Do you want to go to Oregon?

Thursday (3/17), 11:30 pm:
Candace: "Do you want to Oregon?"
Me: "Ummm, yeah?!"
Friday (3/18), 2:53 pm:
We are on the road, filling up the gas tank.

Yes, indeed, Candace and I decided to drive up to Oregon this weekend-- less than 24 hours in advance (much less, I might point out.). Her family had rented a house in Coos Bay and brought all their quads down. Why not? The mountains of homework certainly didn't deter us. I skipped philosophy and the two of us were out of the parking lot by 2:45pm. It was a long drive. Long, long, long. I saw snow falling for the first time in my remembrance- but I wasn't so happy that it was midnight and we were forced to slow down considerably. I just wanted to get there, and we still had 5 hours to go. Yep, we got there at 5:30 am.
5:30, and we expected that everyone would be asleep- certainly not waiting up for us. Wrong. There are her mom and sister sleeping on the couch waiting for us. We walk in, utterly exhausted- but somehow, instead of bed, we wind up sitting around the kitchen island eating cookies.
I hear this bellowing in the background. Neither of them looks surprised.... they calmly tell us that Jack (2yrs) is sleeping in the pantry. All right, awesome. I love a family that can stash their kids anywhere/everywhere. We get ready for bed, and ask where the bathroom. "Well, don't use the hall bathroom. Olivia is in there (3months). She's in the tub." And Seth and Carter slept in the closets. I knew I loved this family before I'd even met all of them.
We slept on the couch that night and got maybe 4 hours of sleep before we were invaded by children.
All of Saturday was spent in riding the dunes. They were so stinkin' gorgeous, and so close. Basically in our backyard, and you could take them directly to the beach- also spectacular. Riding was so much fun, and her dad even got off and let me drive around for a bit.
In between rounds, we were all sitting in the living room talking. In walks Judy (no one knows her). She introduces herself, and asks if she could come in. At this point, Candace and I are pooped, and so we say we are going to go take a nap on her parent's bed. Apparently, Judy got up and wanted to follow us, thinking that a nap sounded like a good idea! She obviously had dementia or something like that.... I don't know what happened, but I hope she found her way home. She was very sweet, just happy to watch the kids playing around.
Saturday night we played Sequence- a game which involves no skill- but does require some mastery in the knowledge of how to cheat so that no one will find out. Pretty fun stuff, when everyone is getting caught and yelling at each other. And the dad exclaims over and over how good the wine is- and when he opens the second bottle for the family, doesn't even realize it's a different wine. :)
We had the MOST circular conversations I have ever witnessed. We talked about hockey- and how the US doesn't cover Canadian hockey- for about an hour and a half. We discussed a jump which Candace accidentally made and almost killed herself for about 3 hours. We talked about how the Yarro post office was broken into and the computers stolen- at which the mom exclaims, "so that's why I haven't heard anything about my Christmas letters!" Despite the fact that the break-in was maybe a week ago, and had nothing to do with the letters themselves. We talked about cell phone companies, and how they don't work when you cross the border- you get charged a $1.50 per minute. When Candace went to take a shower, her dad turned to me and said, "You know what's awful about America? The cheese!" He then went on about cheese production. I literally just said, I'm sorry, and left it at that..... well, except for the tears running down my face the whole night. I could not stop laughing. It was the funniest experience of my life. Darrel wanted to go see the sand dunes at night since there was a full moon. Her dad maintained that he would get lost in the night and we'd have to go find him (he was so serious about this). He stuck to this point, even after Darrel returned 10 minutes later.
Saturday night I slept in a bunk bed above Darrel and Melissa- newlyweds. So that might very well have been the most awkward experience of the weekend.
Sunday morning we got up around 8 and were on the road by 9:30. It took us 14 hours to get to Oregon, so we figured we'd be back around 12 or 1. Perfect for the fact that Candace and I had to go to OC elementary to teach a PE class at 8:45.
I had my first experience driving in snow- it didn't stick though, so it only slowed us down a bit.... and the same with the torrential rain. We were driving and driving (and had only brought one sandwich for each of us for the whole day. Well, it was 10 pm, and we were just about ready to enter the grapevine. About 2 hours more ,and we would have been home. Closed! The grapevine was CLOSED! We had to go back towards Sacramento (you have no idea how discouraging that was!!!) for about 60 miles, take the 46 West (an extra 63 miles) to the 110 South, where we still had about 200 miles to go. It took 18 hours to get home. We were so stressed that we were going the wrong way and that we wouldn't be on time to teach PE... and basically just tired all around. We though about sleeping in the car, but didn't know if the grapevine would be cleared in the morning or not.... so we took the ridiculous detour. I woke up at one point, and we were at a dead stop on the freeway- utterly, completely ridiculous. We didn't know whether to scream, cry, or laugh! We eventually made it back around 3:45, though. Into bed we piled for 3 hours sleep before having to wake up and drive out to Ontario. I showered and dressed, when the other girls who were going with us knock on our door and tell us it was cancelled. Again: laugh or cry? We went to breakfast and then went to bed.
This weekend was crazy ridiculous, but so much fun. It was so worth it- and I love the fact that you can just get in a car and drive! We'll see what next weekend holds for us. ;]