The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Day Eleven: Coming Home

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This is the twelfth and final installment of our travelogue, starring Artificially Sweetened (AS), Cupcake, and me, the Nittany Turkey.

We would have to get to my house before 5 PM on this, the final Tuesday of our journey, so we had to get up pretty doggone early in Rocky Mount. Coupled with the late night and the usual issues with trying to get to sleep when I know I have to do something early, I did not feel very refreshed when awakened by my cell phone’s alarm. Alas, there was no choice but to hit the road.

Checking out of the hotel, we clumsily threw “all our crap” into the weary Sienna for the homeward bound leg. Allowing an hour or so for lunch and assorted pit stops, I calculated that we should easily arrive home on schedule. We sleepily assumed our positions for takeoff.

Our routing was unfortunate, but necessary. We would be on Interstate 95 all the way to Daytona. I-95 is a boring, non-scenic highway, just what a sleepy driver doesn’t need.

After driving for roughly an hour, I began to feel as if I were too sleepy to drive. I pulled off at the next exit, parked in a sleazy motel parking lot, and told the girls to hang on while I took a walk in some fresh air. I did two laps around the motel and returned.

I figured that they would question me as to just what in the hell I was doing briskly walking around the Motel 6 a couple of times, but I think they were too tired to bother with the interrogation. That concerned me, because it meant that my co-pilot, AS, who I had kept in reserve for the entire trip to date, might also be too sleepy to drive. I felt better, so I thought I would wait a while before assessing the need for and viability of a driver swap.

Back on the road, I was thinking back to all the fun times we had enjoyed on this trip. There were so many of them: the whirlwind tour of the mountains of North Carolina; the three-city western and central Pennsylvania blitz; the fun times with the Tams; AS and I obsessively singing “Runaround Sue”; the Amish; the sarcasm from Cupcake; the fact that we all had bladders; and, last but not least, the famous Skynard’s of St. George, South Carolina. I smiled as I drifted through the happy reveries.

My mind turned to my 89 year-old mom, who had fallen while we were away. She lives in South Florida, and she had broken a couple of bones. I talked to her while we were at Tam Manor, and she insisted that she was all right. I had seen pictures of her that my brother had taken when she was in the emergency room, and she didn’t look good at all. I resolved to go to see her when I got back to Florida. I would wait until the weekend, so I could take AS along. Then, I realized that I was daydreaming while paying scant attention to driving. It was time to switch drivers. [Read more…]

Day Ten: Ten Cent Tour of D.C.

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This is the eleventh installment of our summer road trip travelogue, featuring Artificially Sweetened (AS), her daughter, Cupcake, and me, the Nittany Turkey.

My pre-season prognostication having been written and put to bed, I now have no excuses to delay this installment of the travelogue any longer. So, awayyyyyyyyyy we go!

This would be our Washington, D.C. day. At the appointed early morning hour and against the feeble protests of AS, I gathered my stuff together for departure. When I exited the guest facility to go to the bathroom, I was surprised to see Cupcake in the final stages of doing the same. Occasionally, she can be surprisingly sweet and self-reliant; I was happy to see that this was one of those times. So was AS.

I left AS upstairs to gather her stuff as I brought mine downstairs. Toejam and Judy were, of course, already up. Even in retirement, they maintain a first shift coal miner’s schedule.

Toejam and I were discussing my route. He prefaced his comments with, “I know you won’t listen to me, but…” Actually, I wound up listening to him. His idea of taking US 15 down to the Baltimore Beltway turned out to be perfect. I was surprised that my GPS software chose that same routing. But I’m getting ahead of unfolding events.

The plan was to hustle down to suburban Virginia and take the Metro into our nation’s capital, where we could do some sightseeing for a few hours. My hope was that we could avoid rush hours and after the sightseeing, hit the road reasonably early. Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where we would spend the night, would still be a long drive from the capital area.

On Our Way

We said our goodbyes to the Tams after loading the Siena. We will be seeing them again when they pay us a winter visit in January or February. Who knows? We might even see them sooner, if we decided to go to the homecoming game at Penn State this fall.

