Cookout Stories 2009, Vol 5

The fifth and final volume! This will encompass the trip back from Maine to Hartford and the trip back from Hartford to Cinci.

Sunday morning rolled around and all of us got to feast on a huge breakfast again. Was more typical than the previous two breakfasts in the sense it was "just" scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits, donuts etc. Unlike the previous breakfast that had bacon served, I managed to get down to the kitchen and nab some before Yot absorbed it all. Once breakfast had settled in, it was time to clean and pack.

American and Canadian Underwear...Forever Linked by Laundry Detergent

I had done a little of my packing the night before. Usually the night before I go soemwhere, I'll get the clothes and whatnot into my bag, then stuff all the toiletries in the day I'm leaving. I looked at my pile of clothes the night before and decided to do some laundry. Yoteo needed to do some too, so we just tossed it all in together. This is also why you see me wearing that blue t-shirt 2 separate days out of the 3 total we were there. (We were there over 4 days, 2 half days bookened the trip.)

Unbeknownst to us at the time, we apparently wear very similar underwear. Boxer-briefs. While most of the undies we knew belonged to who, there were a couple we were scratching our heads about a bit. Yes, everyone picture Yoteo and myself standing over a load of laundry trying to figure out who's underwear is who's. To top it all off, I got my laundry washed with Yoteo's "I'm not touching American soil" towel. This would be a towel that had the Canadian flag screened on it. Yot would use this to sit on everywhere. Truck beds, picnic table benches, etc. I don't know where he kept that thing stored, but it really wouldn't surprise me if it was an instrument used in his collection of Rest Stop Ass Symphonies.

...and my laundry was done in the same load as this towel. :)

Packing and Cleaning

Packing didn't take too long. We travelled up there pretty lightly. The largest items were mine in the form of two desktop computers we had hauled up there. Kaelis, Eri and Yot all played FFXI on their Netbooks and Suraph had brought his XBox360. Getting loaded up took all of about 30 minutes. Cleaning up the Nerd Cave didn't take as long as expected either. With 6 people pitching in, it was rather clean in about 10 minutes.

After some picture-taking (some of which I still need to get from Kay's parents), we piled into our cars and left. Most of the pictures you see in Volume 2 are pictures we had taken on Sunday prior to leaving.

Seating arrangements were the same as always. Yoteo, Cranky and myself in Cranky's car. Kaylea, Eri and Kaelis in Eri's car.

Speaking of Eri's car...there was still the matter of getting a replacement tire.

Tire Shopping and GameStop FFXI'ers from Fairy

Since no places were open in Lincoln for a tire, we were left with no choice but to ride the spare down to Bangor (bout an hour away) to get one. The closest place I could think of was Sears at the Bangor Mall. A one-hour, uneventful drive later, we arrive and drop the car off. A brief inspection and a forty-five minute quote later, we learn that there were two tires that needed replacing. I don't recall how the other one was damaged though, so part of me suspects it wasn't as damaged as the sales rep said, but the other part of me suspects it probably got damaged in all the hoopla around the campsite.

While the car is being fixed, we go roaming around the mall. I had been here a few times before and knew the general layout. We found a Gamestop and, being gamers, we stopped in the Gamestop.

Kay starts looking for the full version of FFXI for her XBox360 she got for her birthday. You see, Kay does a lot of these surveys online. Over the course of the year or so that she's been doing them, she's amassed a veritable fortune in Gamestop gift cards. One of the employees overheard her talking about FFXI and started talking to us about it. The conversation encompassed which servers we were on and the fact that anyone who plays FFXI in Bangor is on Fairy server.

We didn't think of it until after we had left, but we wondered if Poof was infamous enough for her to be remembered by random Gamestop employees who just happened to play FFXI. From what we understand, Poof made her start on Fairy and well...the rest is history.

Wondering around the mall a bit more to kill some time had us spending some time in a book store and picking up various knick-knacks. When it came time to go pick up the car, we were unpleasantly surprised by the fact it took longer for us to actually pay for the repairs than the repair itself took. Apparently Sears management wasn't anticipating a huge crowd on a late Sunday morning/early afternoon. When the tab was finally settled, we ended up having to unpack the car almost completely so we could put the spare tire where it was supposed to go (instead of the backseat like the Sears employee thought). Now it was lunch time...

