Make it 3-0

Emma got in another scrum with the Jellies on the last day - go figure.

I'll let these speak for themselves.

Dem Jellerfishes

These are them.

These are what they do.

Jumping ahead in time...

So far, it's:

Jellyfish 2

The Penrod's 0

BTW

you guys can leave comments as you all have GMail accounts.

HHI

I guess that the first day was pretty tough to beat. With the bike rack fiasco, just not getting going, and then the wonderful town of Galax. We were kinda hoping for a better day as far as getting to HHI.

Trying to recall if there was anything monumental on the trip there - other than gas being down under $2.49 / gallon on the highway at one point - that's when we filled up.

Found a Starbucks on the way - that's always good.

Stopped at a crazy, crazy McDonalds- at 12:00.

Bad idea - but all things considered, trip was good.

And, we're here - at HHI.

More later

Galax.

So, the Mexican restaurant, is in a town called Galax.

And by town, we mean Hickville.

The food was fantastic, price was ok, wait staff didn't speak English, but that's to be expected.


This is a Friday night, and there is maybe 5 tables filled out of a lot. We ask ourselves, why.

On the way out, we get a clue.

With the thickest of southern and hickish talk...

"Well, you'd think afta 4 years in prision, hed'a learnt his lessin."

Oh, no - they didn't go there.

Laughing back to the hotel, we realize that we'd like something to drink, and we stop at the 2nd (W) of the trip.

Enter the twilight zone.

This place was beyond bizzare.

There were all sorts of hicks/miscreants/and general back woods individuals there that scared the bejezus out of me.

It was something that when I got in the car, I just said "Drive, now!"

See, this only took me one visit to learn my lessin - not 4 years.

At this point, we just called it a day and headed on back, went to bed, and woke up for the next day.

And what a day.

Finally...

At about 6PM we finally roll into Hillsville, VA. Let me tell you - we couldn't have been happier. The hotel looks to be in great shape, the pool is awesome and it's easy to get to it.

Couldn't be greater.

We get all settled in and hit up the pool. Kids are excited cause we are going to be able to with High School Musical 2 as we get Disney Channel.

Somehow, we manage to talk them out of that and into going out to some little Mexican place for dinner.

Then, it get's interesting.

Truckers...

So, as we're driving along, along the many, many, many miles of interstate - a discussion pops up about truckers staring at you.

Abby's response - "I stare back!"

Isn't that exciting!

So, with the bikes falling off, in a construction zone, at 60 mph - we need to pull over. So, there's a emergency pull off in 1/4 mile, and we make it to that. Bikes still in tact and on the vehicle.

Seems that in the work zone, the bumpy drive caused the bike rack to dent the back of the van, and then get a little loose, and then disconnect all together except for the top two straps.

Tighten that up and we are on our way.

Until about 1 hour later, the rack has failed again. Maybe I don't have it setup right, but I don't think so. I think that it's design with the Enterprise is just a bad combination.

So, we pull off at the next exit available, and Lowes and behold, there's a Home Depot.

In. Buy straps. Out. Bike rack in the car, bikes on top, strapped down.

On our way.

This is getting crazy.

(Editor's note - we've managed to get Internet here @ the house, so I'll be able to get things up to speed sooner. Only problem is that it's in one spot - in the bedroom - not outside, or in the living room/kitchen.)

To take or not to take...

So, the debate raged on about taking the bikes, not taking the bikes. What we're going to do is rent a bike for Boo for the week.

Puts us around 8:20 or so.... so much for getting out of here early...

This turns out to be a good decision about 120 miles or so later.

But first, we need to get gas and a power converter for the car - guess we forgot to take care of that before hand.

So, after we spend around 1/2 hour or so at (W) and getting gas -we're on our way.

Kids are watching a movie, M & S are chatting - waiting for the GPS to make a turn - the only thing that it's been good for so far is telling us when we are off course! We're finally on our way and we get just to the west of Pittsburgh - when I realize that the music we've acquired over the past several weeks is not on the laptop that we are using. Wasting all the time we put into in. As M & S are "discussing" the situation, Boo chimes in that "the bikes are falling off."

!!!

The vacation begins.

So, where do we start with this trip - let's try at the beginning.

Everything this morning was going well - the kids were all up on time and ready to go. We were ready to go. And we still had 1/2 hour till we wanted to leave.

That was the best it would be for a while.

Getting the bike rack on the minivan, that was going to be a different story. The rack wouldn't quite sit right on back of the back door, and it was getting more and more difficult to make it stay where we wanted it to. We have three bikes that we wanted to bring down to HHI. And, seeing that Bailey had her bike "stolen" yesterday, there was no way we weren't going to bring it. Well, that changed and as such, her bike is still sitting in North East.

Onward - more later.