Over the hill and past Robert Shewokis’ fuel oil tanks we went and we were on our way out of the Skook. Most of the morning proceeded uneventfully, until it was time for lunch. By that time, we were approaching the Baltimore Beltway.

At Cracker Barrel
At Cracker Barrel

“What do you girls feel like for lunch?” I asked.

“Cracker Barrel is a chain, but it’s good enough,” responded AS.

“Ew!” I croaked.

“Cracker Barrel is good!” asserted Cupcake.

“Cracker Barrel is an old lady restaurant!” I protested.

“You’re mean!”

Yes, I am.

But my protests were too feeble. Somehow, we managed to decide on Cracker Barrel. It was 2-1. It just so happened that there was a Cracker Barrel about 15 minutes away, right off a beltway exit in Frederick, Maryland. So, that’s where we went.

Cupcake ordered bacon and eggs, as she wanted breakfast. AS and I had lunch, a reuben for AS and a hamburger for me.

Hostess Trainee
Hostess Trainee

Well, the food turned out to be acceptable, while the service was diner quality without the friendliness. The waitress dumped a steak fry in my lap when she delivered my burger, and didn’t even notice. Nevertheless, I was amused by the fireplug shaped midget hostess apprentice, who looked like she didn’t quite know why she was there. Her function seemed to be to shadow the “real” hostess, whom I nicknamed “mama.” The little one looked like Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson proceeding to her next event when she tailed a party being seated; when “mama” finally gave her a party of her own to seat, presumably because two parties showed up at the door simultaneously, she perked up and returned from her initial mission all smiles, hands on hips, and generally proud of her consummate achievement. It was way cool. Of course, Cupcake was on my case about my obsession with waitresses and hostesses; that made it even more fun. But I digress.

Having finished what turned out to be a redeeming lunch that will actually bring me back to Cracker Barrel someday when I’m desperate enough on the road, we exited via the Cracker Barrel country store. Well, we took a while to exit. Being the consummate shoppers, we had to look at everything in the store. Finally, I advised the ladies that we had work to do, for there was a Geocache search awaiting us outside.

Off Your Rocker
Off Your Rocker

A nationwide series of Geocaches called “Off Your Rocker” sprang up at Cracker Barrel stores. In case you’ve never seen a Cracker Barrel store, they all have a porch with a couple dozen rocking chairs and antique stuff. You can just sit there as long as you wish, or buy a rocking chair if you want. Or you can hunt for the ubiquitous “Off Your Rocker” cache in front of all the rockers, which requires stealth and cunning to avoid detection, scorn, or ridicule. ???? bingo

We found the cache after a brief search. I say “we”, but AS actually made the grab. Nothing new about that. As for “muggles” (a term borrowed from Harry Potter by Geocachers meaning uninitiated onlookers), there was only one group of four bikers on the porch. AS  was sorta right about lunch and she was right about the cache location.

After signing the log, we re-entered the Cracker Barrel and used the respective gender specific rest rooms for their intended purpose. Shortly, we were back on our way to D.C. [Read more…]

Day Nine: Hot Dog! Let’s go shopping!

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This is the tenth installment of the Summer 2010 road trip travelogue starring Artificially Sweetened (AS), her daughter, Cupcake, and me, the Nittany Turkey.

Day Nine was a Sunday, our last full day in New Philly. We hadn’t developed a plan for the day, which enabled another sleep-in for the girls. Just how, then, did Day Nine evolve into a shopping day?

Well, before the ladies came downstairs, I was talking with Toejam about my thoughts on lunch. I knew that AS liked hot dogs, and in Pottsville there is a hot dog joint called Coney Island that serves memorable wieners. Toejam told me that they weren’t open on Sundays, so I better go to the mall, where there is a small branch of the downtown store. Therein lay the essence of a plan.

As AS approached cognitive functionality (i.e., after some coffee), I told her that the plan was to take her and Cupcake to the mall to get some hot dogs for lunch.

Sproingo! Say da secret woid and da duck comes down and gives you $100…

Yes, I said the magic word, and it wasn’t abracadabra—it was mall.

