May 19, 2013
Ahoy me hearties! All hand hoay!
Beware, the following journal entry contains pirate speak.
First, I want to complain about physical problems, then I won’t complain the rest of the trip. My leg has been kind of weird and sore feeling since detox. That’s from when I broke it and I never went to physical therapy. I never felt a thing with all the pain meds I was on, but now I’m clean so I feel everything. My stitches were taken out Friday before Hasty, Patrick, Pete and I left for our road trip, so that’s good, and the scars don’t look bad. Hasty evened off my hair in the back so the shaved part doesn’t stand out so much, now that some hair has grown in. My black eyes are now a yellow with spots of grey, so not so bad, my nose isn’t swollen. Those aren’t complaints but the other complaint I have is with my brain. I had been writing rough drafts of my journal, then copying the entry into my actual journal, so that’s been a pain in the ass. I think I don’t need to do that anymore since I’m doing all right with it now. But I do notice significant forgetfulness and distraction. Like I’ll be in the middle of doing something and think of something else, and walk away from it, completely forgetting I was doing the first thing. It’s stupid things too at times. Like the other day I was in the shower and I felt hungry. So I just turned off the shower and went to the kitchen for food. I completely forgot to rinse all the suds off of me. Paula had to tell me. Blimey! I just hope one day I don’t get distracted on my way out the door and find myself walking around naked because I forgot to get dressed.
That said, I have to add that it affects my driving. I can only drive an hour at the most. So I don’t contribute so much for the journey in that way, but they understand, and we are four drivers anyway. Everyone will drive at 2 hour intervals and alternate, I will do one hour for my interval. Pete’s very organized, he’s keeping track of it. He also made a list of who’s paying for what. We have to pay for gas, accommodations, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. He’s not marking down how much we pay, he’s just keeping track that we alternate the pay outs. There will be a variation of expenses, but it’s not important.
We left Friday, a friend’s dad owns a garage and he loaned us a van. It’s one they need to fix up and resell so he has no worries about it. I feel like we’re the Scooby Doo gang in their Mystery Machine. Paula gave me some cash and she also gave me one of her credit cards. She put me on as a user. Wait there’s a double meaning there. I meant a user of the card. Whatever. When I return home I plan to start working with Sharly again and getting my shit together. Hasty, Patrick, and Pete took time off from work. They each took a month off. Very fortunate they were able to do that. I don’t know if we’ll be gone that long, but it would be pretty cool.
Ok now that all the technicalities have been described, I can talk about the trip.
My name is Wall Grimm and this is the story of my road trip.
WALL GRIMM’S ROAD TRIPPING
Wish I was really trippin’ but whatever. So, we took off Friday with the van. We took off early enough that we didn’t get caught in rush hour through the New Jersey Turnpike. Our destination is Florida to start. We didn’t go into New York, but we might on the way back. New York’s close to home, we can go there any time, it’s roughly a four hour drive. Or an hour on the commuter plane. So we may skip New York altogether and make that it’s own trip another time. We drove and then we went into a truck stop and napped a little during the evening. Then we continued on to Virginia Beach as our first official stop. We got there about 8am and went to the Youth Hostel. We wanted to see if we could get a private room there, so we could all be together, otherwise we’d be in the dorms, so Hasty would have to go into a female dorm room. Can’t have that. So we went in there and the manager was really cool because usually there’s a minimum stay of 2 or 3 nights on the weekend, but we charmed her into letting us do the one night, and we paid $30 for the room. Not each, just $30. That’s why we’re going to try to do Hostels as much as possible. We may not get lucky all the time because they may be booked. We were lucky this time and we weren’t even trying to hornswaggle her. We haven’t really charted out a course yet, we’re just going to go where our whims take us.
We booked the private room, and the manager even let us go in early because no one had been there from the previous evening. So we brought in our shit battened down the hatches, and got ready to hit the boardwalk. The manager told us that there was a Pirate Party on the beach today, so we were really excited about that. We got ready in our swim suits to hit the beach and go out and buy pirate costumes. Basically we got vests and the shirts, hats, eye patches and the swords the pirates have, that kind of stuff. No pants because we were on the beach. Hasty looked hot.
The boardwalk I think someone said is about 3 miles. I was like, “shiver me timbers.” We got some decent beach time in, jumping in the waves like little kids, walking the boardwalk, going on rides, eating lots of fried dough, and talking like pirates. I found a cute blonde lifeguard with a nice dungbie. I was like, you’re so small, how could you ever rescue me? She said she was a strong swimmer and she has the rescue floatation devices and then she described the training it takes to be a beach life guard. Intense stuff. She impressed me and made me want to try drowning. Me mateys dragged me away before I distracted the lifeguard away from her job any longer. Later we had to drag Hasty away from a group of swashbucklers.
Once at the hostel, we all took turns showering in the head, well the bathroom, not the toilet, but…aye. We then hung out in our room in our underwear. I was the only one who got a tan. The others got sunburned. Sunburned and we haven’t even made it to Florida yet. We took off the shirts now and then to get some sun on us. The sun was strong, so my friends need to use more sunblock. I just put it on my shoulders, my nose, and my lower back along my swim suit line. Those are the only places I might get burned if I do. So yeah, we were all in our underwear. I was like, “yo ho ho, avast ye!” when I saw Hasty, who wasn’t completely in her underwear btw. Well, I guess neither were Patrick and Pete who were in boxers, boxer shorts and t-shirts. Sorry but I was just in my bikini briefs, which was my polite way of not being naked.
Pete played some early 90′s music which is his favorite stuff. One song he played that we all knew was “Two Princes” by the Spin Doctors, so we were dancing around and singing to that one. Then when he played “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis, I grabbed Hasty for a slow dance. Pete and Patrick just stared at each other with awkward looks in their eyes. Hasty was like, “Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen! Just dance already.” They said, “Aye, aye,” and danced. I was just impressed by Hasty’s pirate lingo.
As we were dancing, I started to listen to the lyrics. I said, “wtf is this song even about? It doesn’t make any sense.” Pete said, “Yeah, but it makes no sense nicely.”
When it came time for us to crash, we finally acknowledged that there were two double beds. I said, so who’s sleeping where? Pete and Patrick just kind of threw out an “aw gee I dunno” kind of shy laughter. So we decided that Patrick would sleep with Hasty, and I would sleep with Pete. It would have been completely platonic of course if Hasty and I ended up in the same bed together. I respect her marriage, and she’s a loyal wife. Her husband told me to take care of her and look out for her on our trip, so I won’t let him down. Hasty’s well being is my priority.
Anyway, it’s great to have fun like this, and not be drinking. This is a good group of buccaneers who are supportive of that, completely savvy, I’m lucky for these friends.
Patrick is a character based on himself at http://phintly.wordpress.com/ and Hasty is based on herself from http://hastywords.wordpress.com/ And Hasty’s husband is based on himself at http://hastyhusband.wordpress.com/
