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Life On The Magic Bus
Chapter 9, Part 1: Across America At Random
Doc makes a case
Grace surprises
4/10/2014 4:45 pm
Doc Clay was reading his email when he suddenly let out a loud “Hot Damn! Yes!”
Grace, Lucy, Sasha, and Flash all looked up from their own reading and gave him varying degrees of the same curious but wary stare.
“What now?”, Grace asked.
“Phil Lacewood just suggested a totally cool idea for all of us driving from the West Coast to GenCon this year: a daily route chosen by our followers on various social media!”
“Sounds like fun!”, Lucy exclaimed with her usual optimistic joy.
Flash, the cat, looked up and said, “Adventure? I’m in!”, then went back to texting his girlfriend
“Cool! We can see lots of stuff.”, said Sasha, who was still an innocent pup where Doc’s plans were concerned.
Grace just looked at Doc and said “A totally random route? Hmm…go on.”
Having been given the spousal green light, Doc continued.
“So, we would leave at sun up 8 days before the con. Every night, our internet buddies would vote on a few submitted routes for the next day. Winning route is the one we take. The ground rules are that routes have to always lead toward the con in Baltimore, and the roads have to be paved. Aside from that, they need to allow for driving no more than 12 hours, including at least 3 hours of stopping. Oh, and we will have to stop at certain places for photos and to buy a souvenir. It should be hella fun!”
Having been through nearly 40 years of “hella fun” plans, Grace gave this about a 75% chance of actually being “hella fun”. Still, considering all the things she had done in her life that had far less chance of success, she decided to give it a go.
“Okay, we’ll give this mad idea a try, but you tell Phil that I haven’t forgotten the scavenger hunt at GenCon 1994.”
Doc did a fair job of looking shocked and wounded.
“Aw, baby, that was a whole different thing. It would have turned out perfectly fine if the Milwaukee police hadn’t overreacted.”
“Overreacted? You were all stealing hubcaps! You had to hide in a tree for 3 hours and Phil jumped into the river to get away. One other guy hid in a dumpster most of the night!”
“We were going to put those hubcaps back at some point.”
“MmmHmmm”
Everyone in the room, including the dogs & cat, who were now pretending to watch an exciting commercial on television, knew that “MmmHmmm” was Gracespeak for “Better change the subject”.
Doc blinked and quickly launched into a speech about how fun it would be to get off the interstate and maybe, just maybe, see a few roadside attractions that they might have missed in years past.
Lucy let out a laugh. “And that sound you just heard was the other shoe dropping. He’s gonna use this trip to write another series for Roadside Attraction Quarterly.”
Doc looked at Lucy with fake anger. “Laugh it up, girl, but money is money. And a tax write-off. Now, I’m off to start getting things ready for the trip. It’s only 16 weeks away!”
After he left the room, Grace and the Critters looked at each other.
“I’m not being critical, Mom”, Sasha said, “but you gave in to Daddy pretty easily.”
“Well,” Grace sighed, “we are 11 weeks out from the first anniversary of Winker’s death. That’s going to hit us all hard, but him most of all. This will keep him occupied before and busy after that day, so it will be good for him. Besides, on a scale of “Problem Free” to “Mom Breaks Dad Out Of A Soviet Gulag”, this is about a probable “Not As Bad As It Could Have Been.”
The Critters deferred to the Mom Unit’s experience on these matters, then went back to their reading.
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