An explanation of AIS

Six days, 1950 miles, and 31 hours behind the wheel later, we are home and the whole thing is finally over. Total cost came in at 8 dollars shy of $2000. Collapsed in bed around 10:30 last night...and naturally woke up at 1, wide awake. Nothing more to say about the trip. However, as a public service, I feel it necessary to address an issue that has arisen from a term I used in a previous blog...AIS. It has elicited several raised eyebrows, and even a response from my mother-in-law.."What's AIS??", she asked.

AIS is a term I first heard used on that most profound of all television shows dealing with the dynamic of family life..Everybody Loves Raymond. The patriarch of the Barone clan, Frank, used the term when describing how he organized and planned departure times for family vacations. When Frank declared that AIS time was 6 am, it was final, and nonnegotiable. AIS meant, crudely..ass in seat. Ever since then I have used it myself with great effect. The term communicates perfectly it's unambiguous meaning. What is the last thing one does before departing for a trip in a car?? Exactly.

My family has responded well to such clear and abrupt language. However, using the AIS concept with my extended family with our seven vehicle caravans to the Outer Banks would probably not go so well. Probably something like this.....


Me:  Paula, it's 6:03. What is Ron doing?

Paula:  Oh, he's adding one more of those stretchy things to the bike rack to make sure they are secure.

Me:  No, no, Paula. I clearly wrote in the last e-mail that AIS time was to be 6:00. Why is Ron BCB at 6:03?  ( bungee-cording bikes )

                                                                    later

Me:  Linda...where is Bill? It's 6:13??

Linda:  Oh, he noticed that he only had 3 quarters of a tank of gas, so he's filling up. He'll only be a minute.

Me:  Wait, Bill is TOT at 6:13?? ( topping off tank ) Does anyone in this family read e-mails??!!

                                                                   even later

Me:  Paula, what in heaven's name is Ron doing now?

Paula:  Looks like he's adding some extra waterproofing to the car top carrier. You know, there's some rain on the radar down near Williamsburg.

Me:  But, one does not FWT at 6:17 when one's A should have been IS at 6:00! ( fiddle with tarp ). And by the way, I haven't seen Ryan.

Paula:  Oh, he's still inside trying to decide which hat to wear, the Nationals or the Yankees.

Me:  Do you mean to tell me that Ryan is OOALAG at 6:18?? I give up. This family is hopeless. ( obsessing over accessories like a girl ).

Day Five & Six...Stereotypes and Reality

The much dreaded drive from Short Pump to Princeton lived up to it's billing. To the everlasting credit of my crew, everyone was AIS by 6 AM. Patrick drove the wheels off  his 1998 VW Jetta, keeping it glued on the tail of my Budget Battle Tank. The drive around our nation's capital was emblematic of the dysfunction so associated with that city. 5 lanes of insanely chaotic traffic careening around ill-conceived and poorly constructed beltways. It occurred to me that no metropolitan area in the entire country has been the beneficiary of more stimulus and infrastructure
spending than our capital, and yet to drive the roads built by all that largess is still the most frightening experience in all the world of travel. I almost sideswiped two cars, spent 30 minutes in a traffic jam, and was rewarded with not one hilarious road sign for my efforts. On a side note, and a large number of my extended family will LOVE this, I actually made the first and only bathroom- only stop of my driving career...not for Pam, or Caroline...but for ME. Perhaps it was the hour and a half of white knuckle clinching involved in the navigation around DC, perhaps it was the brutal pounding my kidney's took from the Grand Canyon sized potholes, or maybe it was being so close to a city where everything from money to state secrets flows so freely...after only 3 hours on the road, I truly had to go. Shameful.

Once we made it to Lawrenceville, I was pleasantly surprised at Patrick's apartment complex. In my mind's eye, I was picturing...New Jersey, apartment, near number 1 highway...let's face it, I was thinking public housing meets Jersey shore. Instead, the place was beautiful. The apartment itself was spacious and charming, and the grounds were gorgeous, complete with three pools, walking trails, tennis courts, and landscaped lawns and beautiful trees everywhere. Although the whole vibe of the place laid waste to my prejudiced, anti-yankee sensibilities, one image did serve as a reminder that one stereotype of Jersey is in fact justified. There, in the back of one of the clean parking lots was a late model Nissan Stanza propped up precariously on cinder blocks, with not a tire in sight!

