but officer, i only slammed an 18 pack...

travelling the twisty, hairpin-turned roads 300 feet above the raging river through kern canyon every other week is generally a fun, exciting experience in driving - especially when i take Adalwolf the BMW.  this last weekend, however...not so much.

the main problem in driving this canyon isn't necessarily all of the psychological crap you are bombarded with along the way.  things such as narrow, winding roads or the fact that the south side of the road has, in some cases, a shoulder no greater than 6 inches of dirt up against a sheer wall of rock rising hundreds of feet above, while the north side has some serious free fall areas with no guardrails and a river, flanked by plenty of giant boulders, thrashing hundreds of feet below.  it's not even the unnerving sight of various crosses erected for those people who haven't made it safely through the canyon in the past; although this has never failed to bother me in the 4 years i've been driving it.  the main problem in driving this canyon is simply other drivers.

some people, known affectionately - and sometimes not - as flatlanders, are either unfamiliar with or simply terrified by the road and crawl up it, hugging the center line, occasionally threatening to (albeit, slowly) remove your side view mirror upon passing you. these people generally respond to a flash of bright lights behind them and pull over into one of the many turnouts designed for people that just want to enjoy the scenery (of which there is plenty and it is stunning).  some flatlanders - generally older ones that are just stubborn, or those that  caravan with 5 other cars and - how do i say this without offending anyone - might not be able to read and/or understand the language of the signs along the road that read "slower vehicles use turnouts" - refuse to pull over and have been known to pull a train of 15 cars all the way up the mountain, warranting road rage and dangerous passing maneuvers, to say the least.

even worse than these people, though, is the guy (or gal) leaving a bar somewhere on a friday night, 15 sheets to the wind and needing to get to the other side of the canyon. i have suspected drunk drivers only a couple of times in my travels along ANY road and only once before in this particular canyon. the guy i came up behind last friday night had to have been so completely plowed that the fact he had been able to recognize his car in the parking lot, start it, put it into drive and make it to the mouth of the canyon, was simply amazing.

when i first came up behind the blue minivan, i had just entered the canyon, heading east and was cursing my luck to have gotten stuck behind a slowby right off the bat.  it was just dusk and this guy was driving no more than 15 mph and hugging the right side of the road.  weird, but i just figured he was more terrified of going over the cliff to the north than he was of sheering off the right side of his van against the wall of rock to the south.  i held back patiently - yea, i know...whoa - and gave him the opportunity to find a turnout and pull over before i got all up in his grill to let me by.  while behind him, i had seen him cross the center line a couple of times, but just figured he was cutting a corner here and there - no biggie i do it all the time.  he passed by two turnouts with no indication of pulling over so i flashed him with my brights to let him know i wasn't exactly patient by nature and i expected to be able to fully experience the beauty that is driving Adalwolf on a road like this.  sometimes if i flash someone they get all pissy and slow down even further - whatever, i really have no time for the passive-agressiveness of others, i'm generally too consumed with my own...this guy, however, took off like a shot.  he left me in the dust, which i generally take as a personal slap, but as he took off i noticed that he was swerving back and forth, alternating driving in the dirt and miraculously missing the rock wall on the right with crossing over the center line to the left. i immediately started chanting his license plate number out loud to myself while looking for a cell signal to find that i had absolutely none.  i kept redialing 911, thinking i would eventually hit an emergency-calls-only pocket and i sped up a bit, trying to keep this guy in my sights, but also keeping enough distance that i wouldn't slam into him around some blind turn if he decided to stop in the middle of the road.

