Unsolicited: funny story. sort-of.

Ricky's Blue Heaven. mmmmm!!!!

When I was 24, I took a year off from graduate school. I was kind of having a nervous breakdown, but that's a story for another day (or never, for most of you). Anyway, so around April, we decided to go to Key West. By "we," I mean my mom, my stepfather, my youngest brother (he is ten years my junior), and me. By "go," I mean drive. In a recreational vehicle (RV). From the mid-1980s. That my stepfather bought at an auction. He tried to get us all to practice driving it, since he had the vision of us each taking our turns behind the wheel.

He spent so much time getting that thing ready for the trip. My stepdad is really quite the project man. He is constantly thinking up new ideas and inventions, mapping them out in a sketch pad. Often, he'll sit at the table, drawing engines and designing better ways to build things. For Christmas last year I got him a book about boats; it had diagrams of engines and electrical systems and sail set-ups, and all that kind of stuff. He read it from cover to cover while I was there, and when I left had already begun copying the drawings and figures. He's an idea man. So he had the idea that we would all drive to Key West.

Driving this thing scared the shit out of me, and I basically refused to do it. Isaac, of course, was too young to drive. So, when we headed off to Key West from North Carolina, my stepdad was behind the wheel, where he spent most of the trip, unfortunately for him.

My mom was very good at driving it. I'm not kidding when I say, she once made a u-turn in it. I got behind the wheel once and once only. We were stuck in a traffic jam and Richard was going crazy with fatigue, so I agreed very whinily to take a turn. I can't remember how long I stayed there, but it certainly wasn't long enough for Richard and Mom to rest. Seriously, it was about 30 minutes maybe.

We slept in the parking lots of Super Wal-Marts, once on the way down and once on the way up. That was creepy. People milling about a Super Wal-Mart in the middle of the night in rural South Florida are not the kind I necessarily want to spend a lot of time with.

Key West was gorgeous of course, and we had a really nice place. Of course it was an RV parking lot type place. The guy next to us had a huge brand-new one. He was ex-military, retired. We hit his mirror on the way in, but he assured us he could fix it, and did then and there.

Of course, driving an RV down meant that we had to walk everywhere once we got to our destination. And it was hot, and Isaac was miserable and I am the moodiest person on the planet. Plus my mom is sensitive, my stepdad is easily frustrated, and none of us slept very well, since it was hot and everyone snores. We also had to use semi-public showers (which, although completely nasty and freaky, was also exciting).

Considering all that, I think it was pretty remarkable what a fun time we had. We went snorkeling (see below), we had picnics, we walked around together, we saw the sights, went to museums and ate delicious food (see above). When we looked around Hemingway's house (see below) I imagined living a life like his, writing in a quaint studio in a carriage house behind my gorgeous house, standing in the window while the breeze blows through the open floor-to-ceiling windows, with my dozens of cats wondering the place, chasing around the "wild" chickens (see below). I thought about setting up a table as a glass blower during the nightly sunset celebrations (I was taking lessons at the time).

On the way back home, we tried to make it to Jacksonville. It was so late and we were all so tired. Richard was driving, Isaac was morosely sitting, Mom was in the passenger seat looking at a map, and I was staring blankly out the window, taking a break from writing in my journal because I had started feeling nauseous. All of a sudden I saw an SUV in the far left lane swerve to the left, then back across all four lanes of traffic. By the time he was heading towards us he was perpendicular to the direction in which he started, and completely in no control of his vehicle. I screamed and Richard slammed on the brakes. The next thing we knew the Dodge Durango was square in front of us and we hit him dead on. He then flipped to the side and by the time we all came to a stop, his car was upside down to the left of us. All four lanes of traffic were blocked off for more than half an hour at 11:30 on a Friday night in Jacksonville, and people had to drag this guy out of the car. I wrote this in my journal (along with the above description):

i had saved some flowers from the place we stopped while officer
ASS wrote up the report (apparently all the eyewitnesses imagined
what happened) but there were a bunch of nasty bugs on them so
i got rid of them. This is how it was: [diagram, with a note: after
impact he flipped] He's alright, though. Mom keeps climbing in and
out of the van complaining about her knees. we are all so tired. we
were so tired before the wreck. i feel like i'm going to throw up but
i don't have anything to throw up or energy to throw it up with.

When the law enforcement guy got there I swear to god he was wearing snakeskin boots. He was a big fat old guy with a swagger. He was wearing a brown uniform and chewing something. The time that passed seemed like forever, and was filled talking, trying to stay awake and keep from crying, trying to figure out what happened, going over and over the details, moving vehicles, making sure the other driver, sitting stunned for a while beside his upturned "sport-utility" vehicle, was not badly injured. The officer was really trying my patience, which is not difficult, even under normal circumstances. At one point he said, "It will be labeled as his fault, of course, unless he has a good explanation." At this point, I coldly and not-calmly replied, "What possible good explanation could this guy have for being perpendicular on a major highway at high speed putting all our lives in danger? Unless maybe, the fact that he's on drugs is a good explanation?" At this point my parents prevented me from talking with the law enforcement official anymore. Which was fine with me.

At the Super Wal-Mart parking lot we finally limped to, this one in south Georgia, I think, the surrounding situation was pretty similar to south Florida: poverty, way too bright lighting, extreme heat, creepiness. A little less humidity, which was nice. We bought some duct tape and literally duct taped the RV together. At rest stops and gas stations the whole way home we entertained questions from other sympathetic RV drivers (there's a community of them out there, you know) who wanted to know about the accident. Of course, this meant that people were constantly ogling and inquiring regarding out pathetic RV. This did not make the rest of the trip home any more pleasant.

I didn't write in my journal again until I went to acupuncture for the first time the week after we returned.

My stepdad repaired the RV completely (see below), which involved way more effort than I can believe, and recently took his daughter (my stepsister) and her then-fiancé, now-husband to a lake for a weekend getaway. I am happy to say, they did not have similar problems.