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The summary, in no particular order:
Much sleep deprivation.
Wonderful food.
Canoeing!
Saw the British "Coupling" for the first time. Damn funny. :)
No longer have a car. :'( And I found out that the Metro was the only car I knew how to drive. Driving a car with a smooth ride, an automatic transmission and power steering was like Vimes wearing good boots - I couldn't feel the road. Although of course the first analogy I thought of was it was like trying to do a bag search with winter gloves on.
We started out quite normally for us. I got home from work shortly after 8PM on Thursday and woke up![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eor. We ate, finished packing and washing dishes, and finally were on the road headed out of Portland around midnight. I snoozed off and on in the car - I had no worries because eor was just starting his day and usually doesn't have a problem driving 12 hours.
Two ironies: It occurred to me at one point during the night that it would be easier on his eyes if we could replace the windshield, since it was rather scratched up. And at one of the rest areas he locked the driver's side door and it wouldn't unlock again, so he was forced to start climbing in and out my side.
When I woke up around 8AMeor handed me the tiny little mapquest map that showed the road we were on and asked me to figure out what was wrong because something didn't seem right to him about where we were. We had just decided we needed to pull off the next exit and look for a better map when something caused me to look up - it may have been eor saying "shit!" - just in time to see a deer running full tilt across the interstate from the median. All I had time to do was register the fact that it WAS a deer before it was a former deer, and there was a hole in the windshield in front of eor. It was that fast - the deer was completely unmissable. eor had managed to slow the car by about 20mph before we connected with the deer, so the airbags didn't deploy. He kept control of the car, didn't swerve into the right lane (where he says there was another car) and then got us over to the shoulder. Any number of people have told me we're lucky to be alive, driving such a small car, but I think a good deal of the credit goes to eor's driving skill.
He had to stop me from going back to get the deer carcass out of the road. I saw it as a driving hazard, though of course I also was trying to think how we could get it butchered because it seems disrespectful to kill something and not make use of it. (The next afternoon someone commented that it would have been perfect if we could have shown up with a cooler full of meat - "We brought dinner!" Yeah, I had my swiss army knife, I could have hacked it up, sure.) But, he was right - the traffic was moving way too fast for me to make it out to where the deer was lying, between the middle and right lanes, and drag it off.
The windshield had a hole in it which you could put your hand through, and area surrounding it crazed white with shattering. And yeah, the stuff IS safety glass, but it breaks into incredibly tiny slivers which were sprayed all overeor and really the whole inside of the car. He limped us 3 miles to the next exit, peering around the shattered area. Once we'd pulled into a gas station/convenience store and could actually walk around the car we discovered that the entire left side of the car was crumpled. We hadn't noticed that the driver's side door wouldn't open because it hadn't been opening since he'd locked it at the rest area.
I called the insurance company and was informed we only had liability insurance, nothing to help with damages, and called the police only to be informed that they aren't concerned with deer collisions in Pennsylvania, but they would send someone to get it out of the road. Then we limped it on down to a garage and asked for advice on where to find an auto-body place that could properly assess the damage. The guy there (Barr's Interstate, if you're ever caught in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania) was really nice and suggested Heinbeck's, two miles down the road. "Don't be put off by the look of the place, it looks kind of dusty. And it is. Probably you should talk to Wally. He's a kind of crotchety old man, but if you catch him in the right mood he can give you some good deals."
We caught Wally in an okay mood, I think - he at least seemed very sympathetic and took some time trying to help us out. Old guy, with that old Pennsylvania accent. I found it nearly impossible to understand him. He made phone calls for a while, tried to find us a second-hand windshield, but had no luck. Then he looked through his books to see how much the car would have been worth without the damages. $1700. The windshield alone, new, was listed at $545 - so that doesn't even take into account how much fixing or replacing the three panels on the left side would be. So, with much regret in our hearts, we limped it on back to the area of Barr's Interstate where there were a couple of motels.