at this point i had two other cars behind me that i'm sure were putting skin-eating curses on me because i wouldn't pull over to let them go by.  hey, maybe they hadn't seen this dirtbag up there and didn't know what they would run into, so good-samaritan shawna took it upon herself to save the world and did something that average shawna would NEVER do and hogged the road.  having gone about 8 or 9 miles up the road, still with no cell signal, i came up on this guy doing 15 miles an hour again.  this time i fell back because i didn't want to make him take off again.  it didn't matter, he punched it again, veered off the shoulder to his right spewing gravel and dirt, as i watched him take these turns with absolutely no indication that he even owned brakes, let alone knew how to use them.  a total of about 10 cars had passed me going the opposite direction by this time and i kept thinking "THANKYOUGOD" every time i saw one pass safely...at this point there was really no doubt in my mind that this guy would not make it all the way through the canyon without driving off the edge himself or sending another car in that same direction.

by the time my 911 call went through i had probably traveled 15 of the 20 or so miles that make up the really dangerous stretch of this road...i pulled over when i had the signal and told the operator what i had seen.  i gave her my info and the info of the blue van and she said they would broadcast it to the CHP on either end of the canyon and take care of the problem.  i started slowly up the road again, drove about a half of a mile and came around a blind curve to see a huge suburban sprawled across both sides of the road, completely crushed along it's entire left side. oh shit. bad yes, but people were getting out and standing in the road and no one was screaming - i'm thinking at this point they probably weren't fully aware that if they had been driving a smaller, lighter car they would have been shot off the the cliff to the north, but my guess is that it came to them before too much time had passed.

i pulled up to them, asked if everyone was ok and if it had been the blue van...they weren't sure if they were hurt, but thought not and said the van had taken off after crossing over the center line and sideswiping them them.  i pulled off to the right and called 911 again to report the accident.  still talking to the 911 operator, i started up the road again, turned two corners and almost hit the blue van.  it had obviously stopped of it's own accord and was just left where it died - half on the road, half off.  i stopped behind it and told the operator what i saw and she wanted me to look and see if anyone was still in there...uhhh no, not gonna do it - wouldn't be prudent.  i told her that the tires were blown, the windows were shattered, the entire left side was crushed in and the right was up against the mountain.  i told her that i couldn't see anyone in it, but also didn't see how he could have gotten out, and then informed her that i was a complete wiener and was definitely not getting out to check for sure. she very politely thanked me anyway and let me go about my shaken, needing a shot of crown way.  thankfully i was only about 20 miles from my destination and that shot of crown would be more than likely waiting for me when i got there.

i found out the next day that the driver had fled his vehicle after it crashed and that they called in helicopters to try to find him, but that it was too dark and they'd had no luck.  i still don't know anything else about whether they found him yet or not - what i do know is that i had dodged a bullet myself and i was extremely thankful for that.

pics from the coast...

over the river and through the woods: the 4th act

sunday night we left braden to destroy---er, i mean, spend the night at---leaf's house and headed over to my gram's for a bit of a visit and to pick up that coffee table i was so totally taking from her. i called ahead to see if she needed anything or wanted something to eat - she asked for matches. [whoa, wait...matches? has my little bent-over grandmother, having lived in humboldt county for all of about two months, already developed a hankering for puffin' the fatty?] ok, matches it is...but only because we have to stop anyway for some electrical tape to fix the pesky side-view mirror that i ripped off a couple of years ago backing out of the garage, that was now banging annoyingly against my door, because the super-glue i used to hold it in place had balked at the torrential downpours of humboldt county, . i convince the runts that we should wait for food until we have finished our visit with gram (never know, might catch a contact high and the food will taste even better.).

she is waiting for us in the great room, cozied up to the fire on a couch with the local Sub-Standard paper, chatting with some ladies that were wrapping up a cutthroat game of follow-the-bitch. of course, she had to introduce us to them and she couldn't remember bennett's name (the funny part is that when i told him we were going to visit her, he said, "mom, i bet she doesn't even know who i am anymore". the other funny thing is that he has the exact same name as her dearly departed husband of some 60+ years.) i pointed and laughed at him behind her back and then she went scooting off to introduce us to an elderly hispanic man (oh yea, my grams digs the dark guys) who was sitting approximately 4 inches from a giant tv that had been muted. not sure if he was a lip-reader that couldn't see very well or if he just assumed that his hearing had taken a turn for the worse...regardless he was intently watching a show about the family structure of the meerkat - which just happened to include mating habits and conception, eek.

