(Pretend I’m posting this at 6am on Sunday the 3rd).

So.  Yeah, our (mini) epic (for us) road trip has come and gone, and we survived.  Thrived maybe?  Even?  Too much? Yeah, probably.  But we did ok.

We left at about 8:45pm for the trip down & arrived in Sac around 7am I think.  We stopped a few times to feed the little one and cleanse the plumbing, but no meal stops or anything.  I drove to Redding(ish) then Jen took over from there and I tried to pass out in the back seat.  I don’t think the moon was out, because I remember driving in near pitch blackness a lot of the way, and being unable to see most of the scenery (some of which we saw on the way back in the almost full moon light).

The southern half of the 5 in Oregon (miles 170->0ish) are obnoxious to drive.  Up and down, over and over again, ears popping and never quite unpopping, in and out of thick fog banks…hella meh.  But totally doable.

The first hundred fifty or so miles into Cali are kind of annoying too – lots of downhill, some uphill, and not many places to stop.  I’m sure this part of the drive is beautiful in the sunlight though – but we were having none of that!!

The kids did pretty good.  M woke up angry and ate a few times on the way down, but slept really well almost the whole way back – he got upset every time we stopped for gas, but fell back asleep quickly enough.  Z slept most of the way down, after falling asleep late.  On the way back he did the same, but woke up and snacked from 3-4am ish.  He was so out of it, but adorable of course.

For the trip back, we hit the freeway at about 830pm and got home around 5:15am – not bad eh?  Jen drove all the way to uhh… Ashland I think, then I took the last half.  Unfortunately the back of the van was 2x as full as the first trip, so she wasn’t able to sleep back there much.

We got to spend lots of time with pretty much all the family we wanted to see – but more importantly, so did the kids.  Z learned “grandma” and “grandpa” and used them correctly by the time we left – and M even said his first word (which my mom & some other family got to hear, it was very cool).  The boys grew so much in just 10 days it was crazy.  Not physically but, you know, they each picked up noticeable new tricks, mannerisms, vocabulary, whatever.  It was a lot of work wrangling them for all those days, but also quite awesome to have that time to spend with them.

We also got to visit some old friends I hadn’t seen in a decade, and some that we check in on every few years.  We spend a day at the sunny beach… in December.  I miss that part of California, that’s for sure (the weather, duh!) – but not much else.  Driving more than half the length of California twice (not personally, but you know, being in the car, blah blah), the main sense I had was just the sense that I knew this was no longer my home.  I enjoyed it for the things I liked, but didn’t feel particularly drawn to get all misty eyed or anything.

The kids got entirely too many presents, resulting in the aforementioned packed-ass back of the van, and  (I suspect) a thorough re-organization and re-evaluation of their toys & clothes – time to throw stuff out!

What else?  Oh, camera.  Our sweet camera stopped working randomly at my mom’s house.  So we dashed out to grab a new one and wound up with a “Canon Powershot SD950 IS” (I think that’s it, I’ll double check tonight) – basically an updated version of the SD750 that just broke.  I highly recommend it to other Canon lovers (there are at least two that read this blog…) – it’s a worthy replacement and decent upgrade to the SD750.

Oh – the note.  When we stopped briefly to visit some friends in Santa Barbara, someone left a note on our windshield saying we were blocking their driveway.  I really don’t think we were, unless they drive a hummer or something.  I left room.  Whiners!  Whatever, better than a ticket :).

The new van drove great, I thought.  Nothing broke, nothing sounded funny, no fluids ran out, etc.  Although now it’s about 2000 miles overdue on the 3000 mile checkup.  Heh.  Gotta schedule that.

Too much happened to go into much detail, but it was a great trip.  Maybe we’ll even do it again in another two years.   Maybe the kids will be mellow enough to do it in the daytime so we can finally see the scenery.   Then again, maybe we won’t be in Portland by then.

One can dream.

[edit 1: Speaking of, here's my favorite photo from the trip, click to embiggen.]

[edit 2:  Yeesh. 967 miles from Portland to Santa Barbara, says this map.]

Let’s start with United:

True, by United’s standards we were late (we arrived at the line 45mins before our flight, and you are supposed to be through the line at that point) – still, we’ve never had that problem with Southwest.  Hell, we’ve gotten there 20 mins before a flight before and still been good.  45 mins would be golden with them.  Interestingly, nothing in the confirmation email we got from Orbitz said anything about a time cut off but whatever, I’m sure this is “common knowledge” for air travel.

Anyway, so the lady tells us “You too late,  just go through line anyway it will be ok, the computer will tell you you are late just click continue” (she doesn’t speak the best English) so we think it is cool. NOT!  Clicking continue gets you on standby..which would have resulted on us waiting around in the San Francisco airport for like 11 hours (until a 9PM flight!..our original eta for Santa Barbara was 10 AM).  Keep in mind this is happening at 515am and we’ve been up since 3am…so we’re not incredibly conscious.  That’s their first suggestion…standby and wait in an airport for 11 hours.  WITH A BABY.  Oh, and we can’t get refunds because we bought our tickets through an online  thing too…so from now on I’ll just get tickets direct from the airline in case we need to bitch at someone.  Lesson learned.  So yeah, we’re frustrated and saying “The plane doesn’t leave for 40 minutes!?!? Can’t you just let us on?”  Well no, because the computer won’t let you in..awesome; I love how they removed the human element so there is no one truly “to blame” – “Oh sorry sir, the computer won’t let you do that.”  Right, I’m sure you’re sorry.

So then they tell us to get in another line…ok wait back up, first the lady talking to us leads us out away from the lines and then just takes off for a while.  Eventually she comes back and tells us to get in a line which LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE THE LINE WE JUST WENT THROUGH.  So we’re like what the fuck why do we have to wait in the same line again?  What no one has the brains to tell us though is that while this looks like the same goddam line, it’s actually a different one and while it goes to a window labeled EXACTLY the same thing as the window we just waited in line for, it is somehow magically different.  Which it was I guess, there was a person who actually talked to us there, and eventually got us on standby flight to San Francisco (2 hours later) and another standby flight to San Luis (arriving 2-3 hours later than we would have originally arrived in Santa Barbara).  Standby with a baby….fun….but luckily no one took the spots and we were all good.

While we were waiting I called Avis’ 800 # and had them move the car rental/pickup from Santa Barbara to SLO (so we could then drive to Santa Barbara only arriving 5 hours late!).  No problems right?  Of course not.  When we get there the guy has no information in his system for our reservation.  Double awesomesauce!  Handy for us they had an Impala available.  Because we really wanted to drive a boat with choppy breaks.  But whatever, we made it to SB, visited Eric for a while, then made it back and dropped it off the next day.  And all was good right?  WRONG!  Jackalass motherfuckers called me that night and were like “Sir you returned the car with less gas than you took it with so we’ll have to charge y-”

Me (these are my actual words): THE FUCK YOU WILL!  I filled that thing up right down the goddam street, filled it all the way up.

Avis tool:Well sir we uh won’t be charging you for this but it says that we pumped 15 gallons into that tank -

Me: THE FUCK YOU DID, we only used half the tank anyway
(I only had to put like 8 in, we only drove to SB and back).

Avis tool:I uhh, ok I’ll go check the car myself but we won’t charge you

Me: Fucking right you won’t charge me.
(I was realllllly tired of idiots by then).
They never called back.  We shall see what shows up on my credit card.

Yeah, so all that was fun.  Hope the return trip tomorrow is much less eventful.

After all the drama we went to my Uncle’s wedding, hung out with family, and visited my grandpa in the hospital and he got to meet his great-grandson for the first time.