Posts Tagged ‘driving’
Truly Best
Our Christmas celebrations this year have provided a wonderful addition to years of fabulous Christmases with Cyndie’s family. Now that we live in Wisconsin, the routine for us has settled into a pattern of driving back and forth to Edina on Christmas eve, and then two more times on Christmas day. This allows us to participate in spectacular meals, and all that comes with them, as well as tend to the care of Delilah and our horses back home.
I’m used to driving that route, so it doesn’t bother me. The trouble comes in accounting for that extra hour that always separates us from our intended destination. It becomes a struggle to get out of the house on time to arrive at the celebration by the appointed hour.
Then we need to watch the clock while enjoying the time of our lives so that we don’t end up forcing our dog to wait too long without us at home. Sure wish we could just ask Scotty to beam us home. We always want to stay longer at the social gathering, but without it resulting in such a late return to our home an hour away.
I enjoyed two particular “bests” yesterday that deserve specific mention. Cyndie’s mother, Marie, is a master hostess who prepares world-class meals for large numbers of guests. The traditional family dinner of beef tenderloin on Christmas day is one of my favorites. It is magical, because no matter what variations may occur every year, it is always the best meal I have ever had.
This year, it was even better than that.
Honestly, I struggle to justify enjoying such gastronomical pleasure. The dessert which followed the best-dinner-ever included a cranberry cake with a caramel sauce topping that always tastes so amazing, it should be recognized as a dangerous weapon and require a license to prepare.
I received some very nice gifts from very generous people this Christmas, but there is one that immediately claimed my heart as the best possible thing I opened. We draw names for a gift exchange in Cyndie’s family, and this year, my fellow in-law, Sara, wife of Cyndie’s brother, Ben, picked my name out of the hat.
She nailed the precise art of matching a gift to the recipient, and steeped it in her own joy while creating it. Sara made a wood-burned image of our Wintervale logo on a beautiful pine board. I find it absolutely beautiful to look at. It smells good, too!
It is the best gift.
I just want to look at it again and again. It is one of a kind, made by Sara’s hands, and intended specifically for me. What a precious thing.
I had a very merry Christmas.
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People Grouping
Obviously, we are all individuals, but there is no denying that people are pretty easily grouped for any number of reasons, one of which being, it’s just plain fun to do!
The other day, I decided there are three kinds of people. Those who grab a knob to open a drawer or a closet door without ever noticing the knob is spinning loose —causing it to get worse with every use, …those who try to fix loose knobs by tightening it until the threads strip —making it impossible to ever fix, …and those who are aware of the situation before they ever grab a knob —leading to handling it in such a way it doesn’t spin loose every time or causing thread damage when snugging it up when needed.
It is a known fact that there are two kinds of drivers other than ourselves: Maniacs who drive faster than us and idiots who drive slower. I’m gaining plenty of experience with driving styles during my hour-long commutes to and from work.
Seems to me there are three groups of people in the left/fast/passing lane of the expressway: Those who pick their comfortable speed and stay put, oblivious to what other cars around them are seeking to do, …those who pick a speed below what other fast lane drivers prefer, staying in the left lane no matter what, as if to spite anyone behind them who wishes to drive faster, …and those who drive in the left lane while passing slower cars, but notice immediately if someone approaches from behind at a greater speed, in which case this third group of drivers will move over at the earliest opportunity to allow the faster driver to proceed past.
It’s not rocket science, people.
For grouping people in the world, I think 3 is the ideal number. Splitting us into 2 groups is too easy. Anything more than 3 becomes an exercise in “where do you stop?” If you break it down into 4, you may as well go to 5. Oh, heck, why stop there?
See? Three is perfect.
On people’s opinions about a roll of toilet paper: Those who believe it should be mounted to roll off the top, …those who believe it should roll off the bottom, …and those who don’t give a flying eff what direction it comes from. (Okay, sometimes 4 isn’t all bad… those who say, “Toilet paper? A place to mount it? I wish!”)
Mostly, there are three kinds of people in the world.
I tend to see myself as residing somewhere in the group between the maniacs and the idiots.
Don’t we all?
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Driving Adventures
When we awoke on Wednesday, the beginning of our 7th full day in Guatemala with the Morales family, we started packing almost immediately. It was time to leave Bill & Karin’s beautiful lake house and embark on a road trip to the beach house, reported to probably be 2-hours and 45-minutes duration. After a short time, just as we had on the drive to Lake Atitlán days before, we arrived at a mysterious stretch of road where up and down directions are reversed.
Marco stopped our vehicle, turned on the 4-way hazard lights, and shifted to neutral. The Toyota began to roll uphill. It’s crazy-making!
When we approach a “T” intersection very near to our planned restaurant stop for breakfast, the traffic came to a complete standstill. We were just a couple of car lengths from where we wanted to make a left turn, but were pinned with nowhere to go. Several guys on foot seemed to be trying to augment the single traffic cop’s attempt to orchestrate some progress, but many drivers just chose their own solution and drove around any vehicle in front of them. It only served to complicate the mess.