the old guy, upon being introduced, pulls me aside to inform me that my gram is constantly flirting with him and that he has to keep an eye on her. omg, this is SO my gram - she got tossed from her previous retirement "village" for perpetuating a sordid rumor involving the 50-something groundskeeper and the (way, as in 80+) older chick across the hall. something about him moving in with this other lady, while pining away for my gram in silence. i know it doesn't make much sense, but this is the same gram that gasps and asks me about blowjobs - "they really want you to do THAT with your mouth?" - i can't explain her...i just have to love her. so anyway, i told him to watch his back or my gram would probably try to grab it and then we went upstairs to visit for a bit.

she started to talk about the "incident" at her old place and i managed to steer the conversation elsewhere despite the fact that my girl wanted all the gory details. ugh. we stayed for about an hour and then she blatantly hit on my man saying she was "very pleased to meet you and i hope i get to see alot more of you". she's such a horndog.

over the river and through the woods: section C

the motel we stayed in in eureka was another 2-star-er in my old AAA book, again with the "free continental breakfast" for which we weren't holding out any high hopes. it was downtown - which is a nice way of saying that there was sure to be sleeping transients within 20 feet in any direction, not to mention the, ahem...ladies of the night. (a humboldt hooker should definitely be at the top of your list of Things to Do Before I Die [eek! i mean SEE...should definitely be at the top of your list of Things to SEE Before I Die. if you still want to DO then go for it, but it may very well be the last thing you manage to cross off, so personally, i'd put it towards the bottom of the list.] there is just nothing quite like it anywhere else. it's a very natural [read: totally granola] area where the bathing and the shaving of one's body are ritualistic pressures laid upon us by the man and sometimes actually scoffed upon. oh, and evidently teeth are not necessarily necessary either). the chick behind the motel counter tells me to be sure and park in the lighted, covered parking area...not that, you know, it's not a safe neighborhood or anything. it's just that SHE wouldn't park out on the street, and neither should i. ok, good enough...i can take a hint.

keeping in mind that i am basically an honest person, i lied like a rug about how many people we had staying in our room. i am not about to pay an extra $10 per person, per night or shell out another benjamin for another room so a couple of kids can actually sleep on beds. i figure they are lucky i even like them enough to allow them to sleep on the floor and breathe my motel room air...they certainly aren't getting their own room. this place was much nicer than the previous night's motel, lots of body-sprawling floor space and a tv that was actually bigger than my purse. everyone slept well and we awoke fresh and ready for a day of FOOTBALL with the mcbirdie clan. we had wanted to go out to the beach first, but gee...oddly enough, it was raining. huh, who knew?

[side note: humboldt county is an absolutely gorgeous place of huge redwoods and beautiful exotic-looking plants...lush greenery almost everywhere you look. as with most everything, there is a reason for this - they get something insane like 7 feet of rain per year. oh yea, it's pretty, but dang do you pay the price]

i sent the kids down to the "free continental breakfast" in twos with instructions to not talk to the other pair, so you know, no one would know they were together and therefore here illegally. deportation at this point would have put a serious kink in our plans...turns out that this place actually had a nice breakfast. waffle maker with pre-measured little cups of batter, biscuits and a crock-pot full of yummy country sausage, cereals, oatmeal, breads, muffins, fruit, juices, again with the lukewarm coffee, but hey who's keeping track? everyone had a bit of something (even little-miss-picky-pants brynn) and with a warning phone call, we were off to la casa de mcbride.

