Our weekend trip to Maine for our friends K's & B's wedding went well, all things considered. It was a bit of an ordeal, but I'm finding everything is a bit of an ordeal when you have an infant child. Just staying home is trying. I think going from DC to LA is actually easier than going from DC to Rockport, Maine because it's more direct. To get to Rockport we had to first fly to Boston, rent a car in Boston, and then drive another six hours. It should have only been about three hours, but it was pouring rain and traffic was thick just about the entire way. It was not a fun drive.
Things got off to a bad start at Logan Airport when we (S, Lil' S, our friend E, and I) waited for every piece of luggage to come out and our car seat never showed up. It was at some other pickup point for irregularly shaped items, which E eventually discovered by wandering around. It wasn't even in sight of our carousel. No sign, no announcement. I hate when businesses do this -- when they just expected you to know something you have no way of knowing. Like we're all former employees or something. When we flew from LA to Seattle the car seat came out on the carousel like all the other luggage. Why would we think it wouldn't at this airport unless somebody told us otherwise?
It didn't get immediately better from there. If, by some chance, you have to rent a car at Logan anytime in the near future do not go with Thrifty. It's awful. No matter what you save, it's not worth it. For starters, they aren't even that close to the airport; on the shuttle ride I started to wonder if it was taking us all the way to Maine. Then a customer returning a car was blocking the shuttle loading/unloading zone, which is the only area with cover (I assume this is why the customer was using it), so we sat there and waited for him to move, which he didn't do, and instead of getting him to move, the bus just dropped us off in the pouring rain. So, one guy parks where he isn't supposed to, nobody stops him, and an entire bus of customers and their luggage got soaked -- makes sense. Then the woman at the counter tried to upsell me on a bunch of shit I didn't want; then she told me my credit card wouldn't be charged until after we returned the car, which wasn't true.* The place just sucks. I see they're getting torn apart on Yelp, which they should. (Although, to be fair, the return was quick and easy.)
We were expecting the drive from MA to ME to be idyllic and breezy, instead it was dismal and dreary. Just a thick blanket of wet grayness and bumper to bumper traffic almost the entire 185 miles. I couldn't even get the jams going. I found the local classic rock station on the radio and got excited when they announced three straight commercial-free rock blocks were coming at me. First, the Eagles. I hate the fucking Eagles, man. Next up, the Stones. Nice (so I think). The first song they play is "Gimme Shelter", which is a good song. They follow it up with "Shattered", which is an awful song -- the worst in their catalog. Actually, I take that back, the worst song is "Start Me Up", which is what they played next. The finale was "Satisfaction" -- a great song... the first 1,500 times you hear it. So of all the songs in the Rolling Stones amazing catalog they played one decent song, two shitty songs**, and a good song that it's impossible to derive joy from because it's so fucked out. The next rock block was Def Leppard. I just turned off the radio.
We finally got into Rockport about 6:45 p.m., three to four hours later than we were expecting. We had to shake a tail to get to a cocktail event that started at 7. S was so deflated and tired of dealing with Lil' S (she was in the back seat on entertainment duty during the drive) that she just wanted to put him to bed and stay in, so I had to give her the stern, "Hey, we came all the way here. This is a one-time thing for K & B. We're going." Which worked, but then I pushed things too far by getting on her case to hurry things along ("What are you doing? You can unpack everything and put it away later!"). This caused a mini-fight and delayed us by at least 15 minutes. We hustled to get there and of course the bride and groom and wedding party weren't even there yet. It was just us and a bunch of old people for the first half hour.
Maine and the wedding were very cool though. It cleared up the day after we arrived and was gorgeous the entire weekend. We lucked out in that regard. The ceremony was really quick and sweet, and the reception and after-party apparently went all night. I bowed out early on dad duty. I thought I was at least sparing myself a hangover by not staying out late, but I woke up in the middle of the night with my stomach just killing me. There's an episode of The Simpsons where they go to Itchy & Scratchy land and one of the theme areas is called Searing Gas Pain Land, and that's what my stomach felt like -- it felt like the picture below.
I actually drove to a convenience store at 1:30 a.m. to buy (and quickly down) a bottle of Pepto Bismal. It helped, but it certainly didn't bring me total relief. I couldn't sleep and woke up feeling like I had been up all night drinking. Sometimes when I travel the pipes get a little clogged (a phenomenon not unique to me, I've since learned); combine that with a few slices of pizza and a few beers, and that's me fucked. So, I got to experience the hangover without the party. Super.
We got in on Friday, the wedding was Saturday, we spent Sunday sight-seeing, and headed out Monday. Of course, we left super early Monday morning and sailed right through, hitting almost no traffic. We got to the airport like three hours before our flight left. Normally that wouldn't be such a big deal, but entertaining the little guy in an airport is exhausting. There is shit all over the ground he tries to put in his mouth, and he constantly wants to get into other people's bags. He was super fussy the entire flight home -- a short flight, thankfully. The 50-something-year old man sitting in front of us was visibly annoyed by having a baby behind him. I felt bad for him until I noticed he was reading one of those Cosmo-for-men-type magazines. For some reason this absolved me of all compunction.
Until next time...
*What happened is I was late making a credit card payment, so despite being nowhere near my limit I couldn't use my card until the payment cleared (about a day). So instead I gave them my bank card under the assurance that it was just collateral, the card wouldn't actually be charged, and I could pay with a different card when I returned (and my other card would be freed by then). But my bank card actually was charged (and then refunded when I paid with the other card), drawing the account down to $0. When I went to use it over the weekend it was decline. Thankfully, my other one was available at that point. I can't remember ever having a single card denied, and then I had two denied in a span of three days. Embarrassing. It's mainly my fault for not paying my bill on time, but the woman at the Thrity counter certainly didn't do me any favors by giving me information that wasn't exactly accurate.
