Here I am, in a motel room listening to music on my computer. I have just gotten out of the shower, my hair is wet and I have nothing to dry it with. I'm wearing the same clothes as I was wearing earlier, minus the tank top, so now i have my plaid blouse and doll shirt, with my skirt and legging. I took my legg warmers off. No socks! Alas I have my lovely computer with me but am lacking the right amount of internet sustinence sufficient enough to keep me sane through this....... CRAZY day. I know I ask for an adventure but I don't remember asking to be stressed for so long! Here's how it all went down...
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Last night I went to bed early as to get up at 3:30 in the morning to catch the 5:15 ferry from Dukepoint to Tswassen. I would like to say I got a fair night's sleep considering I fell asleep at around 10:00pm last night (which I haven't been able to do for nearly over a year now). So I woke up at about 3:15 from a nightmare that included me sleeping in a bed to find someone trying to break into my room which (in the dream) was in a basement. It turned out the burglar was just a friend of mine. Anyways, so I decided, about 3 mins before my alarm would go off, that I was going to get up and get ready as fast as I could so we weren't all mad at eachother later... So I went into the bathroom and started to wash my hair then did most of my morning routines, drying my hair, washing my face, etc. It was when it came to my clothes that I started to have problems. Apparently my black hoody had a giant splotch of egg yolk on it..... it was on the inside but it was best to clean it anyways. So I cleaned that and put the rest of my clothes on, but several things happened... my box of jewlery and junk fell on the ground dad couldn't find the cat food so I tried to help him find some upstairs but no luck. Then I also had to straighten my hair and all that jazz, and I couldn't find good socks but I just snagged whatever. I could hear mom yelling from downstairs that the catfood was down there and she sounded mad at both dad and I even though I had only looked for about 15 seconds upstairs and hadn't even gone downstairs yet. Apparently dad had already gone to the truck his friend had lent us to wait for us, by the time I was downstairs mom was stressed and freaking out at me for taking too long. There were some problems with having to go back upstairs and getting my hoody that I'd stuck in the drier and to turn off all the lights upstairs. I grabbed my laptop and stuck it in my bag. We went outside to get to the truck but mom's ankle got injured yesterday while she was walking and the truck was at the bottom of our driveway so she got even more ticked off. After mom getting scared that dad might run her over with the truck, we went in and there was some arguing that we were late even though we still had about half an hour and then some to get to the ferry and wait. Mom noticed the bag of medication in the truck and said "Tonny! what are you thinking!? They're going to think that those are drugs!!" just adding more to the stress and dad, getting angry just stopped the truck. Finally we got going again with more arguing on the way trying to put the blame on people and mom freaking out about dad's driving into the other lane even though at one point there was no reason to get annoyed about it because he meant to go into that lane, then she continued to try and put the blame on one of us for why we were going to be late when finally I just snapped and said "you know what! stop trying to put the blame on someone and at least hope we get there in time instead! you're being negative!" then after afew more times of them trying to put the blame on others I repeated myself again. Man, they can be cranky if they don't get sleep... At last, we made it in time for the 5:15 ferry and everyone was happy, but mom tried to place the blame one more time... but that was the last time. We got a newspaper from a german lady selling them car to car at the ferry terminal as we waited 20 mins.
At last we made it onto the ferry and took the elevator up to the passenger deck due to mom's ankle problem. We had breakfast (I had waffles!) and just had fun talking then went to go sit in the front of the boat until we had to get off, and then back to the truck.
Now, let me tell you about the truck... it was government owned before-hand so it's this really gross bluish green color so it sticks out like a sore thumb. It's very cramped, even upfront. It even has a back seat but the seat is facing another one so I could just turn my head to the left and see traffic behind us and I had very little room with a whole whack of stuff in the back with me, but somehow I managed to take a pillow, rest it in my lap and rest my head on the pillow. And amazingly I was able to fall asleep for afew hours.... afew painful hours though....
But before I fell asleep we had made it to Nomansland which is my favorite place because it's really grassy smile and you can use either canadian or american currency, it doesn't matter. After that I think I might have fallen asleep, which at this present moment in time would be nice, but I want to finish this story before I fall asleep.
Eventually I woke up and we were on the Hi 5 in America. And we missed our turn.... twice. This is when I realised how AGRESSIVE americans are when they drive!!! I honestly was scared. You can't try to sneak into another lane without someone trying to keep you in yours. It's like a giant competition out there. At least in Canada we have some road courtesy... this... this was just scary. American driving... is horrible! I admire those who are brave enough to drive on those roads. Anyways, soon we found ourselves sooo lost we didn't even know where we had come from or where we were going, as our map that guided us was OLD. After making about 37 wrong turns we finally made it to our destination... and found our new car. That is what this whole trip was about in the first place. To get our new used car to the border. At the place where our car was kept, there was a man who gave out these bright orange safety vests, he had white hair and seemed to be in his 60's and he always shook his head but he was really nice. But dad forgot to get mom and I some vests so we couldn't go out of the car for safety reasons. There were semi trucks everywhere. We asked him to get us some vests when he came back from checking out the car from the office. He came back but apparently only the old man handing out the vests could give them to him. So mom and I waited in the car for a while, but mom got impatient and told me she was getting out but I told her to be more patient and to wait til dad came back with the vests. Finally we could go out and see our new car. It's alot of work to go in and out of that truck.
