Indiana or Bust 2009

This past weekend one of my cousins in Indiana got married.  Tracy and I drove down to Indianapolis on Friday, attended the wedding on Saturday, and headed home with my mom riding along on Sunday. 

It's a 10 hour drive.  11 if you have too much coffee in the morning.

Tracy pretty much took over Friday's drive.  I managed to keep occupied by either messing around with her iPod and picking songs or knitting when all else failed to entertain me.

The rules for Tracy driving were pretty obvious:

1.  Tunes are a must.
2.  Anyone is allowed to sing.  The more the merrier.
3.  The louder the better (depending on the song).
4.  If you can act out the song while singing even better.

Tracy also made this basic statement about 10 minutes into our drive:

"I don't claim to have the best voice.  But I'm still going to sing."

This was honestly fine with me because I don't have the best voice either, but I sing awesome in the car.  Even better when I'm completely alone.  Tracy informed me after awhile she was disappointed with my lack of singing; she really thought I'd be doing more of it on this trip.  I clearly needed to kick it into high.  My problem was I didn't know any of the songs on her iPod.

Then I found "The Sound of Music" and them there hills became alive with the sound of our voices belting out the duets that we both finally knew.  Julie Andrews has nothing on us.  (We also do a mean rendition of some "Les Mis" if you were curious.)

Then I decided to photo-document our trip.  Here's what I've got:

1.  Tracy driving.  This is approximately 2 hours into our drive.

2.  Tracy driving.  This is approximately 4 hours into our drive.

I know they look astonishingly similar but that's pretty much how it looked between those two hours.

3.  About 15 years ago our family went to another wedding in Indiana.  Everyone else was sleeping except the two of us.  I was driving and she was keeping me awake.  We were probably singing then too.  Suddenly the family roadster started sputtering and we couldn't figure out what was wrong.  Turns out we had run out of gas.  My dad was flabbergasted that we could allow that to happen.  No one has ever let us live that down.  Before leaving my family reminded us no less than 50 times to check our gas gauge while driving.

 

We did finally stop. 

4.  Traveling note for everyone:  Don't let all the firewood outside this place fool you.  It has the coldest bathrooms I've ever experienced.  I thought I was going to have to break ice to use the facilities. 

5.  I took over for the night session and we finally made it to our hotel room. 

We were exhausted and only too happy to be able to move.  You can imagine our delight when the dog across the parking lot barked from 11:45pm to 12:15am. 

Saturday afternoon was the wedding.  Congrats to the bride and groom!  We met up with family afterward for a wonderful evening of drinks, laughs and general-catching-up.  We were introduced to a delicious new beverage: Margherita (slushy kind) mixed with Sangria.  Delicioso!!

Then Sunday morning came and we were back in the car.  Tracy hardly slept the night before so I took over driving much earlier.

Mom didn't sleep well the night before either.  She konked out about five minutes into the drive.

"Funky-Funk T.K." took over the tunes and was bopping along.  She started singing.  My mom informed her she was a little flat.  That's when Tracy went over the rules with my mom. 

Then Tracy came upon "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and she was truly inspired. 

And then she was just plain delirious.

"Mom...what do you think?  Mom...mom...???"

Okay - I have to say - no matter how many times I look at it I laugh.  That is far and away my new all-time favorite picture of Tracy. 

We had snacks along the way.  My choice of treat was "French Burnt Peanuts".  Tracy thought the new shade of my tongue was hysterical.  Actually, this picture had her in stitches.  She didn't even think it looked like a tongue. 

All this and Tracy looked at the GPS system and realized we still had some time left.  Eight hours to be precise:

Back to the scarf.  Tracy should really learn how to knit.

"Wait.  I can't tell if mom is sleeping or awake."

Then the scarf got old and things got really scary...er...hairy...

We practiced the "Mockingbird Song" sung by Toby Keith and his daughter.  I learned about 80% of my part.  Tracy's got both parts down cold.  I clearly have some studying to do before we head out on our next road trip...

A trip I hope will be no further than our favorite Caribou.  A day-spa if we are lucky.  I'll even go outside the city limits for that one.