Almost Poutine

We weren't particularly hungry when we decided this, but we thought it was a good idea to get it out of the way while we were there. We ultimately decided to go to Longhorn Steakhouse across the road.

Naturally, we had a little fun at our waitress' expense, but she was surprisingly good natured and ribbed back as well. The first of the jokes came about from Suraph's apparent ability to drink like a fish. If I'm ever stranded in the Atlantic, I want that guy there to dry the ocean up. He'd down a glass of water within seconds and our poor waitress didn't catch on until her third trip out there how fast he was drinking it. So everytime she came back out, she'd leave him 2 glasses.

This was before we even ordered our appetizers...

When it came time to order, I ordered up some firecracker chicken wraps. Yot naturally asked if they had poutine or cheese curds and our waitress didn't have a clue what he was talking about. So I suggested he get their cheese fries since they're covered in bacon and the fries could basically be substitute cheese curds as they were covered in cheese anyway.

First words out of Yoteo's mouth after he says "Cheese fries"?

"More Bacon Please."

While it's almost poutine, don't let these pictures fool you. This would be the Canadian caught eating his almost natural, habitual food.

Step 1: Stab food.

Step 2: Open mouth and lift up stabbing utensil.

Step 3: Place food in mouth, chew and look insanely happy.



As for me, I was happily eating my firecracker chicken wraps. Note the one spot on my forehead I missed with sunscreen.


As for Kaelis, he was happily making fun of the metric system while Yoteo's mouth was full of instant heart attack and couldn't retort.


This was pretty much how the rest of lunch went. Lots of food and lots of Canadian jokes...

King Cranky's Departure and Back in Hartford

With lunch finished, car mostly fixed and back on the road, the next event to happen was going to be stopping off in N.H. to part ways with Suraph. This was still about 3-4 hours away. Nothing super noteworthy happened here other than a few more Canadian jokes and a number of jokes mixed in at King Cranky's food pickyness expense (BLAND FOOD ONRY! KING CRANKY DEMANDS IT!) Pulled off at a gas station to dump Yoteo and myself back into the Eriwagon along with some of our luggage (not much, just a backpack and a couple odds and ends).

The Eriwagon is rather comfy when four people are in it. Place a 5th and it's cramped. Suraph's car was pretty much a godsend for all of us as it meant we only had to be crammed into the car for 2-2.5 hours of the trip each way between Hartford and Maine. We had considered bringing a second car up from Cincinnati, but ultimately decided against it when all of our stuff fit nicely in said wagon. Even though he had been going that way anyway, we certainly appreciated the use of his car as it saved us some money on gassing up a third car. Given the issues we had along the way with the Eriwagon, that saved gas money was put to good use. :)

(Plus why waste that much gas in this 'don't waste your gas' world atm...)

Before we took off for the rest of the trip, I made sure to ask about the engine temperature as we hadn't fixed the cooling system problem yet. Same deal...if the car was moving it was fine, but if we were in idle traffic, it got up pretty toasty. As luck would have it, we didn't get too caught up in any heavy stuff. Was one point where it was basically stop and go along the interstate, but that didn't last too long.

Once we got back to Kay's place, we uh...remembered that we had left the sushi that was brought up from Cinci 4 days earlier on Kay's counter. Good thing it was sealed...

Rest of the evening was spent mostly lounging around. I had turned in earlier than most of the others given the thought that I was going to end up driving a good portion of the way back to Cincinnati.

The Twelve(?) Hour Drive Back and Highway Construction

Given we weren't driving in the middle of the night like we did on the way up, Kaelis had decided we should go get the cooling system flushed before we go back. Back to Sears we went about 9:30 in the morning. While the car was in a Sears shop for the third and final time of this trip, we went wandering around the shopping center this Sears was located in. Most of the time was spent in Best Buy just goofing around.

