin even though dogs weren't allowed in it. So we arrived and someone else had moved into it and the keys weren't anywhere.
- So we tried to find out where the keys were and why they were gone, but Dad called his sisters like four times and several of the times whoever he talked to didn't even mention that the sister who had the key to the cabin we were trying to get into was in fact there, with the person he was talking to
- And they were all in one of the other cabins, which was only like 20 yards away and clearly visible through the trees, so they could have all come over to talk about it in person but instead we spent half an hour on the phone
- During this time my mom got so agitated by the, er, discussioning~ that she stormed off down the end of the driveway and we really didn't know where she went
Eventually they arrived and let us into the cabin, where Jenny's family's stuff had already been unpacked, and we had a brief conversation. Everyone else had had dinner, but all of us except Dad needed a snack (he has a very small appetite these days). After a bit of conversation Jenny & her husband had packed their stuff and said they were going to carry it to their cabin and then come back, so the other aunt & uncle offered to help them carry it. They set off, leaving just my cousin Perrin and step-grandmother Debby with us, but were gone for so long they decided maybe the aunt/uncles weren't coming back after all.
So Debby wanted to go to bed. She set out alone, but came back a minute later saying it was too dark outside to find her way without a flashlight. We had no flashlights, so Wax loaned her her phone. Debby was going to walk to her cabin withthe aid of the flashlight app, get her own flashlight and use it to walk back to ours and return Wax's phone.
But a few minutes later she stumbled back in: "It turned off!" The whole phone was turned off, so it must've crashed and she'd had to stumble back down the path in the pitch black.
So my mom said she thought she had a flashlight in the car. She and Debby went out to look for it and we could hear them talking for a minute, and then Perrin said "Maybe I don't want to wait after all. I could walk back with Debby." Just then Mom came back in and said Debby had already left with her flashlight.
Wax said "I can take him." She and Perrin set out using her phone as a flashlight.
And a minute later Jenny and Taum burst in looking for Perrin. "Wax just left to take him to your cabin," we said, "Why didn't you pass each other in the woods?" They hadn't met Wax and Perrin because they had instead met Debby and escorted her to the other cabin because Mom's flashlight was so weak, and then come back to our cabin.
So they left again to look for Wax and Perrin, but then Wax and Perrin popped up again saying they had arrived to find the cabin locked. They stood around for a while before Jenny and Taum came back again and retrieved their child.
3. The Lookout That Didn't Look Out + Finnish Delicacies
The next day we went on the wheelchair-accessible (paved) segment at the top of Overlook Trail, otherwise known as the overlook point. The mountain itself on which Cloudland Canyon State Park is located is called Lookout Mountain and there are a bunch of other mountains around it; the lookout point looks over a canyon containing several waterfalls, but at no point on the trail - amply supplied with lookout points - is the water of the falls or the river visible. To see that you have to hike down the trails, but none of us did that, although my aunts and uncles started down them a bit. Jenny & Taum brought their food, because it was easily portable, over to eat with us, and the others came over after they finished eating, and they all got to try archipelago bread, Snaps, and a couple of flavors of Fazer chocolate (one with candy-coated salt licquorice).
4. Worrying symptoms
Our departure from Georgia was excited Sunday morning by dad throwing up several times in the morning. Nobody knew why he was sick, except maybe a delayed reaction to heat. We did manage to leave on time though, and we stopped (alone, because the aunts/uncles had a schedule to meet for work the next day) at a potter's studio a few miles from the park. My parents bought a piece pottery for us, one for my sister and one for my dad, and we made it home in reasonable time, although we did have to stop and let Mom nap in the car once. Then we got back and it was hot in the house because Dad'd turned up the thermostat while we were gone and all the ceiling fans were off. I went around and turned them all on (7/8 rooms) and we adjusted the thermostat back down, but Wax was just completely pink and weak and barely able to speak. I was like, "Are you sick???" And she said "IT'S JUST SO HOT" and we gave her icewater and then me & Mom dragged a dresser from on top of the floor vent in the guest bedroom and set up two fans aimed at the bed to help her until the ac did its thing. But the rest of us were like "Huh, weird... it's not that hot?" My poor little frost flower.
5. Bae's First American Speeding Ticket
After two days of rest and packing, it was time to drive to the airport for our return journey, but Mom had forgotten to plan in advance for an attendant to arrive early so we could leave at 5 am ish. Instead we left at 5:40, which was the earliest Dad's regular attendant could make it, and started an exciting drive: Mom was sleepy! The car was kinda swerving!
Our nerves were so wracked that we begged her to let Wax drive even though it's not legal, we don't think, because she doesn't have an International Driver's License, just her Finnish one. She had also never driven automatic before, but she gave mom a chance to rest for a few hours. We argued that the odds of getting pulled over were small - it hasn't happened to mom in years, and on a crowded freeway you're generally going the same speed as everyone around you. "Plus," I argued, "if we get pulled over, we're already going to miss the flight, so getting a ticket will be a smaller worry and a smaller expense for everyone and we can just say we didn't know you weren't allowed!"
WELL.
We DID get pulled over and Wax DID get a ticket!
And we WERE going the same speed as everyone around us at the time!
However, the officer just gave us a warning citation, addressed to Mom's address, and let us go again... with no mention of the illegal driving. We can only conclude he didn't know.
And WE STILL MADE IT TO THE AIRPORT ON TIME!
The flights back all made it more or less on time and they were as awful as any transoceanic flight, but not any more awful than usual.
Wax's mom pulled up with our box'o'kitties exactly as we walked into the parking lot with our suitcases, so we carried them up in the same trip. Snookums started shouting in the box and didn't stop for a couple of hours after we got him inside.
PS: We brought Wax's mom a bottle of Southern Comfort, which neither of us has ever tasted, and a box of her favorite duty-free chocolates, to thank her for caring for the kitties and houseplants.
