Days of Spring Break remaining: one
As you folks may (or may not, since I've been so quiet) have assumed, I have safely ventured to, and returned from, West Virginia over my Spring Break. I've been back for four days now, but in those four days I've been quite busy. Busy with what, you may ask? Well, here's the entire story. Of everything that's happened in the past ten days. I'm not going to post it all at once (doing so would take hours to write and would create a blog post that would easily span ten pages if typed into a word processor), but instead in segments -- probably three or four more after this one, depending on how long it takes to tell the whole story. Suffice it to say that there is a lot to be covered about my trip. Really, really a lot.
Also: because this story won't make any sense unless I divulge this information (not that the vast majority of my blog's readers don't know it anyway), I've decided that it's time to let you folks in on the secret I've been keeping from you, the one that's made me so happy as of late -- I have been seeing someone new. Yes, I am in a relationship. With a girl. And she's wonderful, sweet, (fairly) local, and I am very, very happy. I am happier in my life than I've been for a long, long time -- which if you're a regular reader of this blog, you should already know. The two of us have been together for a while now.
I've kept this quiet until now for a multitude of reasons. For one, she and I have been keeping it low-key, under-the-radar, and we're both fairly private people about this sort of thing. It's really nobody's business but ours, and both of us intend to keep it that way. As mentioned before, the only reason I'm writing about it is because the story of my Spring Break -- both here at home and in West Virginia -- won't make any sense unless I mention this. To those of you who already knew about our relationship, you're probably sarcastically thinking "wow, shocker," right now. And, to be fair, most of you who already know this information know it because, well, you've met the girl already. Ahem. But we'll get to that.
Anyway. For the purposes of this blog, I will give her the codename of Lady, because that's what she is. She's my lady, I'm her man, and we're not defining ourselves as anything more than that in the confines of our relationship. Besides, Lady is a regal sort of codename. Like lady of the house or something like that.
Again, anyway. Let's begin the story.
Thursday night (the 15th), I was talking to Lady before I went to bed. To make this story make a little more sense, I should also mention that she originally hails from the east coast (which, of course, better explains my plans to look for work/teaching opportunities in New England and the Mid-Atlantic), but goes to school out here. However, while my spring break was just starting, hers was ending. Well, sort of ending, anyway. Because she has family in Virginia whom she was visiting at the time, and I was flying to West Virginia in the morning, she came up with what she thought was a "crazy, outlandish idea."
This idea was that since we were both going to be on the same side of the country at the same time, which would never happen otherwise unless we were to go out there together, that she should borrow her aunt's Prius and drive up to meet my parents while we were both still (relatively) close to each other on that side of the country before she had to return to the midwest again for school. This idea would entail not only getting permission from her aunt to borrow the Prius for the weekend, but would mean that all of a sudden, after barely telling my parents about her a few weeks prior, that I would have to ask my parents "Hey, do you want to meet my new ladyfriend when I'm in town?" and have them say yes as well. As it was going to be a lot of driving for Lady (seven hours, one way, in a Prius) this permission from both parties was, needless to say, important, as her own car was still out here at school, parked at the dorm parking lot.
Luckily (very luckily), my parents were fine with the idea, though a bit apprehensive at first -- understandably so. Because of the incredibly long drive Lady would be making, she'd be staying at the house with me, in my room, for at least one night. As a small aside, I wasn't concerned that my parents would nix the idea -- I knew they were curious to meet my new woman, and the arrangements wouldn't be any different than when my ex used to fly out to West Virginia with me to visit, which we did twice over the time I've been living out here. The only real difference would be that Lady and I would be traveling separately, though the end result would be the same.
Lady, of course, got permission to borrow the Prius for the weekend, as her aunt already adores me from everything she's told her about me, and tentative plans were set before I went to bed that Thursday night: I'd arrive on the ground in Pittsburgh, and she would be on the road shortly thereafter, using her GPS to plot the way to Morgantown (and, eventually, my home), arriving sometime that night. Excited, I went to bed.
On Friday morning (the 16th) I woke up at 1AM. My flight out of Wichita was scheduled to leave at 6. I talked to Lady for a while to cement everything (because she was still up), and then finished all of the preparations of the house -- making sure the cats had enough food/water/litter, locking everything down tight as a drum, etc. -- before leaving the house around 3:30 to drive to the airport.