The unpacking of the truck went swimmingly well compared to the Nashville version. All of his stuff was unloaded and his bedroom and music/computer center completely set up in less than two hours. We got to meet one of his roommates who was very nice. Pam finally got her chance to clean all of his "kitchen stuff". His closet is organized, bed made for the first ( and last ) time. By 5:30, Pam and I were checked in to our hotel. At 7:00 we met the kids at Palmer Square in the heart of Princeton for a lovely dinner at Winbergs, and an evening of sightseeing, a relaxing ending to a day that had begun at 4:30 AM.

Today, we finally rid ourselves of this wretched truck. Patrick is as I write this driving Matt to the Philadelphia airport. He will return by noon where we will meet him and Caroline back at the apartment for some final touches. Then we will leave him to his new life and make the drive back to Short Pump.....or....Pam will see tons of other stuff that needs to be done and we will end up staying another night in this Garden State. Who knows. Either way, it has been a long, nerve wracking week. Something like an adventure.

Day Two & Three. A Blur...

Tuesday was one of those days that you will remember forever. Like 9/11, the Rodney King riots, the Japanese Tsunami...days that you will always recall in crystal clear detail. For me, the detail I will always remember is..spaghetti.

In Patrick's defense, he had been forced by circumstances to move all of his worldly belongings twice in the last 3 months, and then once again from a bedroom to what was a dining room in his current apartment. It's a long story involving leases and whatnot that I won't bore you with except to say that there were extenuating circumstances behind the fate that awaited us at his apartment Tuesday. We arrived around 1 o'clock in the afternoon with the rental truck for what we supposed would be a rather simple job of loading all of his stuff and then going out to dinner. Wrong. What we found was the most bizarrely conceived collection of boxes you could possibly imagine. In one half empty box there would be two books, some sheet music, one sock, a necktie, and a box of flour. On the top of the box, it would be labeled.."eclectic randomness". No, we would have loved any label. There were no labels. How do you label a box with one pair of long john underwear, a screwdriver, a box of staples, and a can opener? For Pam, this was the moral equivalent of cruel and unusual punishment. Her eyes were wide with the horror of it all. She began making furious plans to organize it all, starting with cleaning everything she could get her hands on. But soon she realized the futility of her efforts. The turning point for her brings me to my spaghetti moment. Up on the top shelf of his closet was a box that he assured us contained only "kitchen stuff". He was right. Inside was a teaming mass of things associated in most people's minds with kitchens. There were two or three glasses, some plastic measuring spoons, and no less than 8 frying pans of every size imaginable. Where did he get so many frying pans? We could only recall buying him two. From the looks of it, maybe he thought that once a frying pan was used once, then a new one was needed. Digging through the box, I half expected some hostile living thing to jump out at me. Then I saw it. The one thing that served as a cold water in the face moment for Pam and I, the clarifying event of the day that screamed out, "Forget organization..that way leads to madness. Just throw it all in the truck and deal with it later." We pulled out the last frying pan in the box and found that it still had the remains of a spaghetti dinner from June encrusted to the Teflon coating.

By late afternoon, it was all packed. Then I happen to notice that the right rear tire on the truck was flat. You would think that this would have sent me over the edge, but I was strangely serene. I calmly called the "roadside assistance 800 number" given me by the strange smelling woman at the Budget Truck Rental office earlier in the day. In less than an hour, Leon showed up and replaced the valve stem. The next thing I knew, Pam and I were sitting at Puckett's Boat House across the table from Patrick and Caroline having a lovely dinner in the most charming small town in America...Franklin, Tennessee.

Yesterday was just a long hard slog of a trip. 10 hours of holding on for dear life in the loudest truck cab I've ever heard, sitting in a seat designed for transferring all of the impact of even the smallest pot hole directly to your kidneys, with the added bonus of an engine that got 8 miles to the gallon. The driving downpours and high winds we encountered along the way actually helped me by diverting my attention from the cramps in my legs brought on by restricted blood flow to my extremities, courtesy of my tortuous drivers seat.

Last but not least, I did notice two hilarious roadsigns along the way, one that caused much ponderous thought and the other, well, it just struck me as funny. The first one was a large sign advertising an ADULT SUPERSTORE and CONSIGNMENT SHOP. The mind reels at the possibilities. The second was actually plastered on the side of a building. There was a ginormous picture of an AK-47 machine gun and then the name of the gun store. Right under that was a sign in huge red letters....JESUS IS LORD.

