The Drive
The plan this year still involved driving. I originally contemplated flying into Baltimore and renting a car. However, after realizing the sheer amount of equipment that was going to be needed, I opted to get a new set of tires at Sears for Dad's SUV ($800...) and just haul myself up there. Besides, the drive itself is only about 8.5 hours w/o any stops. A far cry from the near 40 hours spent on the road from last year.
Anyway, my part of the plan was as follows:
- Drakus drives up to my house.
- Drakus and I drive back to Nashville to pick up Kreoss.
- The 3 of us drive to WV via I-40, I-81, I-70, and I-68.
- Stop at every Wal-Mart along the way to hunt for Transformers.
Suraph's part of the plan was:
- Pick up Kaylea at the Baltimore airport, which was about 2 hours away and along his way down from where he normally lives in New Hampshire.
Kaelis/Erimentha's part of the plan was:
- Drive from Ohio to WV, about 7ish hours according to mapquest.
- Bring Skyline chili.
The drive up took a little longer than expected due to my apparent inability to stay up all night anymore. Two 5-Hour Energy shots didn't even keep me from having to pull off and doze for a bit. Those 2 shots did give me a rather bad case of the jitters though.
Or it could have been those 2 shots + all the caffeinated Diet Coke I had been drinking...
Anyway, onto the stories!
The Meetings!
I've never met Drakus or Kreoss face to face. I've known Drakus a lot less time than Kreoss. Seems this time every year, Kreoss has something really dumb go wrong in his life that prevents him from coming to the cookout. In fact, it's such the case that it's become a bit of a running gag. We send him the invite, he starts bracing for the worst.
First year: Truck blew up.
Second year: Moving.
Third year: Divorced (long story, just know that it wasn't Kreoss' fault)
This year: Almost. He was apparently in the Philippines at some point the week before the cookout purchasing a number of items. In other words: someone got his CC information and cleaned his account out. Fortunately, this amounted to only a couple hundred bucks as it was middle of the month and he had paid all of his bills and had taken out the cash he was going to need for the trip. His flight also got delayed by about an hour.
Back to Drakus for a moment though. Drakus was driving up to meet me at my place from Memphis, TN. I was in the process of getting some last minute things together and heading for the front door. As I opened the door and got ready to go out, there was Drakus. Damn near ran into him.
For those of you that are wondering, I first thought that this was his "I hate BLM and I hate you for making me play it" face. Then I realized...this expression never changes. :)
(kidding...)
Anyway, we loaded up, hung out with the folks for a bit and hit the road back to Nashville. The primary reason he was meeting me at my place instead of just say...leaving his car at the airport is that he was a little paranoid about leaving his car someplace he didn't know. Not that I blame him, but it's probably less likely something stupid was going to happen to his car at my house than it was at the airport.
Once back in Nashville, Drakus and I were hungry, so we stopped off at Jack-In-The-Box. Then killed a couple hours driving around Nashville waiting for Kreo's delayed flight to come in. Toys R Us, Wal-Mart, The Great Escape and a couple of video stores were visited. As it got closer to time, we headed to the airport where I was going to try to time it so I could get Kreo and get out of the airport w/o having to pay a parking fee.
The following conversation took place via texts while Kreo was at his layover in New Orleans:
Q: Any baggage other than carryons?
K: Yeah I got checked bags
Q: K, we'll meet you at your bag belt.
K: U got it.
(seeing "U" in place of "You" always gets me to make fun of people...)
Q: What r u wearing and do u feel like touching urself?
K: Black shirt and hat...no to the last part :p
Q: Could you possible be more vague...
K: Oh and my hair is back to it's natural dirty blonde. Not red or bleached like a lot of my facebook pics.
(for the record...there's exactly ONE picture of Kreoss on his FB page. The rest were of his cats and Disney characters)
K: plain black polo and black kangol hat with grey jeans...I guess i could have picked something that stands out more.
Q: K, we stand out. We won't be hard to find.
(I say this planning to be standing at the base of the escalators scratching my ass.)
Once he landed, he was easy to spot. Ponytail, Goatee and black hat. He actually caught Drakus and I both looking up at the Arrivals/Departures board. After a short wait for his bags, we got out and on the road.
And no, I didn't beat the parking clock. $2.00 please!
Fuckers.
