What Happens When You Vacation With A Fellow Blogger? (Part I)

My trip started quite a bit before the others'. Well, it was only a figurative trip, sliding down the slippery slope of my ego. I begged and pleaded, cajoled and cried. And I got the car. That was imperative, because B~M's father had set a mile limit, and the [undisclosed location] fell a few miles out of it's radius.

But, finally, with my hard-earned car, and my harder-earned passengers, we were off. Well, no, it wasn't that simple. As Bad4 warns us , B~M doesn't take kindly to waking up at unearthly hours. Neither did our other passenger, (a blog-lurker who will be called BL from now on). Good 'ol SD woke everyone up though, so all was good. 

It was about 9:25, only one hour late, that we pulled away from BL's house. We were armed with two different sets of directions, and Peshy . We were confident that we would not be getting lost, nor would we be having any trouble finding anything. My father always says, "In war, overconfidence breeds disaster." Apparently, that goes for vacations too. 

We learned the hard way. It was 10:00 and we were no closer to getting anywhere than we had been at 9:25. When 10:15 came and went, and we were still going in circles, we realized that it was time to start getting some real info. BL called her brother, who snorted and told us to ignore two sets of directions and our friend Peshy and go the other way. Oh, gee! How silly of us to blindly follow all these directions...

Once we realized that there were two bloggers and an avid blog-reader experiencing this trip together, things went from exciting to even more exciting. Suddenly we were arguing over each and every occurrence. "Who gets to blog it?" SD was composing blog posts in her head, and sharing them with her passengers. Bas~Melech was countering with her own blog post ideas. 

By the time we reached our destination, our blog-lurking friend had enough. "If I had a blog, and were writing a post about this trip, it would say 'SD and Bas~Melech spent the entire trip planning their blog posts.'" Sadly, she wouldn't be exaggerating all that much. 

Well, thanks to, or should I say in spite of, our deluge of directions, we arrived safe and sound at [undisclosed location]. In we went, happily anticipating the blog-post-fodder that we'd gain from a wondrous place such as the one we were at. Our joyous smiles lasted about three minutes, or as long as it took for us to realize that it was not an optical illusion, and that the line really DID stretch back around the other side of the room and up the stairs and around the pillars. Luckily for us, they were in the process of showing their once-hourly outdoor show just as we settled in to wait on line. Unluckily for us, the show ended before we even figured out that it had started.

So, lacking something to look at, our conversation, naturally, reverted back to blogs. (Is there really something else to talk about? Gosh! Why didn't anyone TELL me?) Bas~Melech was happily participating in our conversation for the first fifteen seconds, or as long as it took for someone to come stand behind us in line. Bas~Melech took one look at the frum lady and her 12 kids that had materialized behind us, and turned a brilliant shade of green. "Will you STOP THAT right now!" She asked through clenched teeth. Understandably, Bas~Melech, who is a true Bas Melech in real life, did not want to give off any mistaken impressions about her refinement. 

So, we managed to divert our conversation momentarily, as we made the most important decision of our lives. (Thus far.) Do we pay the extra $4.50 for the IMAX? After much deliberation, and a little bit of counting out quarters and dimes, we were came to the definitive conclusion that we were going to see the IMAX. At that point, it was our turn to pay. B~M was happy to discover that her student ID would save her $1 on her admission. SD was happy to inform her that if she'd go there daily, it would only take two or three or twenty years for her college tuition to pay for itself.

Then came the best part. I soon realized that going to [undisclosed location] with a teacher is awesome. Bas~Melech could barely contain her enthusiasm. While SD and BL were eagerly trying out some interactive exhibit, Bas~Melech was happily reading the explanations to anyone and everyone who would listen. And if the [undisclosed location] didn't explain things well enough, Bas~Melech was happy to explain further. And I have to say it really worked. I came away from this trip with a far greater understanding of how a teacher's mind works than I ever did before.

We paraded around the [undisclosed location] with an air of delight.Who cares if the place was a mob scene? Who cares if there were enough frum people there to have separate chassidish, litvish, and sefardi mincha minyanim running constantly in the front? We were there to have FUN. 

When we walked in, the general agreement between B~M and myself was that we would post the actual name of the place we went to, unless we met someone we know. You can imagine my dismay, therefore, about an hour into our stay, when we hear a loud voice calling from across the room. "Oh, hi there Bas~Melech! I haven't seen you in a while!" Sigh. Then of course, her companion smiled at me. "Oh, it's you SD! What's going on?" what's going on? I'll tell you what's going on. I just lost my ability to write a proper blog post, thank you very much. What's going on with YOU?

The rest of the day proceeded pretty smoothly, or at least it did until we settled into the comfortable seats of the IMAX. That's when SD discovered the wifi. And, probably not coincidentally, that's when B~M got angry. "BL, can you grab that thing from her?" She said, just as I was knee-deep in unread emails. "Absolutely NOT!" I countered. "I've been feeling out of 'touch' all day. I finally got wifi!" Poor BL, sitting in the middle of us, was too jealous to act impartially. "Can I PLEASE check my email?" Some people, so tied to their email... So I signed myself out of gmail an handed my precious toy over to BL, one seat closer to the evil clutches of the sacrilege of B~M, who showed an absolute disregard for the feelings of something FAR more more important than Peshy. 

Luckily, the IMAX started before things got too heated. And luckily for me, Bas~Melech was two seats away and didn't notice that I checked my email during the show. Or that when they had a link on the screen, I checked out if it was a real link or not. (C'mon Bas~Melech! Don't kill me now! You KNOW I wouldn't be able to enjoy the show if I couldn't check if the link was legit! It was, btw.)

We wandered around the [undisclosed location] for another while, thoroughly enjoying the commentary from our resident teacher, until the place had the audacity to close. 

So we headed to our car, paid the obscene price to release it from the evil clutches of the valet parking service, who had parked it but refused to retrieve it, and then charged extra for the hour we spent looking for the car, and finally left.