For those of you who have never been to Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport, it's a really confusing route over three different highways and several access roads to get there, especially from Newton. And because my GPS is old, it gives me (at times) confusing directions. I had to turn around in a Kmart parking lot, then in a JCPenney parking lot, at 4AM, just to be able to get on the right road (twice) that would lead me to the airport. After that nightmare was finished and I'd gotten there safely, I put my car in the long-term parking lot and took a picture of it so I would know where it was. Said picture is now available to be seen in my "Spring Break 2012" photo album on Facebook, as well.
I got into the terminal and printed my boarding passes with about 45 minutes before the plane would take off, only to find the place stuffed with people flying out for their own Spring Break trips. I've flown in and out of Mid-Continent Airport many times; this was waaaaay above-average foot traffic, especially for a little after 5AM. The line for security stretched really, really far down the long hallway, until the TSA people decided to open a second line to lessen the wait.
When I got to the metal detector, I went through it and it buzzed the "you're a terrorist" buzzer. Apparently I had metal on me I didn't know about, even though I'd emptied my pockets and had taken off my shoes. The TSA lady asked me if I was wearing a belt, which I was. I figured that was the problem, took it off and put it through the scanner, and stepped through again. It buzzed again, and then played a little tone.
"Stand right here," the TSA lady said to me in broken English, "you've been randomly selected for additional screening."
Note: this is the first time this has ever happened to me, and my first thought was something along the lines of oh, okay, whatever works. I stood beside the metal detector, but they didn't feel me up or run the wand over me or anything like that. Instead, I was told to step behind the X-ray machine (which I did), and another TSA lady behind the counter swabbed my sneakers and then ran the swabs under what looked like a tricorder from Star Trek. She then looked up at me and smiled, and said, "Okay, sir, you're free to go." So I did. I gathered my things, put them in the appropriate places, and then went to my gate. Apparently, in Wichita, that's all "additional screening" entails. Okay, I'm cool with that.
It was only after I was walking about halfway to my gate, long after passing through security, that I realized my large, shiny metal aviator sunglasses were hanging from the collar of my t-shirt. D'oh. That's why the metal detector kept going off. You think the TSA people would've caught that. Hell, you think I would've caught that as well. But oh well, no harm no foul, and I was ready to get on the plane. I texted Lady and told her that I was boarding, even though she was asleep by that point, and then shut off my phone.
My mother, when she orders me plane tickets to fly out there to visit, will always fly me through Delta. She has experience with Delta, and a long history with them -- in her job she's always handled travel arrangements for the higher-ups, and for the most part she's always flown Delta when she has been able to. Therefore, when she flies me anyplace, about 95% of the time, she flies me on Delta. The only other airline I've flown through on trips home and back was United, which was fine as well.
Delta has a spotty history with customer service, from most of the stuff I know about them. I've never truly had any problems with them, however, despite how many times I've flown on them. Well, not until last Friday, anyway.
I got on the plane fine; it was a tiny little Embraer Canadair Regional Jet, known in the industry as a CRJ. It had less than fifty seats, though there are larger ones that have about 100 or so. This one was a small one; if it were any smaller it would've been a prop plane or a Learjet. I crammed myself into it, and then...sat there. On the tarmac. For half an hour.
This would not have been a problem if I had more than fifty minutes between flights. My flight from Wichita flew into Minneapolis, where I would get a connecting flight to Pittsburgh. I had a fifty-minute window after it touched down where I could get to the next terminal and relax.
"We are going to take off shortly," the pilot said over the intercom, "but we're running a little late this morning and we are seventh in line for takeoff. Should be another ten minutes or so."
This, understandably, made me really nervous -- I'd never flown into Minneapolis before. I had no clue how large or small the airport would be, and would have to quickly find my terminal to get to the next flight, wherever that terminal or gate would be. And I would have to find it in a very short amount of time.
Finally, the plane was in the air and I was on my way. We were, indeed, a little more than half an hour late. Though we were making what the pilot called "good time," I was counting down the minutes that I'd have once I was on the ground in Minneapolis. My only hope was that I would get off the plane, walk forty feet to the next gate, and get on the next one.
This. Is not what happened.
I landed in Minneapolis and found that I was in terminal A once I got off the plane. My connecting flight to Pittsburgh was in terminal C. Terminal C was a tram ride away, a ride that could be a long one. After all, I've flown into and out of Dallas, and their tram goes about three miles or so (or feels like it). I had fifteen minutes before my plane lifted off.
Fuck.