“As long as we’re going to the mall, I wanted to buy Cupcake some jeans for school,” said AS, her eyes focusing. I could feel her shopping gears spinning up to operational speed, lubricated by SAE 90 coffee and fueled by a breakfast bar.

Back in my day, we weren’t allowed to wear jeans to school, but that’s beside the point. My desire to feed the girls a couple of hot dogs had just been transmogrified into a full-scale babe clothing shopping mission. Ooooh boy!

Nuclear Bomb
Nuclear Bomb

We three piled into the Sienna for a voyage into the wonderful world of babeshopping. But first, I had an item on my list of things to do before leaving Schuylkill County. In nearby St. Clair, there was a house with a bomb casing on its front porch’s roof. The word “NUCLEAR” was stenciled on the bomb. I needed to get a picture of it before I left in order to capture the flair of the local gentry.

After the brief photo shoot, I remembered where the mall was, much to the delight of AS and to the quasi-constructive apathy of Cupcake. When we arrived in the mall parking lot, I said I would park at the end by Boscov’s, the one and only anchor department store there. We passed a huge tent. I mentioned that it was too early to be selling Christmas trees and too late for Fourth of July fireworks, so what could it be? We soon found out when we saw the sign that said “Boscov’s Tent Sale — up to 70% off.” What flashed in my brain was “OMG OMG”.

“We have to go in there,” declared AS. I would not have a choice in the matter.

“OK,” I agreed limply. It was going to be a long afternoon.

I guess we looked at everything in the tent at least once. Thinking that I might be able to cut to the chase, I pointed AS to a rack with girls’ jeans selling for $3. In return, I received a word or two of heady shopping advice.

Jeans Shopping
Jeans Shopping

“I never buy pants that I can’t try on, even if they’re only $3,” said AS. I never thought of that. I mean, for $3, I’d take a chance, and if they didn’t fit, I’d sell them on eBay for $5. But I’m just a man. Who cares what I think? Now, it was clear that we would definitely have to go inside after spending the “necessary” time in the tent.

AS and Cupcake split up. I could walk from one to the other and back, feigning interest in what they were doing, to avert the boredom of looking at lots of stuff no one intended to buy. After all, the stuff in the tent was there because it had been languishing too long in the store. Finally, the Cupcake got bored, too. But AS was in full shop-mode, so there was no telling when we would exit the tent. I think the only thing that eventually saved us was that the tent wasn’t air conditioned. It wasn’t extremely hot, but after walking around for 20 minutes or so, it was getting a wee bit uncomfortable.

I’m not sure what it was that AS bought, but I was pleased when she said that she was ready to go to the register to check out. Cool! Now we could get out of here and, um, shop.

Inside the main store, there was air conditioning, so my tolerance level increased. At this point, the jeans assault team began its search and seizure mission. I gestured to the Levis display, thinking that I might be able to channel their efforts, but I received a swift rebuke.

“Why not get the ones that started it all? Good old original Levis,” I suggested.

“Because they’re not cool,” said AS.

“Oh.”

Moneybags AS
Moneybags AS

We looked at a lot of racks. How many exactly, I forget. It’s all a blur.  Finally, Cupcake was ready to try on some jeans. I pointed out the sign that said they could take no more than three garments into the fitting room and they had to tell a clerk before they went in. They ignored the second part. I’m not sure whether they ignored the first part as well, as there several ingresses and egresses.

When Cupcake came out the first time, I asked AS why the jeans’ rear pockets were not properly situated high on Cupcake’s butt cheeks. She admonished me that I didn’t know how it was supposed to work. These were low riders or some such thing. Yeah, but does that mean that the bottom half of the patch pockets should be down her thighs? Furthermore, is it really necessary to show butt crack? I mean without a thong in there and a tramp stamp above to decorate it? But surely, AS wouldn’t approve of something like that. I guess I know nothing about girls’ fashions. Silly me.

I was called upon to be a human clothing rack while the two of them went into the changing room. I got to hold the stuff that they had either already decided upon buying or were saving for subsequent try-on sessions. I whiled away the time by taking pictures of unsuspecting customers and employees.

[Read more…]