Dwylin &
Landon
The evening of June
11th brought forth many emotions. Anticipation, worry,
sweat, laughter, panic, and air pressure, but enough about Dwylin’s
car. The appointed time for packing was quickly coming to an abrupt
end. Its 4 o'clock on Tuesday night and Dwylin’s car, the one we
are taking to the airport in the morning, needs air in one of
the back tires. It also appears that a couple of starlings have set
their sights on the back windshield of Dwylin's car. At least six of
them left some departing gifts in my rearview mirror all covered in
white.
From dealing with
this situation, Landon picked up Dwylin to go play in a church league
softball game (Woodlawn vs Fairhaven). They played two games and
both teams won a game. We then headed back to Landon’s house and
spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to hit our max of 40 lbs
in our shared checked bag. It didn’t take long for sleep to come
to either of them, because they had an early start and a long day
ahead of them.
The alarms were
going off that morning at 3:45 AM precisely. Landon made some coffee
and we were off. Middlebury, IN at 4 in the morning is comparable to
the movie, Mad Max: Fury Road! RV workers can be a reckless and
aggressive group of individuals. We did end up getting through town,
without a scratch. A few more hours and we’ll be in Chicago, but
the restroom came a calling.
We pulled off the
highway in Portage hoping to help ourselves out, in more ways than
one… if you know what I mean… but McDonald’s wasn’t feeling
the same way. We got out of the car for a stretch and headed
inside. BANG! Was the sound of the door as Dwylin, unsuccessfully,
tried to open a simple door. It was locked, and we had forgotten
about the time change. The restrooms in this establishment was very
much closed. Our salvation was found across the street in the
restroom of the gas station.
We eventually made
it to Chicago and found our airline and made our flight. It was off
to Las Vegas, and a 3-hour flight to come. We landed in Vegas with
one good hour plus to burn in the airport with oodles and oodles of
slot machines. After one gate change and many tempting looks at
devices claiming a $25,000.00 prize if you play pull a lever. We
found our salvation, from our temptation, with a little help from the
spirit in the sky, which just so happened to be our airline for the
trip as well. For an hour and seventeen minutes we sat in the
airplane anticipating our arrival in Oakland and the official start
of our quote “VACATION”.
We arrived a little
after 1:15 PST and we found our checked bag and started looking for
our ride. We could not find a vehicle with familiar faces,
anywhere...
Matt &
Linda
The long drive
began on Thursday, June 6th to Plains, MT. Matt and Linda
were heading west from Missouri because they’re helping one of
Dan’s brothers. That, however, is another story for another time,
and back to this trip. They headed west and the first stop was Mount
Rushmore. They loved the experience and had a blast seeing the four
Presidents in the rock.
They pulled into
Plains in the afternoon of the following day. They greeted some old
friends and had a burger or two at “The Butchers Nook”
restaurant. All in all, they were in Montana from Friday till Tuesday
morning. They were off, in their car, driving down to meet everyone
for our weekend in San Jose.
They drove all day
and ended up at Multnomah Falls in Oregon. The same Multnomah Falls
we visited on our Alaska trip four years ago. From the falls they
headed west to Corvallis, OR to walk on the football field of the
Oregon State Beavers. Their day of travel ended on the coast of
Oregon, off Highway 1, and watched a sunset. Awaiting the coming day
in California, and all the adventures to follow.
Matt and Linda had
a 7ish hour drive into California to Oakland, so that they could pick
up Dwylin and Landon from the airport. First, they went to pick up
our rented vehicle, from “Turo”, basically an “Air BnB” for
cars. Since they went to pick up this van first, and we flew in
around 1 o’clock, the traffic wasn’t great so they pulled up
about 20 minutes late, only to see the bright-eyed face and big smile
of Landon Miller. Landon was so excited that he forgot how to work a
van trunk door for a minute, but Dwylin explained that it may be the
year 2019, but it is also only the year 2019. Dwylin then preceded to
open the van trunk like its always been done for the past 40 some odd
years.
Then immediately we
were off again, and south we went, down to San Jose Airport. We
dropped Linda off with their own car and she headed for the rental
property, and the guys headed to the airport. We pulled up on time
for Jon, Heidi, and Dan’s arrival, but there was no one around to
be seen...
Jon, Heidi &
Dan
“The Big Three”
left Plains, Montana Wednesday morning with sights of California in
their eyes. The warm environment and the welcome adventure of time
off was enticing, but first, breakfast at the new Butchers Nook.
They just opened for business one week before taking off for a
vacation. They all ate breakfast and headed out for Spokane, WA.
They headed out of
Spokane at 10:30 a.m. and were on there way to Salt Lake City, Utah.
They landed around 1:30 pm, and just sat around, in the land of
Mormons, waiting for their flight to San Jose. Their flight left
about a half-hour late, but in all reality, they could do nothing
about this. Their flight landed about a half-hour late because of
this and then they met up with the rest of the crew.
Many Happy
Meeting
Now
all the people were back together again and headed to San Jose, our
temporary home. Now since
we are in the Pacific time zone, this meant that it was 8 o’clock
EST.
Which wouldn’t normally be an issue but we had our eyes set on
going to Buffalo Wild Wings and watching game Seven of the Stanley
Cup Finals.
A match between the favored Boston Bruins and the underdog St. Louis
Blues. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great game. The
Blues
won their
first title in team history 4-1 on Wednesday night. From Bdubs we
headed home and went to bed
with
anticipation in our heads because we were headed to Pebble Beach for
the US Open the very next morning.
However, not before at
least a couple games of ping pong.
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