Driving to Duck

I am remiss. I am back.

Let me tell you a story you're all familiar with. It's an oldie, but goodie and it's called, "Family Vacation." You've all done it, you all know what it means. And you all know what happens. In fact, I went to my doctor two days before I left and he asked what I was doing the coming weekend. Here's how our conversation went:

Me: I'm leaving on Saturday for a family vacation. Everyone's flying in.
Doc: Ohhhh....this is when everyone regresses back to their most annoying teenage self.
Me: Actually we intentionally never progressed to make the transition easier.

Point is, he got it. Say family vacation and everyone gets it. Whatever.

Mom, Dad, me, Kristin and her 2 year old daughter Aviva all flew together to Norfolk, VA where we then collected a rental mini-van and began our hour and a half drive to the beach.

About 30 minutes in we realized that the windshield wipers had been running for a while.

"Dad? You wanna turn off the windshield wipers?"

Turns out he did. He just couldn't. Everyone in the car tried to get them off to no avail. OK, fine.

Next thing we noticed was that it was getting steadily warmer. And by warmer I mean SCALDING HOT. Tempers were rising and sweat was running. Voices started getting louder as we shouted for dad to roll down the windows.

Nope. No dice. The electrical system was down and we couldn't get windows down. At that point we started talking about how we were going to die (oh and by the way we're in bumper to bumper traffic and not moving AT ALL) in this heat box. Aviva meanwhile is passed out asleep, probably unconscious.

I tried to push open the back windows that didn't seem to be operated by electricity, but I couldn't get 'em. Kristin came busting back over me and shoved them open.

Shauri: "Wow, you're strong. You'd definitely live in a survival of the fittest situation."

Kristin: (scoffing) "Well I know I'd beat you."

Ouch. True, but ouch.

I won't tell the whole story, but I will say that there was a lot of conversation with Budget rent a car about solutions, a lot of anger and sweat and finally when Aviva woke up about an hour of screaming. I repeat, screaming. Kristin told us the only solution was to sing the farmer in the dell, which I swear we did going through every single animal that ever existed AND THEN my mom started going through the first ones again.

It was a long and painful journey, but not surprisingly, these horrible (in the moment) moments, are the ones that live on as our favorite stories to recount. All I can say is, wait until you hear about the return trip.