Reminiscing

Mom and I went for a walk last night and we got to reminiscing about a trip we had taken a year or two ago.  Lake Tahoe and northern California, I do believe.  We both hate to drive, so we brought along my brother to chauffeur.  That was his one and only job.  Plus, Mom had broken her hand a couple of weeks before so she needed a little extra help from time to time. 

We were somewhere in northern California, trying to find the Avenue of the Giants, when we came up on a gas station / convenience store in the middle of nowhere.  We had spent half an hour going up a mountain and had no idea where we were.  We weren't on any map.  I looked.  As soon as we get there, my brother bolts from the car.  No idea where he's going.  Mom and I go inside this store, which looked like someplace you really wouldn't want to be on your own.  Very remote and backwoodsy.  It's nearly lunch time, so we go up to the counter at the tiny little deli and tell the worker girl that we'd like some sandwiches.  She says "Did you take a number?"  We look around the store.  We're the only people there.  "No.  We didn't take a number."  "Well, you have to take a number" she says.  Fine.  We turn around at the ticket getting post, which is right next to where we were standing and  get numbers 1, 2, and 3. We hand the numbers to the worker lady, who hadn't moved.  To this day, I'm not sure why we had to have numbers.  Rules is rules, I guess.

We ordered  a sandwich for my brother, who still hadn't resurfaced.  I got a sandwich and Mom got a bowl of chili.  Seriously.  At a gas station in the middle of nowhere, she orders a bowl of chili.  We walk back outside and find Robby, who tells us he had gotten car sick and just threw up behind the store.  He was sick as a dog.  Trouble is, we had gone the wrong way, so now we had to go back down the same mountain that made him sick. 

Being the nice person that I am, I offered to drive so he could lie down in the back seat.  We had to take our food with us since there was no place to eat at the gas station and, frankly, we wanted to shag ass out of there.  So we load up back in the car, Robby passes out in the back seat and we take off.  Mom tries to get a spoonful of chili, with her broken hand, somehow manages to twirl the spoon and flicks chili all over the car.  She looked over at me with the most annoyed look on her face and says "Well, how am I supposed to eat chili with a broken hand???" as if it were somehow my fault.  Beats me. Shouldn't have ordered chili.  I'm not even sure how she did it.  Even with a broken hand, one should not flick chili everywhere.   

Again, being the nice person that I am, I let mom have my sandwich and I took her chili.  So I have to drive down this mountain, full of switchbacks and hairpin turns, whilst trying to eat a bowl of chili one handed.  And I'm not even supposed to be driving.  Our chauffeur was dry heaving in the back seat.  

We did finally make it to the Avenue of the Giants and it was well worth it.  They are spectacular.  And just so's you know, at Lake Tahoe, Mom orders some sort of weird Asian soup for lunch.  Soup they serve with chopsticks.  She can't use chopsticks, even without a broken hand.  Much like the chili, it was a failure, so I ended up getting weird Asian soup for lunch and she got my awesome sandwich.  Quit ordering soup!!!