We got a room, took showers, shook most of the glass from our clothes and started making phone calls. Eventually we came up with a one-way unlimited mileage car rental from the Avis at the Harrisburg airport, and lined up an airport limo to take us there. We decided to give our dear little Metro over to the nice guy at Barr's Interstate as a gift, because we couldn't make hauling it home seem financially sensible, and we didn't want to hassle with a scrap guy who would probably try to charge us to haul it away.
So we ended up picking up the rental car at Harrisburg, driving back to Pine Grove to get all our stuff, retracing our route back up to where we'd missed our intersection with the other interstate we should have been on, and after all that I guess we'd lost at least 12, maybe 13, hours of travel time andeor had gotten no sleep. My own sleep was spotty. At the point he asked me to take a turn driving it was at least 11PM and I had things swimming in front of my eyes. The resultant terror woke him right back up so he could get back behind the wheel.
We arrived at Butonquail's house at 1:30AM on Saturday. Beat.
When we arrived, around 1:30AM on Saturday, the first thing Butonquail wanted to do was feed us, which was quite a good thing in our opinion because we hadn't eaten a real meal since 8:30PM on Thursday. Since then we'd been nibbling - french fries, Tostitos, peanuts, a small chunk of cheese. She's a good cook. Lamb curry that melts in your mouth, and proper yellow basmati rice.
Breakfast Saturday (around noon, I think) included cinnamon bread french toast, scrambled eggs with american cheese, and bacon.
That was shortly followed by lunch, with hambugers, sausages, sauteed onions and peppers and potato salad.
Sunday breakfast was more scrambled eggs, this time with asiago cheese, and sausages.
Sunday dinner was prawn vindaloo, spinach and lentil something-or-other, more of that excellent yellow basmati (this time with sliced almonds).
And then we nibbled again until Monday dinner which we made at home.
And that's all I have the energy to write about tonight. Perhaps I'll make another attempt tomorrow, though I'm afraid most of the rest is the type of stuff you can't really explain all that well besides "It was quite nice!" I had a good time at Butonquail's, she's wonderful. :)
Much sleep deprivation.
Wonderful food.
Canoeing!
Saw the British "Coupling" for the first time. Damn funny. :)
No longer have a car. :'( And I found out that the Metro was the only car I knew how to drive. Driving a car with a smooth ride, an automatic transmission and power steering was like Vimes wearing good boots - I couldn't feel the road. Although of course the first analogy I thought of was it was like trying to do a bag search with winter gloves on.
We started out quite normally for us. I got home from work shortly after 8PM on Thursday and woke up
eor. We ate, finished packing and washing dishes, and finally were on the road headed out of Portland around midnight. I snoozed off and on in the car - I had no worries because eor was just starting his day and usually doesn't have a problem driving 12 hours. Two ironies: It occurred to me at one point during the night that it would be easier on his eyes if we could replace the windshield, since it was rather scratched up. And at one of the rest areas he locked the driver's side door and it wouldn't unlock again, so he was forced to start climbing in and out my side.
When I woke up around 8AM
eor handed me the tiny little mapquest map that showed the road we were on and asked me to figure out what was wrong because something didn't seem right to him about where we were. We had just decided we needed to pull off the next exit and look for a better map when something caused me to look up - it may have been eor saying "shit!" - just in time to see a deer running full tilt across the interstate from the median. All I had time to do was register the fact that it WAS a deer before it was a former deer, and there was a hole in the windshield in front of eor. It was that fast - the deer was completely unmissable. eor had managed to slow the car by about 20mph before we connected with the deer, so the airbags didn't deploy. He kept control of the car, didn't swerve into the right lane (where he says there was another car) and then got us over to the shoulder. Any number of people have told me we're lucky to be alive, driving such a small car, but I think a good deal of the credit goes to eor's driving skill. He had to stop me from going back to get the deer carcass out of the road. I saw it as a driving hazard, though of course I also was trying to think how we could get it butchered because it seems disrespectful to kill something and not make use of it. (The next afternoon someone commented that it would have been perfect if we could have shown up with a cooler full of meat - "We brought dinner!" Yeah, I had my swiss army knife, I could have hacked it up, sure.) But, he was right - the traffic was moving way too fast for me to make it out to where the deer was lying, between the middle and right lanes, and drag it off.