playoffs weekend...those damn undefeated patriots were playing in the first game of the day, my beloved packers in the second. leaf and her family were kind enough to allow us to invade her lovely, clean, quiet home for the day. the kids all paired - or tripled - off and stayed outta our hair for the most part. braden had to be threatened a couple of times as he was, on occasion, being particularly braden and making people want to throw him off a bridge. or hit him - whatever. the girls went for walks and got muddy, the boys pretty much stayed upstairs in front of the ps2 all day. we ate yummy whore's-derves and just vegged with my leaf and her man. oh and leaf got sick to her stomach - well that's what she said anyway. it did happen right about dinner time, so she may have just wanted us OUT. heh heh heh...i did manage to forget a kid at her house that night. score one me.

over the river and through the woods: part deux

as requested by my friend fleck - cheese grill, keep (or go put) yer panties on...you're asking for two posts within a 12 hour period.

hmmm...let's see where did i leave off? oh, ok - 7 peeps (at least 5 of them them rather smelly) crammed into my suburban headed into snow country (read: closed windows - again with the smelly) over one of the most remote highways in the country; meaning very curvy roads, no cell service, no bathrooms and !gasp! no fresh coffee (generally i take a thermos of coffee when i travel, as my name is shawna and i am a caffeine addict, and i had left my house the previous evening with one [strangely, it happened to fall over and drain all over my carpet about 20 mins into our drive] and we stopped at a convenience store to refill it. somehow...amazingly, it got broked. no one knows how, all i can tell you is that i went to fill it with my free lukewarm "continental" coffee the next morning and it made this disturbing rattling noise. to top it off this was a mr. coffee carafe/thermos TREASURE i had gotten at the thrift store for...yes, 89 cents. dammit, this is why we can't have anything nice.)

so anyway - really nothing too exciting about this leg unless you consider nauseated children totally unprepared to play in the snow sinking into 5 foot drifts and almost falling off the side of a mountain while taking in the beauty of life that only a boy can know (yes, i mean peeing in the wilderness - standing tall, hands on hips, masters of all that they survey), a dead cammie battery (again, so me.) and then the re-situating of steaming wet children into a car already packed to the gills. we passed exactly three "shoe trees" - have you ever seen these? the ones where peeps throw their tied-together shoes up into a tree? can someone tell me why? - and five deer (OMG we are SO suburban...with the way most of us reacted to the deer, you would have thought that bigfoot, WITH the loch ness monster growing out of his ass, had stopped us on the side of the road to politely ask us directions to the nearest public toilet - bennett does get his props here, he looked up only once from his gameboy to ask disgustedly, "am i really related to you people?").

we got to humboldt county (oh yea..."wake & bake" country [not that i would know mom...whatever my older bro mark told you is a lie :-/ ] around 2ish and i realize that i don't have directions to my gram's place (she lives in a senior center, but i have no idea which one) so i set dale up with a pen and paper and instructions to write anything and everything i said that sounded even remotely necessary for finding my sweet gram. see, she tends to get rattled under pressure, she's new to the area and she rambles incessantly...add those together and you have a 25 minute phone conversation where all you really figure out is that you want to turn left at the red lion [which turns out shoulda been a right but you give her a break cause she's old.], the name of her street and that she does not live in the salvation army thrift store. really glad she cleared that up, because that would have just been weird. yes we found her, (despite her best efforts to get me hopelessly lost). hey, wait a minute...

she was waiting outside for us, freezing her brittle little bones off and immediately began to squeak - when she gets excited she makes this little noise like a puppy that is just beside itself with joy. so cute. she then proceeded to parade all 7 of us into the center's great room (by the way, i loved this room...huge blazing fireplace, lots of comfy couches and chairs, books, coffee, CRIBBAGE! - oh yea, when i'm old, and if i can remember, this is where i'm heading when the people i love can no longer can stand me.), introducing us to anyone who happened to be breathing (some were a tad questionable) and continued her squeaking. we stopped to check her mail and were practically run over by esther and her walker-posse as they headed down the corridor, three abreast, jockeying for position as the hallway narrowed. dale and my kids tromped up the stairs making sounds that vaguely resembled mating buffalo, as gram and i took the oh-so-achingly-slow elevator.