Day One of Moving Week

Day one of our nomadic adventure went quite well, thank you. We left Short Pump at 7:40 in the morning and stopped for the first time at 11:45 at our favorite lunch spot in Abingdon, Va. Then we drove for roughly another 4 hours until a gas/bathroom break near Cookeville,Tn. After another hour we arrived at our east-end hotel near the airport in Nashville, 8 hours and 55 minutes after leaving Short Pump. Upon posting our progress on Facebook, I was met with incredulous accusations of being a relentless slave driver by not allowing more bathroom breaks for Pam. Actually, on our second stop in Cookeville, Pam didn't even get to use the bathroom because it was being monopolized by a desperate women with "kidney issues". So, in fact Pam went over 5 hours without a bathroom break, no surprise to me since, in a family of iron bladders, she is the Queen. My family has made over fifteen 13 hour road trips to Maine. Most of those trips were made through the night, straight through with two stops. So starting at an early age my children learned how to "conquer the trip" in fine fashion. Of course, I'm fully aware that most people hear these stories and recoil in honor at the prospect of having to be in a car for more than 45 minutes without going to the bathroom. When I am part of the Dunnevant family convoy of 7 cars headed to the beach every other year, it is an agonizing experience. My dear extended family have the combined bladder strength of a freshman pledge at Delta Tau Chi. We turn a 3 and a half hour ride into a 7 hour tour of the finest bathroom facilities from Richmond to Nags Head. I feel like we should be filming a public service announcement for the American Urological Association. I've come up with lots of names for these trips to help me deal with the frustrating pace with humor and not hostility....The Bladder Battle...The Wee-Wee Wars...The Trickle-Down Trip....When Will We Get There?...it DEPENDS...

Last night we attended a concert at the First Presbyterian Church of Patrick's choir, the Wedgewood Summer Chorale. This was a choir that he recruited and directed all summer for this one concert..just because he couldn't imagine going 3 months without some sort of musical project to work on. One of the songs they sang was a premiere of one of his works called..In Sorrow. Speaking as a parent with no training in the fine art of choral music, it was a stunningly beautiful piece. After the concert, one of Patrick's favorite professor's at Belmont came up to Pam and I to say of that song.."I hate your son! When I was his age, I couldn't possibly have written something as solemn and intelligent as that. Most kids his age have to work through the anger and bitterness in their lives when they write music, but what comes out of Patrick is beauty and joy." He went on to praise us for fine parenting to produce a man capable of such work. It was all quite dizzying...and uncomfortable. We pointed out to him that we had lots of help along the way. Honestly, although musical talent is evident throughout my extended family, I hesitate to credit his gifts as merely a function of genetics. What Patrick has is closer to a freakish, sixth sense of a thing, a divine gift given out at random by an unpredictable God who blesses whom he wishes to bless, and curses whom he wishes to curse. So endowed, it's up to Patrick to make something of it, to God's glory. He is well on his way.

Just about the time Patrick might be expected to get all puffed up with pride with himself, he gets pulled over on his way back to his apartment for having expired decals and a defective headlight!! Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?

Great Campaign Commercials in History...sorta

Now that Paul Ryan is on the Republican ticket, I'm sure that the Democratic Party will revise that classic commercial they ran back during the 2010 congressional elections featuring a Paul Ryan lookalike literally pushing a wheelchair bound senior citizen over a cliff. Paul Ryan's crime? He had offered a plan to reform Medicare, an actuarially doomed social program that is on a path to destroy itself absent changes. For his efforts, he was made the center piece of the Democratic Party's effort to demonize Republicans as anti-old people...the now famous Mediscare strategy. Watch it for yourself..it's awesome!!

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Classic stuff. But, it has gotten me to thinking. How would modern campaign strategists have handled previous presidential campaigns? If there were television commercials, political consultants and Hollywood production capabilities, along with today's standards of decency back, say, 100 years ago, what kinds of commercials would they have produced? Hmmmm...


Vote for Wendell Willkie!! ...Isn't it about time we had a President who will STAND UP for America?







Seriously? Must we elect the ugliest man in America as our next President?  Vote Breckinridge '60




If he's so smart, how come he has a slave-girlfriend?  John Adams is the only man running for President in 1800 with all white children...John Adams, the pure choice for President.






William Howard Taft...an animal hating, tub of lard! The last thing America needs is another FAT CAT in the white house. Vote William Jennings Bryan in 1908!!

Time For A Little Bragging

So, this morning I was planning on vacuuming the down stairs, as is usually my lot on Saturdays. But while I was sitting at this desk catching up on the overnight news I hear the Dyson roaring. Pam then told me that I am not to do anything that might throw out my back between now and Monday morning when we depart for Nashville. Long car rides followed by moving furniture and boxes has been a toxic mixture for me in the past so, she's probably right. But I hate being told I can't do something because I might get hurt. Even when I was a kid I hated it. Mom would say.."Douglas!! Put some shoes on before you walk through the smoldering embers of the trash fire from last night!!" Of course, hearing that was like a green light challenge for me so I boldly plowed ahead, Tony Robbins-like into the smokey pile, whereupon my bare left foot immediately came down on the jagged edge of a broken coke bottle. The inch long scar is still there as a monument to my foolishness. True story.

