road trip from hell (m)

Saturday.  Hockey game out in western MA.  A simple, straight shot on the Mass Pike.  We should be there in under 3 hours.

However, my husband suggests we bring his roommate from Dartmouth and his wife with us. By the way, we're picking them up along Route 2.

Route 2?  Route 2 is the long way.  Rural backroads.  My husband says this will be fun.  It's a beautiful clear day and we'll see "scenic vistas."  Who talks like that?

Whatever.  We head out, take the wrong turn to pick them up, have to learn to use On Star with the new car (the "bus") to find out where the BJ's is off Route 2 (our meeting place).   We scoop them up and I change seats as we are going "Italian-style" (men in front, women in the back) and head west.  We cross through mountains. We pass streams.  The road curves; there are hairpin turns.  My WASP husband is reveling in the "scenic vistas."  I'm about to throw up.

At the two-hour mark, people get hungry.  No time to stop according to my husband.  I look down and see my bag from Weight Watchers.  It's got my new purchases in it: almond nut bars (new product) and dark chocolate raspberry bars.  I reluctantly offer them to the group.  They inhale them, proclaiming them to be "excellent."  The wife, B, is back to a size 8.  She goes up to a size 14 and then comes back down.  I've seen this movie multiple times.  She has several closets worth of clothes because she has to cover the range.

We arrive just in time for the game.  Two hours later, the game is over and my favorite part comes: hugging Sam.  We told him the route we took and he said, "Why?  That way makes me sick with all those curves and hairpin turns."

We stop for dinner on the way home (I had haddock en papillote--very good and healthy.  Must learn to make it).  The wife, B, has 4 glasses of wine.  She and I take the front seat on the way home.  The men sleep in the back.  She's blitzed and drops the f-bomb in every sentence.  I count how many times she uses it as a verb...a noun....and an adjective.  It's a lot.  She asks me FIVE TIMES what I'm doing tomorrow.  My knee starts to hurt.  I imagine the live operator from On Star listening in horror to this conversation.  Then, I hear a noise from the back of the car...my husband is eating the last of my new pack of Weight Watchers bars.

Three hours later, we are home.  Harrison takes one look at me and says, "Uh, oh.  You look rough."

Scenic vistas, my ass.