**By the way, this is one of the many reasons the Beatles are superior to the Stones. There are no "Shattered"s or "Start Me Up"s in The Fab Four's catalog.
Things got off to a bad start at Logan Airport when we (S, Lil' S, our friend E, and I) waited for every piece of luggage to come out and our car seat never showed up. It was at some other pickup point for irregularly shaped items, which E eventually discovered by wandering around. It wasn't even in sight of our carousel. No sign, no announcement. I hate when businesses do this -- when they just expected you to know something you have no way of knowing. Like we're all former employees or something. When we flew from LA to Seattle the car seat came out on the carousel like all the other luggage. Why would we think it wouldn't at this airport unless somebody told us otherwise?
[Once we woke up in our hotel to this view, things were OK.]
It didn't get immediately better from there. If, by some chance, you have to rent a car at Logan anytime in the near future do not go with Thrifty. It's awful. No matter what you save, it's not worth it. For starters, they aren't even that close to the airport; on the shuttle ride I started to wonder if it was taking us all the way to Maine. Then a customer returning a car was blocking the shuttle loading/unloading zone, which is the only area with cover (I assume this is why the customer was using it), so we sat there and waited for him to move, which he didn't do, and instead of getting him to move, the bus just dropped us off in the pouring rain. So, one guy parks where he isn't supposed to, nobody stops him, and an entire bus of customers and their luggage got soaked -- makes sense. Then the woman at the counter tried to upsell me on a bunch of shit I didn't want; then she told me my credit card wouldn't be charged until after we returned the car, which wasn't true.* The place just sucks. I see they're getting torn apart on Yelp, which they should. (Although, to be fair, the return was quick and easy.)
We were expecting the drive from MA to ME to be idyllic and breezy, instead it was dismal and dreary. Just a thick blanket of wet grayness and bumper to bumper traffic almost the entire 185 miles. I couldn't even get the jams going. I found the local classic rock station on the radio and got excited when they announced three straight commercial-free rock blocks were coming at me. First, the Eagles. I hate the fucking Eagles, man. Next up, the Stones. Nice (so I think). The first song they play is "Gimme Shelter", which is a good song. They follow it up with "Shattered", which is an awful song -- the worst in their catalog. Actually, I take that back, the worst song is "Start Me Up", which is what they played next. The finale was "Satisfaction" -- a great song... the first 1,500 times you hear it. So of all the songs in the Rolling Stones amazing catalog they played one decent song, two shitty songs**, and a good song that it's impossible to derive joy from because it's so fucked out. The next rock block was Def Leppard. I just turned off the radio.
We finally got into Rockport about 6:45 p.m., three to four hours later than we were expecting. We had to shake a tail to get to a cocktail event that started at 7. S was so deflated and tired of dealing with Lil' S (she was in the back seat on entertainment duty during the drive) that she just wanted to put him to bed and stay in, so I had to give her the stern, "Hey, we came all the way here. This is a one-time thing for K & B. We're going." Which worked, but then I pushed things too far by getting on her case to hurry things along ("What are you doing? You can unpack everything and put it away later!"). This caused a mini-fight and delayed us by at least 15 minutes. We hustled to get there and of course the bride and groom and wedding party weren't even there yet. It was just us and a bunch of old people for the first half hour.
Maine and the wedding were very cool though. It cleared up the day after we arrived and was gorgeous the entire weekend. We lucked out in that regard. The ceremony was really quick and sweet, and the reception and after-party apparently went all night. I bowed out early on dad duty. I thought I was at least sparing myself a hangover by not staying out late, but I woke up in the middle of the night with my stomach just killing me. There's an episode of The Simpsons where they go to Itchy & Scratchy land and one of the theme areas is called Searing Gas Pain Land, and that's what my stomach felt like -- it felt like the picture below.
I actually drove to a convenience store at 1:30 a.m. to buy (and quickly down) a bottle of Pepto Bismal. It helped, but it certainly didn't bring me total relief. I couldn't sleep and woke up feeling like I had been up all night drinking. Sometimes when I travel the pipes get a little clogged (a phenomenon not unique to me, I've since learned); combine that with a few slices of pizza and a few beers, and that's me fucked. So, I got to experience the hangover without the party. Super.
We got in on Friday, the wedding was Saturday, we spent Sunday sight-seeing, and headed out Monday. Of course, we left super early Monday morning and sailed right through, hitting almost no traffic. We got to the airport like three hours before our flight left. Normally that wouldn't be such a big deal, but entertaining the little guy in an airport is exhausting. There is shit all over the ground he tries to put in his mouth, and he constantly wants to get into other people's bags. He was super fussy the entire flight home -- a short flight, thankfully. The 50-something-year old man sitting in front of us was visibly annoyed by having a baby behind him. I felt bad for him until I noticed he was reading one of those Cosmo-for-men-type magazines. For some reason this absolved me of all compunction.
Until next time...
*What happened is I was late making a credit card payment, so despite being nowhere near my limit I couldn't use my card until the payment cleared (about a day). So instead I gave them my bank card under the assurance that it was just collateral, the card wouldn't actually be charged, and I could pay with a different card when I returned (and my other card would be freed by then). But my bank card actually was charged (and then refunded when I paid with the other card), drawing the account down to $0. When I went to use it over the weekend it was decline. Thankfully, my other one was available at that point. I can't remember ever having a single card denied, and then I had two denied in a span of three days. Embarrassing. It's mainly my fault for not paying my bill on time, but the woman at the Thrity counter certainly didn't do me any favors by giving me information that wasn't exactly accurate.
**By the way, this is one of the many reasons the Beatles are superior to the Stones. There are no "Shattered"s or "Start Me Up"s in The Fab Four's catalog.
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