although she still has boxes everywhere, her apartment is small and cozy. we took over any and all available places to sit while she started to give us her things. this is what she does. she will direct you to something and tell you to just take it that she has no need for it. for example, she told me to take her coffee table (which i must admit is very cool and hell yea, i took it)...this would be the same coffee table that, at that particular moment, housed her computer and numerous plants, not to mention books and a bowl of cereal. yep, she has no need for that particular piece of furniture. at one point she told me to look at some tins she had been collecting and to take some with me. while i'm rummaging, i notice the variety of baggies sitting next the the group of tins. a kid was looking for one earlier and so, as i began digging through trying to find one the right size, she pushes her way in there and says: "no, not those shawna, i'm using those - i said the tins next to them". like i'm loading up my purse with her ziplocks. dammit, she had caught the tater.

we took her to an early dinner at hometown buffet (oh yea, only the best for my gram.) and everyone went their separate ways in search of goodness to put upon their plates. i followed her around for about 20 minutes carrying two plates as she loaded them up with a variety of things. (for the record, this chick can pack it away). after i got her settled in her seat with her mountains of food before her, she requested a "rut-beer" with no ice and she was a happy little (chatting - always with the chatting) clam. off i went in search of my own monster plate of food and i joined my little family in a savage flurry of fists and forks. after we ate so much we were all groaning, dale and i sat with my gram and bagged on people, while the kids ran across the mall for some...i dunno, crap of some sort. when we finally felt we could actually stand up and walk without barfing, we made our way back to the car and back to gram's house, being very careful not to hit any speed bumps or jostle our seatbelts in any way.

it had been a long, but very good day and we were ready for our beds...

'

over the river and through the woods: the first evening

took a road trip this past weekend. wasn't enough to take my three kids on a 9+ hour trek to gram's house. nope, decided to invite my niece and nephew along for the ride as well. i prepared dale as best i could and he assured me he still wanted to go - was excited to go, no less. yea, ok. we'll see how you feel in two days, champion.

got all my ducks in a row, motel resies made, clothes washed and packed, phone calls made warning folks that it hadn't been the nightmare of all nightmares, i really was going to show up and it really would be loud. i picked the kids up from school on friday afternoon and waited for d to arrive so we could take off. i had made plans with the disney guy to take care of the pup while we were gone (i wasted calling in a marker on that, dammit, but more on that some other time), because, where i may be a bit off, i'm not completely stoopit - i did not want to deal with her on top of everything else, plus she takes up a lot of room. and she has gas. eye-bleeding horrible gas. truly, i get enough of that from my kids.

we arrived in the lurvely town of anderson, CA (where we would pick up the extra two mouths to feed) at around midnight after an uneventful 5 hour drive. i had made a reservation (using a 2001 AAA travel book, silly me) at a two-star (read: cheap, but not necessarily life-threatening) motel that had advertised a free continental breakfast. we checked into our room which, while being a tad sparse, seemed clean enough for our hamburger-helper tastes. we did find out the next morning that either the AAA book flat out lied or something had definitely changed because the "free continental breakfast" consisted of some lukewarm coffee and...well, some sugar for those who prefer to grace their joe with it. in all fairness they did offer some rather greyish looking bananas or nasty lemon-jelly pastries for "each 50 cent". needless to say, we decided to skip this veritable plethora of goodness and went in search of a subway. now in the matter of hours that we had been away from home, we had discovered that i forgot my shoes (so me) and my toothbrush. bennett had broken his i-pod earphones and was having a serious freak-out because he couldn't drown out the sounds of his family's incessant breathing in and out, and my niece had decided she really wanted to take up crocheting this weekend (because she knows her aunty shawna can rock a crocheted blanket), but had no hook. or yarn. off to walmart and no shit, they had a subway.

getting about a 2 hour later start than we had hoped for (and therefore, leaving right on time), we started out across the beautiful klamath mountain range in search of snow and eventually, hopefully grandmother's house.