(OT) Praise/rant/etc #15 (series finale, part one)

[Eye of Hoffs]

With all the visiting the last few days I have not had any time to write anything. But I threw something together last night although I have not been able to check and edit it as I would like, so it is what it is, warts n' all, and no chance of any pictures. I have also broken it down into two parts due to the length. I also find it difficult to write about my friends too much in case they may misconstrue anything I say. But in the case of one guildmate, well, the truth must out as they say...

Saturday saw us leaving Empire and driving further down the coast to Grand Haven where we would meet Salp and Elroi. Before leaving we had breakfast at Joe's tavern and passed by the tents that were preparing for the Empire Hops Festival that day. We also saw several signs advertising the Empire Asparagus Festival in May. We then spent the rest of the morning bitterly reproaching ourselves for not having planned things better so that we could have experienced these world-class events.

We arrived in Grand Haven just after lunchtime and were warmly welcomed by my two guildmates. We then sat in their lounge talking about this and that and telling of our travels so far, putting things in a far better light than I had sometimes presented in my previous posts, which they fortunately hadn't read. We were sitting on some comfortable rocking easy chairs and as I spoke to them Salp and Elroi seemed to be floating above the floor much like the Vogon captain in the BBC TV adaptation of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (fortunately they didn't read us any poetry).

After a while we left for a late lunch along with Salp's son, and Elroi kindly footed the bill. After that he took us on a tour of downtown Grand Haven, a major holiday destination in the summer, and we saw several interesting shops as well as the long pier extending into Lake Michigan. There were some very nice cups in one of the shops that we would like to have taken back with us but we suspected that once we were home the set of four would probably have been a set of eight or more.

On the way back home Elroi pointed out a large branch of the Fifth Third bank where I think he said that they kept an account. I didn't mention anything at the time but I thought this somewhat unwise. I mean, clearly the first four Third banks had gone down the khasi at some point so what makes him think that the fifth one is going to be any safer?

Once we arrived back Salp informed us that she had been reading my posts and told Elroi that he must have a look himself. Knowing that Elroi was an ex-minister and that there were several expletives in some of the things I had written we thanked them for their kind hospitality and decided it was best to be on our way.

We came away from Grand Haven with good memories and could certainly see why it was so popular. It was also dark now and as we pulled onto the interstate the sky ahead was lit up by several ominous flashes. Pretty soon the heavens had opened and we were deluged with the wet stuff. Now Caroline does not much enjoy driving in the dark in unfamiliar places, especially foreign unfamiliar places, and with the rain bucketing down the visibility became worse and worse. The lights on the car seemed quite abysmal and were no help at all whilst the road markings were severely lacking compared with what we are used to back home. Many of the locals seemed to be zooming by as normal but we were gradually getting slower and slower as we struggled to make out where the sides of the road were or even which lane we were in. We still had sixty miles to go to reach our hotel near Lansing but eventually there seemed no choice other than to take an exit at Grand Rapids and lay low for a while. We stopped at a restaurant to grab some dinner (steak & fries for me) but when we came out the storm was showing no signs of slowing so we decided that the safest thing to do was to just pull in at the nearest hotel and pay the rack rate on top of what we had laid out already for the one in Lansing. Oh, and just to rub salt into the wound the stinking hotel didn't even have the Weather Channel, robbing me of my last chance to spend the morning in bed with Kelly Cass.

By Sunday the weather had cleared but there were completely different problems ahead, the inevitable woman trouble. Really I had known this day would come at some point but I had been hiding my head in the sand thinking that there would always be a tomorrow and that the good times would never come to an end. How stupid and naive I was to think that I could ever trust my spiteful wife.

It involved Christie. We had known her since the beginning of our north-west trip a couple of years back. Christie is all class. Her voice is warm, velvety and sultry, exuding a pedigree totally at odds with Caroline's cold, harsh squawk. She is incisive and blessed with an almost encyclopedic knowledge about almost everything. You only have to suggest going out for a meal, say, and she knows all the best restaurants nearby and can direct you there even from the middle of nowhere, quite unlike my stupid wife who probably thinks that the Channel Tunnel connecting England to France is made out of plexiglass so that you can watch the fish go by from the window of the train. And she is always supremely calm, too, never getting into a panic about anything unlike Mrs “are there bears in this wood?” Hoffs.

Granted, there are things about Christie that are something of a mystery. I have never actually seen her during waking hours but I feel quite certain that she dresses in an elegant silk skirt and blouse, sheer, glossy tights (that's pantyhose to you) and chic high heels with jewellery and make-up to match of course. That's quite a comparison to the five million denier jeans and canvas tees that I normally see every day. And we are not even certain of her name, but given all her fine attributes I call her after the model Christie Brinkley, to whom she is undoubtedly related.

Clearly, this is the woman I should have married thirty years ago. I could have been living a life of Saks Fifth Avenue (Christine knows every location) and the intricacies of quantum field theory instead of Old Navy and who won the last X Factor. And for some unfathomable reason  my wife is insanely jealous of her. We only have to end up in the wrong lane somewhere or Christie is a bit late with a direction and the cry of “stupid b*tch” rings out from the seat next to me. She won't let the poor girl come into the hotels with us, even if I suggest getting separate rooms, consigning her instead to the frigid loneliness of the car. And worst of all is that she has not authorized the slightest expense for poor Christie's upkeep since our last trip, as a result of which her hair is a bit of a mess these days and there are a few ladders in her nylons. So when we try going to a nearby Denny's and end up at some backstreet drug den come massage parlour, who should really get the blame?