After checking out the car we had to go get it temporarily insured, but dad couldn't remember all the directions the man had given him to get to the insurance place so guess what happened... that's right. We go lost again. But it's strange, for some reason, for the whole ride from the new car to Mcdonalds where dad got annoyed and decided to stop, I wasn't there for any of it. I remember us driving out of the place holding our car... but after that I couldn't remember any of it, as if my mind and body were in completely different places the whole time. Apparently I came back when dad said he was sick and tired and decided to go to Mcdonalds. Which was insanely dirty.... it had latino workers, and even the kitchen looked like it was mexican, at least from what I can remember a mexican kitchen looks like. but the people were really nice. Mom had problems flushing the toilet though so I had to go in and take something off the sensor. We got out of McD's and asked a trucker(cuz they know these places better than anyone) how to get to the insurance place. I decided I would write down the directions instead of trying to memorize them like dad was doing. We had already asked enough for directions and struggled with the old map... which dad insisted was not that old. Well it turned out writing stuff down was a good idea after all, we made it just fine. Dad went in and then I followed about 10 mins after. There was an African American man in there talking on a cell phone as loud as he could! You know those stereotypical Black people they show in the movies? The ones who always die first or are the comic relief?? Yeah, he was just like that! I always just thought it was a Hollywood stereotype but it turns out they really do exist which is kinda nice to know. It made me happy. We got the insurance and filled out the papers and went on our way. But.... we couldn't find our way back..... Once again we were hoplessly and utterly LOST. No matter how many directions we asked we just couldn't get back to the car. We asked a lady at a convenience store, who gave very vague answers to directions. We asked a fellow latino man who's nick name was "Lalo" (which I found was a great name and is short for Edwardo), he was very nice but he got his roads mixed up and instead of sending us to WEST Marginal he sent us to EAST Marginal, where we asked some welders how to get to west marginal in which case...
We were on the wrong side of the river.
Thanks to the welder's we got onto the right side of the river and found ourselves on West Marginal, but we couldn't find the correct street, for the reasons why we were lost were because dad always just turned wherever without putting much thought into it. At least this time we told him to stay on the street... oh we stayed on it... and ended up having no choice but to take a right turn onto a FREEWAY. This had happened so many times today that it was just getting ridiculous. Luckly I remembered which way we had came and we were able to turn off and come around back to the way we came. We stopped again for directions (which we had so many of that day). Someone was nice enough to actually PRINT OUT a map for us!! We made it back to the car and got some vests from the nice man again. Mom and I got in the car and started to test it out. It needed gas and it had flat tires. We thought that maybe we could get it filled up at a station right beside the area the car was kept. But it turned out that was for semi trucks and what not. So dad once again asked for directions, and we started to make our way to the nearest gas station where we filled up and pumped the tires. I even got to drive the car abit! .... after mom used the washroom in the convenience store.
Okay, so now we needed to find a way to a motel, because by this time we had wasted a WHOLE day being lost and had no time to get the car to the border. So we got more directions and headed out... but again... we took MORE WRONG TURNS!! This time it was scary because dad was using the truck and mom and I were in the small car....
ON AN AMERICAN HIGHWAY.
That was stressful! I had to yell several times for mom to take chances because those american drivers... oh man... they give NO chances, so you have to take whatever you can get!! Man what an adrenaline rush... not the good kind for me either... you know the kind you get that scares the living h*ll out of you cuz you're not in control or meaning for anything to happen.... yeah.... it was intense. But whenever we lost dad we would find him on the side of the road waiting for us, so it was okay.
We were lost again though so we decided to get out of the car and go for dinner. Turns out, the place we were going to go to wasn't so good.... the people were scary and the restaurant was majorly run down, so we left suddenly but not after dad got MORE directions.... which you guessed....
We got lost again.
And once again we were on the scary highway OF DOOM. I swear if I weren't wigging I'd have been crying. But it was for the better, instead we found a nice motel that seemed somewhat safer than the other places since the last person we took directions from told us not to stay around there cuz it was dangerous.
After arriving here I thought I'd leave my laptop under the pillow as we were going to go out to dinner at some diner up the street. But mom talked me into taking it with me incase someone came into the room and found it. So we headed out on our way to dinner. So you think the excitement ended when we showed up at the motel right? WRONG. As we were turning left, dad didn't notice that there was an orange line and almost went into the opposite lane... meaning oncoming traffic!! But then I screamed and he realised that he was turning into the wrong section of the road so he fixed it. Then after that everything was fine.... except my nerves but that's nothing afew years of counselling won't solve.
......hopefully.
You know I like american's, all day they have been nothing but kind to us even if we said we were from canada.... but i'm scared of their driving. I hope I will never again have to deal with that.... EVER!!!!
Well now it's time to crash as it is 11:21 PM and my battery is at 7%... (they shut off my plug in...) ciao!
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Writer's Note: This was a while ago... i didn't get around to posting it nor did i get around to write day two of this horrible trip
Itchy Gonzalles Community Member |
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