Patience turns out to be the best course of action, and eventually we made our turn and got to stretch our legs and sit down to eat. The restaurant had a roof, but no walls around the seating area. Cyndie ordered in Spanish; an omelet with vegetables for me, pancakes for her.
Breakfast automatically came with cups of coffee and a bowl of a sweet porridge. I noticed Cyndie and Marco set their cups aside after their first taste and he ordered better coffee for the two of them. I normally don’t like cooked oatmeal or porridge, but this was sweet and not heavy. I liked it a lot. It was a great breakfast on the road.
Shortly after departing from that restaurant, we came to a stretch of divided highway with a very long backup of stopped traffic in the lanes approaching from the other direction. Shockingly, we suddenly spotted vehicles driving toward us in our lanes! After multiple cars switched lanes in reaction, everyone going our direction adjusted to the right lane. After the initial alarm, it wasn’t as unnerving as you’d think, because there is a lot of driving in each other’s lanes to make passes on the two-lane roads everywhere else. Still, they were driving into traffic and it was very hazardous, so Dunia got on her phone and reported the situation to authorities.
Despite the traffic challenges, it seemed a relatively short time had passed when we reached sights that I began to recognize from my visit there with Marco a week earlier. The beach house was just ahead.
Upon arriving, we were able to meet Bill and Karin. The two families each have adjacent beach houses beside the large shared pool. It reminds me very much of the community of families at Cyndie’s family vacation home in Hayward, WI. We also are greeted by Karin’s sister and niece, and later, Bill and Karin’s son, Anthony.
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It was significantly hotter this day than any other we’d experienced, in large part because we’ve come down to sea level and it was sunny all day. I get my first chance to play some football with the Morales boys and Anthony, followed by a jump in the pool. Dunia’s parents arrived and we met them as Marco began preparations for a dinner of grilled lobster tail.
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As the sun got low, mosquitoes and the heat contributed to drive us into our air-conditioned room at around 6:45. It feels much later than that and we give in to beckoning sleep early, after a day that felt like we mostly just lounged in the pool. Hardly the exerting activities that should have caused such tiredness. Maybe the week was finally catching up with us.
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Driving Day
In the early morning darkness yesterday, with the wind blowing fiercely, mixing ground snow with the on-and-off cloudbursts of new flakes, I set off in the car with Cyndie by my side. I had taken the day off from work to transport her to a day surgery appointment tending to a minor issue with the middle finger of her right hand. I suspect I will be seeing a lot of that finger from her in the days ahead.
Since this day was all about her, I figured that most of the time would consist of restful idleness for me. I hadn’t thoroughly considered what effort it would take to set off in the pre-dawn darkness, through a fresh coating of snow on the roads, down a totally unfamiliar route, to a destination that was over an hour away from us. That drive alone turned out to be pretty exhausting. It didn’t help that we needed to get up so early that I only logged a fraction of my full night’s sleep, waking at the point of deepest slumber.
Since her appointment was early, we were one of the first patients arriving, even getting there before her nurse. As one of the first appointments of the day, they were able to get her ready for the doctor in no time and I wandered off to the family lounge. I leisurely made my way through the newspaper, hoping the reading would lull me to sleep. Before I got through the last section, the doctor arrived to provide a report of what he found. So much for a nap.
I re-joined Cyndie in the prep/recovery station. There had been a chance that they would want to take skin from her arm for a graft on the knuckle, so the anesthesiologist made sure Cyndie’s entire arm had no feeling or function. It turned out they did not need the graft, which was great, but the arm was done for the day. She couldn’t get a finger to even twitch. They supported her sleeping arm in a sling and off we went, in search of some breakfast.
All too soon, I was driving again, this time with Cyndie sound asleep beside me. At least now there was daylight so that I could see where we were going. Travel was still treacherous, with snow blowing across the road in many places. At one point, when the road turned, it was obvious that someone’s car didn’t, and it sat buried in the snow straight ahead. That could easily have been us if it had still been dark.
We arrived home safe and sound, and both fell right to sleep for a nap. When I awoke, it was time again to venture out for a drive to pick up her pain medication at our usual pharmacy which was in the opposite direction from where we had been in the morning. More wind, more snow over the road, and more driving than I have done in one day for a long time.
Just to make a fatiguing day of doing pretty much nothing even more exhausting, there were complications with the prescription I was hoping to pick up. Our usual pharmacy just happened to be having technical difficulties this day. They suggested I try a different pharmacy. Had I known this in advance, we could have chosen one closer to home. I turned around and headed back toward our place and pulled up to the drive-thru window of the second pharmacy.
How many of you can see this coming? They were having difficulty filling the prescription because it looked like the first pharmacy already took care of it. Lovely. It was a tangled mess, but pharmacy #2 made many phone calls and found a way to help us out. My little errand to pick up her prescription took twice as long as it needed to.
Finally, I was driving home again, now into the dark of night, navigating drifted roadways, and already mentally preparing for this morning’s pre-dawn hour-long commute to the day job. I wish I had driverless car technology so I could do it with my eyes closed.
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Relative Something 