I bolted to the tram, had to wait another three or four minutes for it to show up, and then rode it for another three or four minutes to terminal C, found my gate, and was one of the last ten people to get on my plane to Pittsburgh. No sooner than I had stuffed my bag under the seat in front of me and had buckled my belt, the plane's door was shut and locked, and we were lifting off moments later. I had just made the flight. I was really relieved.
I dozed off on that flight, as I was exhausted (I'd been awake since 1AM, remember?) and when I awakened, we were beginning our final descent into Pittsburgh -- where it was seventy degrees, bright, sunny and gorgeous outside. I met my parents outside in the short term parking, and was really relieved to see them.
"I'm here, we're having lunch with Jane and Wayne, and [Lady] is already on her way to West Virginia," I said.
As I mentioned previously, my parents knew very little about Lady aside from her name and that we'd been together a while. Neither of them are the type to really ask questions about any of that stuff; they know that when I am ready to give them details, I will. Before she and I had made our weekend plans, Lady and I had discussed what to tell our respective parents about each other, and we were still fairly committed to keeping it low-key. She didn't tell her mother about me, for example, until after she'd already left her parents' house and was in Virginia visiting her aunt and uncle; she didn't tell her aunt and uncle about me until the week prior to the trip. Until those plans were made, I was likewise planning to only tell my parents the barest of details -- something along the lines of her name is [Lady], she's wonderful, we've been together a while, she goes to school at [school] and this is how we met...here's a picture of us together, etc etc. The only person who knew the whole story of us was, and still remains, my best friend and "sister," Andrea. A few very close friends, such as Suri, knew a few smaller details, but nothing major.
"So what's the deal with this [Lady] person?" Mom asked me, once we were in the car.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, who is she? Where is she from? How did you meet? I'd like to know who this person is if she's going to be staying in my home."
Reasonable requests, to be sure. So I gave my parents the brief rundown. My Dad is a pretty go-with-the-flow guy; he doesn't really question anything in a specific sense, but he's happy I've found someone. My answers to my mother's questions -- all of which were up-front and completely truthful, as I am honest, honorable, and can't lie to my mother (not that I would anyway) -- put her at ease almost immediately. At least outwardly, anyhow. Whether she was still apprehensive up until Lady's arrival that night, I don't know, but she didn't show it.
I texted my friends from Pittsburgh, Jane and Wayne, and we made plans to meet for lunch at Red Robin at 1PM. I think. It was something like that. Jane and Wayne have been very, very good friends of mine for many years, and I have written about them at length in this blog on countless occasions. They have always been there for me, and likewise I've done my best to be there for them. When the ex and I broke up, they sent me at least two care packages containing kitchen stuff (knives) and tie-dye materials; when my Xbox died, it was Wayne who gave me his old one, shipping it to me in the mail. For my birthday, they got me a copy of Captain America: The First Avenger and mailed it to me. Suffice it to say that they are wonderful, wonderful people and very dear friends -- and because I haven't seen them in person in seven(!) years, we had made plans almost a month ago to meet up for lunch with my parents once I was on the ground...which we did. My parents loved them, too. Jane later told me that she sees that I have gotten a lot of my sense of humor from my mother, which is probably true. It was a very fun lunch, during which all of us got reeeeeally full of burgers and fries. I love Jane and Wayne; it has been way, way too long since I last saw them, and my fondest hopes are that we don't have to go that long between seeing each other again -- as far as to say that the next time (and every time in the foreseeable future) that I'm in Pittsburgh, all of us should meet up for lunch with my parents. Next time, of course, I will more than likely be traveling with Lady as well, and they'll get to meet her, too.
Meanwhile, on our drive back to Morgantown, I heard from Lady via text-message that she had been delayed in leaving, and that she was just leaving her aunt and uncle's place at around 3PM. This was fine; her GPS would take her straight to Morgantown, and the timeframe was that she'd arrive around 10:30PM or so. The plan that night was to get pizza from our town's best pizza place (which had recently split into two places with different names, but the same pizza) and that way we'd have food in the house for her when she got home, even though we would've eaten beforehand.
When we (finally) got back to Morgantown, I cashed my Kansas State Tax refund at my bank, as in West Virginia I actually have access to my bank, and then spent the afternoon and evening once I got home playing with my parents' cats, seeing my old dog, moving/cleaning wicker furniture with my parents, and sitting on the porch waiting for Lady to give me periodical progress reports on her journey to my house. If it was surreal to travel by plane alone (it was; I've never flown anywhere by myself before), it was even more surreal to be traveling separately from my love, to have her navigate her way to my parents' house in a borrowed Prius, and her never having met my parents before. Let me tell you, that wait was a very strange, very stressful experience.
