South again, south again

[fbhjr]

Thursday morning perrin_o_ravnos and I went to pick up the rental van for the trip south.
If what I consider to be the most strange rental car experience I’ve had, we got to the place to get the car, and no one was there. It’s a small kiosk in the lobby of a hotel, so that isn’t so strange. There is a red phone without numbers there, it connects with the owners cellphone.
I picked it up, the owner told me “Your keys are on the desk.”
I looked, and on the far side of the desk was a key and rental agreement.
“Don’t I have to fill out some paperwork?” I asked.
“The key is on the desk,” she repeated. So, we took the key and agreement and went to find the van. There is some worry that we’ll be busted for grand theft auto, and not the video game, but I do have the rental agreement, so...

We met my wife and morgan_lafaye at the practice ground and loaded all of the troupe stuff into the van. Then we went back to our place and loaded up the rest of our stuff.
My wife went off to work, she was flying the next day, and we set off for CT.

We stopped at perrin_o_ravnos’s parents, dropped off his car and picked up silverdragonma.
On the 40 or so miles there, we used 1/4 tank of gas. This did not bode well for the trip.
But, there was a strange orange light on the dashboard. We couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally I realized it was supposed to be a low tire. So, we stopped and filled the tires with air. Our milage went from about 15 MPG to about 27MPG. That was a very nice improvement.

We drove across CT, through NY and into NJ. That’s when I realized we had forgotten the toll transponder in my car back in MA. Sad, but perrin_o_ravnos and morgan_lafaye had small bills so we just paid the tolls by hand. It was the first time I’ve done that in quite some time.

For the most part, we hit very little traffic. The only part that was bad was on the NJ/PA border. There, the road just stopped for almost an hour. We think it was a truck with a smashed roof we saw on the side of the road when we got going again. But, there was no sign of what did it to the truck or how it happened.

No traffic was good. But, what we had to deal with was fog. I’m not talking little wispy things. I’m talking about you can’t see the northbound lanes unless you’re in the far left southbound lane. It wasn’t that bad the whole way, but we hit very thick patches of fog for the whole trip.
We ran down 81 through VA to 77 into NC. 77 goes down the side of a mountain right at the border. I had thought the fog would be clear on the side of a mountain. I was wrong. That was where it was the worst. I was quite honestly afraid dropping a long distance over only 5 miles with almost no visibility while trucks went by us at 70 at midnight on wet pavement. But, we got off the mountain and things got a bit better.

There were only 4 of us in the van, which is less than normal. But, we did OK at visiting on the trip. I could tell morgan_lafaye was struggling to find things to talk about with me while the others slept by the fact she asked me a lot about World of Warcraft. She doesn’t play and doesn’t usually have much interest in it. But, it did give me something to talk about and keep me going.

I drove from when we set off a bit before noon until we hit AL at about 6 the next morning. perrin_o_ravnos took over then and drove us the last 5 or so hours to Mobile.
We got here about 10 local time, and the hotel was understandably not ready for us. So, we went out to the faire site and unloaded some of the stuff.
Steve, the faire organizer, showed us the pictures of his new son born 6 weeks ago, and where we needed to set up.
Once we had staked out our area, we went off to the nearest Waffle House for breakfast/lunch. While we were there, Tom arrived and joined us. As he was getting his food, my wife, blue_micha and julytooth arrived from their flights down and joined us.
So, we went from just 4 of us to 9 of us over about 20 minutes. The folks at Waffle House seemed a bit confused by that, but the food was good.

After that, we went back to the site and ran through our fights. We were going to do more, but decided to go to Wal-Mart for supplies, then to the hotel to check into our rooms.

I took a shower then lay down on the bed in my room. It seemed like soon after capt_amos, mythfish and their friends were in the room. I guess I had fallen asleep for a while, which is probably good.

The whole group headed off to dinner, but I wasn’t up for it, so stayed in the room and wrote this.
Tomorrow is the faire. Hopefully all will go well.

Comments

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

Hoooray!

Glad your trip was for the most part, "uneventful"

sucks you forgot the transponder...They just doubled the rates inside 128 to Boston up here. Many Massholes are quite displeased...But, they may eliminate tolls and booths soon 128 west to Stockbridge, which would be a vast change.

Honestly, I never imagined the Pike without tolls...

anyway, have a great time, can't wait to hear about the adventures. Sorry I couldn't be there.

[saeble.livejournal.com]

what ever happened to those fire balls ?

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

We haven't gotten the new design tried. Our big fire shows are in July, so we've got some time. We do a short show here, but it's the last show of the day and we've got to finish before the police go home for the day. (Yeah, that is strange, isn't it.)
I'm hoping we can get them made over our winter...

Break a Leg, and have fun at the show !

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

Enjoy your time in Mobile - I am sure that the regular madness will be waiting for you when you return, so make the most of your trip !