The windshield had a hole in it which you could put your hand through, and area surrounding it crazed white with shattering. And yeah, the stuff IS safety glass, but it breaks into incredibly tiny slivers which were sprayed all over
eor and really the whole inside of the car. He limped us 3 miles to the next exit, peering around the shattered area. Once we'd pulled into a gas station/convenience store and could actually walk around the car we discovered that the entire left side of the car was crumpled. We hadn't noticed that the driver's side door wouldn't open because it hadn't been opening since he'd locked it at the rest area. I called the insurance company and was informed we only had liability insurance, nothing to help with damages, and called the police only to be informed that they aren't concerned with deer collisions in Pennsylvania, but they would send someone to get it out of the road. Then we limped it on down to a garage and asked for advice on where to find an auto-body place that could properly assess the damage. The guy there (Barr's Interstate, if you're ever caught in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania) was really nice and suggested Heinbeck's, two miles down the road. "Don't be put off by the look of the place, it looks kind of dusty. And it is. Probably you should talk to Wally. He's a kind of crotchety old man, but if you catch him in the right mood he can give you some good deals."
We caught Wally in an okay mood, I think - he at least seemed very sympathetic and took some time trying to help us out. Old guy, with that old Pennsylvania accent. I found it nearly impossible to understand him. He made phone calls for a while, tried to find us a second-hand windshield, but had no luck. Then he looked through his books to see how much the car would have been worth without the damages. $1700. The windshield alone, new, was listed at $545 - so that doesn't even take into account how much fixing or replacing the three panels on the left side would be. So, with much regret in our hearts, we limped it on back to the area of Barr's Interstate where there were a couple of motels.
We got a room, took showers, shook most of the glass from our clothes and started making phone calls. Eventually we came up with a one-way unlimited mileage car rental from the Avis at the Harrisburg airport, and lined up an airport limo to take us there. We decided to give our dear little Metro over to the nice guy at Barr's Interstate as a gift, because we couldn't make hauling it home seem financially sensible, and we didn't want to hassle with a scrap guy who would probably try to charge us to haul it away.
So we ended up picking up the rental car at Harrisburg, driving back to Pine Grove to get all our stuff, retracing our route back up to where we'd missed our intersection with the other interstate we should have been on, and after all that I guess we'd lost at least 12, maybe 13, hours of travel time and
eor had gotten no sleep. My own sleep was spotty. At the point he asked me to take a turn driving it was at least 11PM and I had things swimming in front of my eyes. The resultant terror woke him right back up so he could get back behind the wheel. We arrived at Butonquail's house at 1:30AM on Saturday. Beat.
When we arrived, around 1:30AM on Saturday, the first thing Butonquail wanted to do was feed us, which was quite a good thing in our opinion because we hadn't eaten a real meal since 8:30PM on Thursday. Since then we'd been nibbling - french fries, Tostitos, peanuts, a small chunk of cheese. She's a good cook. Lamb curry that melts in your mouth, and proper yellow basmati rice.
Breakfast Saturday (around noon, I think) included cinnamon bread french toast, scrambled eggs with american cheese, and bacon.
That was shortly followed by lunch, with hambugers, sausages, sauteed onions and peppers and potato salad.
Sunday breakfast was more scrambled eggs, this time with asiago cheese, and sausages.
Sunday dinner was prawn vindaloo, spinach and lentil something-or-other, more of that excellent yellow basmati (this time with sliced almonds).
And then we nibbled again until Monday dinner which we made at home.
And that's all I have the energy to write about tonight. Perhaps I'll make another attempt tomorrow, though I'm afraid most of the rest is the type of stuff you can't really explain all that well besides "It was quite nice!" I had a good time at Butonquail's, she's wonderful. :)