Every two hours or so, Lady would text me a progress report -- first it was that she had to stop to get some coffee and a little something to eat, the next was that she got lost on a back road and that she'd be about an hour later than she thought she'd be, because her GPS was going nuts. I told her we'd wait to get the pizzas until right before the place closed, and when she got home she could eat because they'd be here and we could heat them up.
And then I heard nothing else from her for about three hours.
Imagine my mindset: my love was driving seven-plus hours in a Prius she didn't own, to a town she'd never been to, in the dark, following one of two GPS units -- her Droid smartphone has one, and the Prius has one built into the dash. And I heard nothing else from her for a long, long time. Needless to say, I was worried. Cell phone reception is horrific in the West Virginia mountains, and for a long time during my visit I had no service whatsoever unless I was in Morgantown proper, where I only had AT&T service. My phone is T-Mobile. Always has been. With only AT&T service I can only access about half of my phone's capabilities, and it screws up the timestamps on all of my texts and calls. Badly.
Anyway.
Around 8:30 that night my parents called in the pizza order for carry-out. We knew at this point that it was possible that Lady wouldn't be reaching Morgantown until after 11, possibly close to midnight, so we made the decision to get the pizza as planned, and if Lady needed directions from Morgantown to the house, we'd either go meet her or plot the route to my parents' house (about 20 minutes to the east of town).
Halfway to town to pick up the pizza, I got a frantic call from Lady telling me that she was still about 2.5 hours away, and that her GPS had gotten her hopelessly lost. She didn't trust the Prius GPS because it was sending her in really strange directions, and her Droid was at 5% battery without a way to charge it. I asked her where she was, where it told her she was, and she gave me the name of a highway I'd never heard of. We gave her an address to a street in Morgantown (Earl Core Road, in Sabraton, which is relatively close to the house) and let her zero in on that. She told me she had found route 7, which was good because it was the road that was not only really long, but would take her to Morgantown (in a roundabout way, but would still get her here) and I told her to follow that, follow the GPS, and to conserve the battery on her phone so that if she had to call me or anyone else in an emergency, she could. This calmed her down, and she said she'd follow the Prius GPS and let me know when she was close. She also said that my parents' street address didn't show up on the Prius GPS, no matter how she plugged it in. My dad and I were staying up for her anyway, so I told her to turn the phone back on and call me once she got into Morgantown, and we'd meet her wherever, and I'd guide her back the rest of the way to my parents' house.
Those next 2.5 hours were torturous, let me tell you. She had been freaked out by the drive, was really tired, and just like me, she hates driving at night. But around 11:15 or so I got a call.
"I'm at the McDonalds in....Sabraton?" she said, after asking the clerk at the counter where she was.
"Perfect," I said. "We'll be there in twenty minutes."
Those twenty minutes were somewhat torturous as well. I hadn't seen the girl in three weeks; she'd been away on her spring break, and her break is two weeks instead of one. The last time she'd been in town was the weekend prior to the beginning of her break -- she'd been back east with her family ever since. We don't tend to stay apart too long if we can avoid it; her school is a few hours from me, and if possible, we try to spend most weekends together in some fashion. For most of March, due to her break and my own schooling, we'd not seen each other that much. Now, not only would we be reunited after being apart for three weeks, but it would be in my hometown, in my childhood home, visiting my parents. I hate to over-use the word "surreal," but this time it definitely applied.
We met with her at the McDonald's and split up -- my dad took his truck back up the mountain alone, and I rode with Lady in the Prius, guiding her to my house. Once we got there, both of us were exhausted, but she got to formally meet my dad in the house, as well as meet my parents' cats and my old dog. My mother had gone to bed, so she wouldn't get to meet her until the morning. Completely worn out, she ate some pizza and we went to bed -- ending a very, very long day for everyone involved. We slept like rocks.
So that's the story of just the first day of my trip back home, travel included. It was one of the most eventful, stress-filled days of my entire life, yet so much got accomplished, and so many good things happened -- including my love arriving safe and sound at my house in West Virginia.
The Toyota Prius is awesome, by the way. I'm so buying one when I have enough money to do so.
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