Going back to get the car, the Sears employee informed us that due to the color of the goop that came out, it's possible that something was cracked in the engine and causing oil to leak into the cooling system. I want to say he said "Head Gasket", but my own head isn't on straight this morning as I write this and I can't remember. I do remember thinking "awesome" as he's explaining this and I do remember talking to Kaelis about what it could possibly mean, but for the life of me, I cannot remember the part name.

Wasn't really anything we could do about it at that point as the Sears guy explained that getting that part fixed meant new engine. He wasn't sure himself if it was even cracked, but recommended that when we get the oil changed again, to have them double check the cooling system fluid to see if anything leaked in. This reassured me that the car would make it back to Cincinnati at the very least. About 10:30AM eastern time, we finally got back on the road to Cincinnati and the conclusion of our 2009 Cookout was drawing near.

Most of the trip back was relatively uneventful and boring. We made several driving changes and rest stops along the way. At one point on I-80 though, we came to a dead stop. The entire way up to this point, the Eriwagon's temperature had behaved itself, even in idle traffic. It was here that we started noticing the engine temperature climbing back up towards the red again. It didn't quite make it there, making it only to the 3/4 mark on the temperature gauge, but it was still enough to cause us a little concern.

Before I tell what happened here, I have to rant about one thing. I hate highway construction. I know it's necessary and I know the way things have to get done aren't always the most convenient in the world, but for fuck's sake...CAN'T YOU MOTHER FUCKERS JUST DO ONE GODDAMN HIGHWAY AT A TIME?!??! WHY IN THE HELL MUST YOU TEAR UP EVERY MAJOR HIGHWAY ACROSS THE STATE AT THE SAME TIME?!?!? ISN'T A FOUR HUNDRED MILE STRETCH OF HIGHWAY ENOUGH FOR ALL OF YOU TO WORK ON AT THE SAME TIME?!?!? THERE'S NO DAMN REASON WHATSOEVER TO TEAR UP I-84, I-81, I-80, AND I-76 ALL AT THE SAME TIME!! ..!..(>.<)..!..

Anyway, yeah. The rant should be a clue about why we had to stop. We were literally stopped or going 1-2mph for about 45 minutes...and we still had to take a detour. Good thing we had 3G there or we probably would still be sitting along that damn highway. Once we got around the I-80 stupidity, we stopped off at a rest stop shortly before we entered Ohio. It was about 8:30 and we hadn't eaten dinner. This rest stop happened to include a bit of a home-cooking restaurant, so we opted to go sit down and eat instead of grabbing food to go. We all ended up with steak and shrimp...which was all right, but nothing spectacular.

Piling back into the car, we proceed the rest of the way home. We ended up getting back to Kaelis' house about 1:30-2AM. So thanks to all the rest stops and the highway construction, a twelve hour drive ended up turning into a near 14 hour drive. Yoteo and I were halfway expecting our cars to be covered in various tree bits and bird poop due to where we had parked in Kaelis' driveway, but much to our surprise...our cars looked just fine.

Needless to say, it's damn good that the rest of us didn't have to work on Tuesday. We all got to sleep in. Well I guess most of us did since Canuck doesn't do much sleeping at all anyway. The next day saw Yoteo and I visit the Creationist Museum and I was back home 3-3.5 hours later.

Conclusion

This is the third year in a row that we've done this. The first two years had Kaelis, Eri, Kay, Sirinity, Looco and I participating and obviously this year we were sans the two midgets (due to incoming baby) and had King Cranky and Yoteo in their place. Each year, these seem to get more and more fun.

Next year I'm hoping that I'm back out in my own place and can host it here. I'm not sure if that will come to fruition yet, but we've already got two other places volunteered verbally at the moment. Suraph has volunteered his parent's river-side house in West Virginia for next summer's cookout (obviously pending permission from his parents who apparently don't occupy said house) and Kaelis has volunteered to let us use his house again should my plans or Suraph's plans fall through.

The fact that I can write 5 blog posts about all of the stuff that happened in a week and knowing I probably missed a number of things that happened that didn't involve me should tell you just how much fun this event has become. Hopefully next year, we end up with Sirinity and Looco back along with possibly adding a few new people to the fold as well. :)