On the Road: Part 1

Writing from the Jagadhir Road a motel room in Waynesboro, Virginia on the fourth? . . . no, fifth . . . day of our trip.  L and M are in Baltimore, leaving for New York in the morning.

L decided before we left that it was a bad idea to make the drive in three days and risk taking me into the first alumni event on just a few hours’ rest, so instead we did it in two grinding sixteen-hour days of driving.  About the only things worth noting were when we stopped for lunch the first day at an Italian joint in Mount Pleasant, Texas that turned out unexpectedly to be run by a Kosovar couple, and on the second day I did not get lost on the Kentucky parkway system and go to Tennessee by mistake, as I did the last time.  Quinn decided to help things along by bucking whenever she was put under load at low RPMs (mostly in overdrive), and making an awful valve-clattery noise when she was wound up over 3,000 RPM (i.e., any time we were accelerating).  It made some uncomfortable motoring in the hills of West Virginia, but at least the weather was nice the whole way.

We got to Bunrab’s house after ten on Thursday night, fell into bed almost at once, and got up barely in time for lunch on Friday, which we had with Kelly and her boyfriend Larry.  We fooled the afternoon away until it was time to go to L’s alumni cocktail party, at which point the weather made up for its previous niceness with a drenching, blustery thunderstorm that reduced traffic to a crawl.  Even with the rain, though, we were on time for the party which was rather smaller than I remembered.  I think the weather discouraged a lot of people from coming out.  The drinks were adequate and the food was very good, and L visited with various friends and siblings’ friends until time for the cabaret performance to start at seven.

The cabaret was all Park School alumni performing, and they were mostly good, but with enough clunkers to remind you this wasn’t a professional gig.  One guy, who was to “perform” music that he’d written for a video game (this is what he does for a living), never could get all his hardware sorted out and had to give up in the end.  They all got done and out by ten, and we drove back across from Brooklandville to Bunrab’s condo in Columbia.

Next time:  the reunion proper, and I start to chase trains.