The Ride That Never Ended But Did Or My Family Vacation Pt.1

Whenever someone speaks the words "Hey, let's all get together in a small cabin that is the perfect size for a retired couple but when you cram it full of other people it's not such a great size anymore and everyone has to sleep like two feet from the other person so if you fart in your sleep? Well, you're probably farting in someones face. Why are we getting together? Because it's FISHING DERBY WEEKEND!" and then suddenly you've planned a trip to go to a fishing derby and spend two days driving in a vehicle with a dog that will absolutely hate you for life because when he gets into the truck he automatically thinks it's "Ohmyfuckinggawd! It's dog park time!" when in reality he'll never see that place for almost two weeks. So when he realizes that we "tricked him" he takes it upon himself to be that moody toddler in the back seat that totally needs attention but wants to pretend he doesn't even like your face.

Since we live so stupidly far away from my parents and the rest of my family, basically, it was going to end up being a two day drive just to get where we needed to go and you know what? Driving more then one day sucks balls. Don't get me wrong, I love road trips, but this time was just horrible. To start off with there have been massive amount of wild fires in my area so for the past two weeks I have been forced to breath in smoke and ash into my precious princess lungs to the point that both The Pilot and I felt like crap starting off. It was the idea of fresh air that really spurred on this trip.

Not for my family. Or the chance to win Five Grand in this fishing derby. Fresh air. Oh, and the ability to purchase fireworks. Because of the fire ban. We could only get fireworks out in British Columbia.

We staggered our trip by deciding to stop in Hinton, AB because it was just outside of Jasper, AB and it would leave only six hours left to drive and stopping after ten hours seemed like the perfect idea.

The drive to Hinton was sprinkled with conversations about the equipment on the side of the road basically being "rape machines" because neither The Pilot or I knew what they did and his choice of them being tools of evil seemed to fit perfectly into whatever I wanted to believe.

It was during this portion of the trip that The Pilot started spewing some of the most memorable quotes I have ever heard come out of this mans beautiful mouth and weird, and odd times.

My favorite one? We were driving down the highway after an over extended period of silence and he blurts out, rather empathetically, "If an eagle ever flew down and snatched Baby Bowie, I would be so pissed. I would never be OK with that. Ever." and it's like fuck, there goes my idea of adopting Bowie out to an Eagle so I wouldn't have to listen to him huffing and puffing and sighing in the back seat in such a way I know he's calling both of us an asshole. The asshole.

When we did get to Hinton we were settled in a hotel room with too beds and because I'm dating a giant child he spent most of the time jumping back and forth between the two beds as the dog leaped happily along with him to the point that I wanted to shoot myself because I was sitting on the bed watching television and I don't need to be plowed over by my boyfriend and dog while I'm trying to watch Holmes Inspection, god dammit.

I also purchased my mother some garden gnomes for her garden as a belated Mothers' Day gift. Why gnomes? Because I had watched Gnomeo & Juliet before we left and my mother got a green house as a gift from my dad so I decided that she needed some gnomes to help her plants grow and hopefully, maybe I could catch them playing out a tragically hip romance in the garden.

Instead, I could only find two gnomes that looked like they would murder my mother and chop her into little pieces and throw her into the lake rather than have a tragically interesting romance under the cover of darkness.

Somehow, I'm more proud of those murderous gnomes than I would have been of those love bird gnomes.