Seth Pippa Pete Noah
Silas and Tua ham it up.
Kentucky was a welcome treat. We mingled with family and reconnected with dear friends we rarely get to see. Seth got out for a ride with his pal, Pete. They haven't ridden for nearly a decade and yet they both seem to have retained their capacity for grueling climbs and breakneck downhills. We enjoyed a few 70 degree days followed almost immediatly by a cold front which brought 30 degrees and snow. The time with family was good too. Bug's sister Cydil produced a few really fine photoshoots of the girls and their grandparents, as well as all of the rest of us.
The trip home was one of the great undertakings of recent memory. In the greater scheme, the encumbrances of travelling 18 hours straight with two children under the age of three are really not all that bad. The preceding week had been restful enough and thankfully, there were no rogue March weather events to contend with on the way back. Had either not been the case, I imagine I would be writing this post from somewhere in Ohio. We left the foggy streets of Wilmore at 5am and for the next five hours, the girls slept like dew on grass. It was just after eight though when Pip's cries began to grate across my ears like fingernails across a chalkboard. At that point we were somewhere north of Columbus and we pulled into an obliging McDonalds parking lot. Tua was awake and had just emptied out her second juice box over her lap. I arranged a deal with Tua that if she would run around the lot with me for five minutes, we would go inside and order some McDonald's sausage patties (her favorite, not mine). The McDonald's lot was big and empty and it would come to serve as a benchmark against which all other pitstops were measured for the remainder of the trip. As Tua and I raced each other across the asphalt, four large tour buses pulled into the drive and emptied their cargo onto the doorstep of the eatery. Tua looked at the mobs of people entering McDonalds, looked back at me and gave her trademark "all-done"...which I knew meant only one thing- taking our place at the back of the throngs for a couple of promised sausage. However, it did make her morning and an hour later we were back on the road. That was the last happy moment on the journey...about fifty miles after that point, the girls began a volley of cries that would subside as if only to remind us of blissful silence, only to begin again, rising and falling in no apparent cadence. This cresendo and pause routine went on for the next 10 hours.
We landed back in Bridgewater promptly at 11:30 pm. As we were drifting off to sleep, Bug and I remarked to ourselves that it would be selfish on our part to push that hard for that distance again. Our recomendation therefore- if you have to travel with kids, make it fun for them. Once the journey runs out of fun, get a room. It will do wonders for your nerves and you will find rest for your souls.