11PM Gas Stop + McDonald's Redneck Love
After a few hours, we're outside of Knoxville and I decide to pull off for gas and get some snacks. I found a combination Love's Travel Stop + McDonald's. After filling up, Drakus, Kreo and I decided to go get ourselves a late night snack. I got a huge Diet Coke and some snack wraps, Kreo got a couple cheeseburgers and Drakus got something fruity...
We go back to the Vue to eat and notice a "big-boned" McDonald's employee and her boyfriend out in the front. The boyfriend is the stereotypical redneck. Boots, dirty jeans, old T-Shirt. The girl I couldn't really tell about since she was in a McDonald's uniform, but she appeared to be Hispanic. Since we didn't really have anything else to watch while we were eating (and also cause the Vue was pointed directly at where they were standing), we just sort of kept our eyes on them.
...And then they started making out...
......and then we collectively wondered if she had touched our food since she had been the one, who just about 10 mins earlier, had taken our orders.
Sad thing is. They couldn't wait to make out apparently. Once they were done sucking face, they held hands and walked to their car...
...which was parked right next to mine.
This is going to be a great trip. :)
Knoxville Walmart Hunting, Magellan vs. Droid.
Aside from the Transformer hunting, the purpose for Walmart stops is to stretch and wake up a bit. Once we hit Knoxville a short bit after witnessing redneck love, we spent about 20 minutes searching for a Walmart we had seen from the side of the road. Drakus had brought his GPS with him (Magellan) and Kreoss brought his phone with the built in GPS (Droid). However both were being a little retarded in regards to their signals and we ended up looping through a neighborhood about midnight.
The primary thing to note here was:
I didn't bring directions to our final destination because I knew we'd have both of those devices. This wasn't a good sign. :)
Virginia Is One Fat State
One theme of the drive up was that it seemed like I had picked the longest routes possible in two states. I picked I-40 in TN, which basically equates to driving the entire length of the state. I picked I-81 in Virginia, which basically equated to driving through the state diagonally. There were slightly faster routes like I-79, but I've been through those mountains in West Virginia before and I didn't want any part of those again during the night.
Trust me, when you walk into a gas station at 2AM to pay for gas, run into 2 people making out only to discover that it's 2 dudes with 3 teeth between them making out, you tend to want to avoid nighttime travel through that region.
Anyway, the drive through Virigina seemed like it was a lot longer than it should have been. Might've been cause we were tired or that we had pulled off a couple times to try to catch a few winks of sleep, but it really just seemed like that stretch of 81 went on for-f***ing-ever.
The Arrival
We met up with Suraph and Kay at the Country Club Mall in Cumberland, MD. Suraph had sent me directions to get to the house from I-68, but they were directions like:
Turn left at the missle plant.
Turn right at the T intersection with O'Beery McLiquors (which actually exists btw...).
Turn left at the pile of dead deer and go straight up the mountain. We're at the very top.
So we opted to just meet at the mall and follow him up. A short lunch at the Cafe Court and a brief supply run in Wal-Mart and Gamestop and we were headed up to the house.
See?
This would be the view from the short walk up to the actual top of the mountain. This would also be the view of Suraph's house.
View from the deck.
Another angle from the deck.
Yet another angle from the deck.
Needless to say, this was a kick ass spot for a cookout.
Nerd Cave V2.0 Construction
Naturally, a cookout wouldn't be a cookout w/o building the Nerd Cave. The first 2 years, the Nerd Cave was pretty much prebuilt. Last year and this year, we had to put some effort into it.
This would be where Drakus, myself and Suraph spent most of our playing time. The respective stations are from top to bottom. Suraph stole his folks' computer monitor once he discovered it supported HDMI. He basically had his computer at his feet and his 360 by his side.
This table and the table behind the couch was where Kaelis and Erimentha typically had set up their netbooks. You'll also note Kay's notebook is there too an the red recliner was occupied by Kay for most of the trip. She wouldn't share. :)
Most of our gaming time was actually spent in front of this TV playing multiplayer games like TMNT, Castle Crashers, South Park, Mario Party 8, Mario Bros Wii and Super Smash Bros.
Speaking of Mario Party 8, there will be an insanely funny video from the cookout that I will post barring any interference from the 4 men filmed in it.
Anyway, that was pretty much it for Day 1. More stories soon to come. Some topics to look forward to:
Stripes the Cat
Orioles vs. Blue Jays
Late Night Castle Crashing
For the record, I got a milkshake at McDonalds, why they put a damn cherry on it is beyond me.
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