Let's see... We start at 8 or so at night on Thursday. I had been up since about 6 at that point, had taken 2 finals, moved a ton of stuff to my car, and hadn't eaten much. But I was out for Spring Break, so Life Was Good. Dinner came in the form of the spaghetti I made a while back, which for some reason I had this huge craving for. Life Was Still Good.

Now, originally, I was supposed to have come home Friday so we could leave. But I was home early. And things went something like this:

Me: Well, now I can sleep later than I was going to. Yay!

Dad: Hey, we can start earlier now! Yay!

Me: Doh.

As it turns out, we didn't start early. Dad left the keys in the ignition to the RV, turned on, so the batteries all burnt out. So we got to wait while he jumped the things. But we eventually got going. Only to drive for billions of hours with nothing to do but read and listen to my walkman. Which I did. Life was boring, but I lived.

Then we pulled into Redding. Turned into the RV park just in time to see two cop cars responding to some guy beating on his wife. People like that suck, did I mention? There was, of course, some wondering about gee, do we really want to stay here right now? We did, so we went through all the assorted joys of hooking an RV up to water and things. It's so much fun I won't even bother to tell you the details. Dinner consisted of Round Table pizza, which I hadn't had in like 10 years. Still good stuff. At the pizza parlor, Mom saw dad eyeing the arcades, so she got out $4 in quarters, gave em to me. I gave em to dad, who then gave them back to me. Whereupon I proceeded to get third in the high scores in Raiden II, amazing everyone with amazing displays of dodging hordes of enemy laser things while shooting this really cool purple lightning stuff that curved around the screen, taking out tons of guys but making it really hard to see. But it was fun. :)

Oh yes, and there was a trucker with a rubber chicken in his window. I unfortunately didn't see this.

I have a complaint to make about the RV couch. Not only is it too short, it's hard and very uncomfortable. Needless to say, I slept badly the whole trip. What's better is, they've apparently passed laws in Northern California outlawing good radio reception. I'd find a decent rock station for about 2 songs or so, whereupon the static would be horrid, so I'd have to change the station. The choices:

Any of 3 country stations,

any of 2 spanish stations,

a gospel station,

a country-rock station,

Some really wierd opera station or something.

And if I was REALLY lucky, there might be an oldies station, but those were apparently outlawed in some areas as well.

So I got to stare out the window and screw around with radio stations. This was bad.

Also of note was a large number of trucks going north with weird bell-shaped things under blue tarps. Whatever they were, somebody needed lots of them.

Finally we pulled into my cousin (?)'s driveway. There was assorted family reunion type stuff that I won't really bore you with. It was all right. We had dinner at some Mexican restaurant that completely ruled, and I don't even like Mexican all that much.

Sunday was particularly entertaining. Among other things, we had the funeral, which was short, to the point, and nobody was overly sad or anything. Rather cheerful, actually, as funerals go. Afterwards, we wandered around Los Gatos for a while looking for somewhere to eat, and finally found a breakfast place (supposedly the kids wanted eggs and bacon, but they all got other stuff and the adults got eggs. Go figure.). It was sort of dingy and crowded, but the food was good.

I pause at this point to vent just a bit on San Jose/Los Gatos/etc. If you're from around there, don't take it personally. ;) I'll begin with the fact that down the street from where we ate was a building with an Ask Jeeves sign on it. Alternately, while we were eating, no less than two people got on very loud motorcycles, revved them for like 2 minutes each, then took off. Alternately, EVERY SINGLE CAR down there was either:

A. A Mustang

B. Some model of high end SUV

C. A BMW

A few people had like a Honda Accord or something, but yeesh. The whole place was brand spanking new, dripped money, and sort of screamed "Haha, we're filthy rich, look at us, nyah!" This was not helped by the guy in the silver Mustang convertible blaring his music right next to us, who upon the light turning green sped off in front of us. Which brings up the well known topic that California drivers are all maniacs, but I won't go there. ;)

Anyway, back to the story. I had to be on my flight at 5:45, so we got me to the airport at 2, then kicked around until 4:45 or so, when my parents left. During that time we saw this huge group of HS kids run in and park their stuff right next to us. Whereupon one kid passed out cookies and another one ran around looking for some water while dad sat there drinking this bottle of it. Which, it being an airport, was massively overpriced.

Which reminds me. Another rant interlude here. Yall know the Expedia.com commercials on TV? The annoying ones where they say Expedia.com a record 2,974 times during the 30 second commercial? Well, I saw an Expedia.com cafe. The place, combined with the fact that I hate San Jose International Airport (I'll get there in a sec), totally annoyed me, amazingly enough. Little hole in the wall where people flopped down on stools under little zooming airplane logo lights to watch mind numbing golf or something on TV and get drunk or something. On the walls were colorful little pictures like "City X, 28th richest place in America". Outside was this little TV playing scenes from around the world, which was sort of like saying "Hey, just think, instead of sitting in this pit of an airport, you could be enjoying yourself HERE!" Bah.

Oh yes, and San Jose International. SJ is the capitol of Silicon Valley, according to the signs. So why the hell can't they afford a decent airport? I mean, the use of stairs to get off of jetliners went out of style eons ago. Cool airports, like Portland, have those little tunnel things that run out and attach to the plane so you can walk directly into the airport. Amazing concept, isn't it?

At any rate, after eons of boredom, I got on the damn plane and we flew up to Portland. Since I really enjoy flying, this was good. Then, unfortunately, I got to kick around the airport for an hour, during which I had dinner (King sized Skittles). Got on the flight to Eugene at 9pm. Flew to Eugene in this dinky little plane with like 10 rows of seats. Noisy thing. Couldn't catch the name of the plane, it was so crappy. Fortunately, the ordeal was short, and I got in my car, and drove home. Life Was Good. Except, of course, that I had been in/around/driving to/from airports for the past 9 and a half hours. Blerk. But now that I'm back, I can get down to enjoying Spring Break. :)