Speaking of overnight news, Romney picked Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his VP. I don't like to brag, but to some of us, this is not really news. I now call your attention to these words written by your humble blogger on January 2, 2012 as part of my "Predictions" blog...


8. Mitt Romney will win the Republican party nomination, becoming the first Mormon to be so honored. He names Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. In a bold move designed to prove that he does, in fact, have a sense of humor, they arrive at the Republican convention center in Tampa riding two bicycles, wearing white shirts with skinny black ties.


BAMM!!

Moving My Boy To New Jersey

Next week is going to be a beauty. My son will be moving from Nashville, Tennessee to Princeton, New Jersey to attend grad school. Here's how the itinerary looks on paper.

# Pam and I leave Richmond at 8 AM Monday morning headed for Nashville. It's 600 miles and will take 9 hours. Somewhere around Knoxville we gain an hour, crossing into the central time zone.

# Monday evening, we will attend Patrick's final choral concert in Nashville. This time it's a choir he created from scratch at the beginning of the summer. They have been rehearsing for nearly 3 months just for this one and only performance. It would seem that my son cannot go a single season without hatching some musical project, and spending a fortune on sheet music. ( BLAST you Sherri Matthews!!)

# Tuesday morning I pick up the Budget Rental truck and head over to Patrick's apartment. He is currently sleeping in the dining room of a place he has lived for only 2 months. The guy who is replacing him in this place decided to move in two weeks early, so all of Patrick's worldly possessions are stacked in what was once a dining room. He sleeps somewhere in the pile. When  he Skyped us the other night the only part of this chaos that looked even vaguely organized was the wall that contained his keyboard/computer combo. Oh..and the new guy has a puppy. So, here's hoping the mutt doesn't have flees. We will spend this day sorting through the mountains of stuff, organizing, discarding and boxing it all up. All the while we will be meeting Patrick's girlfriend of these past 4 months who we have heard about but never actually met..Caroline. Tuesday night we will all have dinner at Puckett's Boat House, Patrick's employer since graduation in December.

# Wednesday morning three vehicles will depart Nashville around 8 in the morning. I will be driving the truck, Pam will be driving our car, and Patrick will be driving his car with Caroline and his best friend Matt as passengers. We will all have walkie-talkies just in case Patrick's 14 year old VW Jetta dies on the way. On this leg of the journey, we lose that hour we gained on Monday, arriving back in Richmond hopefully around 7 o'clock in the evening.

# Thursday will be a day of Patrick showing his girlfriend the sights of his home town, while Pam frantically prepares for the last leg of the trip, and I go into the office and try to get some work done.

# Friday morning early, which for me would be 6 but will probably end up being 7:30, the same three vehicle convoy will depart Short Pump and make the most dangerous road trip in America...up 95 thru D.C., around Baltimore, across the Delaware bridge and onto the New Jersey turnpike. Mapquest says 5 and a half hours, but with the traffic, multiple accidents( hopefully not involving US) it could be 7 hours. Once we arrive in Princeton, we get to meet Patrick's new roommates who have already moved in. These are two kids he has never met, since he only knows them from Facebook.  Awesome.

# By mid afternoon Saturday, the move complete, and amidst much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth from my wife we will drop off the rental truck in Lawrenceville, and make the death-drive back to Richmond, arriving sometime before midnight. Total miles driven since Monday...2000. Total cost of truck, gas, meals and hotels..$1800.


Why do we do this as parents? Our son is 23 years old. He works, pays his own bills, he is a fully functioning adult. If left to his own devices he could move himself from Nashville to Princeton. Why spend all this money, blow and entire week of production to oversee the event? He didn't ask us to help. So, why do we do it? Part of me thinks we shouldn't insert ourselves into this thing. But another huge part of me thinks.."What, are you NUTS????" He's our little boy. Sure, maybe 15 years have passed since he has actually been our little boy, but it's hard to see him as a grownup. When we moved Kaitlin into her rental house at Wake Forest when she was starting grad school, I remember thinking to myself.." How is she going to make it here by herself, since she is only 6 years old?" We parents are weird that way. Time may march on, but not in our imaginations. These smart, engaging, ambitious adults staring back at us can't possibly be our children...can they? What happened??