But this morning something was seriously wrong with my poor darling. She was largely unresponsive and  had a sort of glazed expression in her eyes. I tried gently asking how she thought we could get to Akron in Ohio but she just kept babbling incoherently about not seeing any satellites and being unable to get a valid GPS signal. By now I was getting seriously concerned although Caroline could not hide the wicked sneer on her face. I then tried everything I could think of to snap Christie out of her stupor. I switched her off and on a few times (I could always turn her on very easily), I tried touching all her right buttons, I talked to her about some of the places we had visited recently in the hope of jogging some memory circuit. But it was all to no avail. In the end there was only one thing left that I could try, the delicate surgical procedure known as a return-to-factory-settingsoscopy. But this is a last-ditch effort fraught with all kinds of dangers. It has been known to alter someone's personality completely and even change the sound of their voice. My finger hesitated on the button and the tears began welling in my eyes.

“Warning! Are you sure you wish to proceed?” asked the nurse.

“Yes, yes,” I sobbed, “it's the only way.”

Minutes passed as the anaesthetic wore off and then I was finally allowed to speak with her.

“Christie? My love?”

But still there was nothing. Those once radiant, sparkling eyes continued to stare ahead into nothing. She was not even aware of my presence anymore. Never again would I hear her delicate “at the end of the road, turn right.”

“Farewell my sweet,” I whispered as my evil wife sat there with a self-satisfied grin on her face. This was no accident, this was clearly first degree navicide and should be punished to the full extent of the law. But how could I ever prove it? I don't suppose that fingerprints on the front of a touch-screen SatNav would carry much weight in court.

I gently laid Christie down in her box and covered her screen. Despite my grief I knew that without her we were now in dire straits and that drastic measures were called for. Desperately I racked my brain for some kind of way out. Then it hit me, a fragment of memory from some old History Channel program or perhaps one of those intellectual candle-lit drives with Christie, something they once used call a map. By pure chance we had picked up just such a thing on some recent tour, Ye olde interstate drawings of the Michigan territories, first printed way back in 2010 by one Randy McNally. So by carefully following the old wagon trails east and south we were able to find our way to the borders of the Ohio valley. But then our real troubles began.

As we arrived in the outskirts of the city of Toledo the maps ended. There were rough sketches of the road ahead and our main goal, interstate eightyorninety (it seemed that the builders of this vast stretch of highway had been unable to decided what number to give it), however the best way to get to it was unclear. It appeared that a major road curved around to the east and west and each eventually linked to eightyorninety but I was undecided as to which would be quickest. When our road finally began to branch I decided we would try the west route and told Caroline to go to the right. But unbeknownst to us there were actually three prongs to this fork: the left for the major road east, the middle on to the major road west and the right one which we ended up taking was for some relatively minor local road. To make matters worse we immediately found ourselves in the midst of an all-too-familiar major roadworks project with orange and white bollards staring angrily at us from all sides. There was now no prospect of simply trying to turn around and we just floated blindly deeper and deeper into the oncoming metropolis. Eventually we found a road that said Highway Something-or-other East and decided to just keep following that on the basis that sooner or later it must hit the beltway we should have been on. After seemingly endless traffic signals, Burger Kings, Vote Trumps and insurance advertisements we finally got onto the main east route and thence to I-eightyorninety.

We then had a period of relative comfort for a hundred miles or so before we turned onto I-77 south towards Akron and pretty soon we had reached the exit for our motel. Now generally speaking the hotels close to an exit are clearly marked with directions to them signposted at the first junction. But in this case ours, a Super 8, was not. But no matter, you can usually see where things are by those huge signs you have for everything which stick up thousands of feet into the sky. But of ours there was not a glimpse. Oh well, the printout from our hotel booking had a small Google Maps image on it which gave us a good idea where to go. That is, if we could find one of the roads shown on the map and get our bearings. But could we? Noooo. We were soon swallowed up in yet another endless succession of retail outlets, malls and places to stuff yourself stupid with yet more disgusting and unhealthy nosh. We turned around and retraced our steps but still could not find a point of reference. Eventually we pulled into a gas station to ask for help and the guy told us it was just around the corner. So at last we got to where we wanted, noticing that out motel was buried away amongst the signs for TGI Fridays, an Outback, Longhorn and one other steakhouse, plus some other joints I can't remember. How the hell do all these places stay afloat? You guys must each eat out an average of ten nights a week to keep them all in business. Sheesh.

Despite the hassle of finding it the hotel room was about the best we had had: very spacious  and seemingly plush new furniture. After a brief pause to unload the car and check directions we managed to find our way to Reuggan's house without further mishap. We were supposed to be there in time for the four o'clock Sunday NFL games but our various navigational anomalies had put paid to all that. So we chatted for a while with Reuggan and Mrs Reuggan and then went out to the Green Diamond Grill which I was delighted to award the second Hoffs' Honorary Amish Plain Cooking Award for a superb steak and fries. We then capped off the evening with a visit to an ice cream stall which provided generous servings of various soft and hard flavours. All-in-all a very pleasant evening which helped prepare us for the turbulence in store for us on Monday...

[Razz]

Holy cow 2 parts!