Today I am going to write about one of the best road trips I have ever taken in my life.  A trip that is the perfect example of when the actual trip was more fun than the destination.  This trip was to go see Lollapalooza in Raleigh, NC back in 1994 with a group of awesome friends.  We were all really excited to go to this concert, there were a lot of bands playing that we all loved and who doesn’t love a good road trip with friends.  The lineup for the concert was as follows:

Main Stage: The Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, George Clinton & the P-Funk All Stars, The Breeders, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, L7, Green Day

Side Stage: The Flaming Lips, The Verve, The Boo Radleys, Guided by Voices, Lambchop, Girls Against Boys, Rollerskate Skinny, Palace Songs, Stereolab, Fu-Schnickens, The Pharcyde, Shudder to Think, Luscious Jackson, God Lives Underwater, King Kong, Charlie Hunter Trio, Shonen Knife, Blast Off Country Style, Souls of Mischief, Cypress Hill, The Black Crowes

There were a bunch of us going, so we took several cars, booked a couple hotel rooms for after the concert to share and were ready to set off on our adventure to the Walnut Creek Amphitheater.  In order to fit more people into less cars, I talked my mom into letting me drive her Suburban, which easily fit like eight of us with no problems.  Two other cars full of people followed us.  The trip down was nothing spectacular.. I mean, we had fun, laughing and doing other stuff, but that was not the leg of the trip that made this particular trip so memorable.  The actual concert was SO GOOD.  I remember it being 200 degrees hotter than hell that day, but we had a blast despite the heat.  When the sun went down and we saw The Beastie Boys and The Smashing Pumpkins - I remember us all talking and saying “this will be one of the greatest concerts we ever see in our entire lives” and it was, to this day, it was.  We stayed to the very end of the concert, found our cars, located our hotel, took turns in the showers of our rooms washing all the sweat off and drank until we all passed out.

The next morning, we woke up and found a Denny’s to go eat breakfast at before leaving for the almost four hour trip back to Virginia Beach.  Now… once we were on the road, I cannot for the life of me remember what started the fight between two of the cars… but I do know that it was a fight that none of us will ever forget.  We STILL laugh about this story whenever we all get together.  Because we were broke ass 18 and 19 year olds, we had packed a cooler full of shit to keep in the Suburban.  T.R. and his girlfriend Lee-Anne (now his wife) were in charge of cooler duty.  Lee-Anne was a total hippy, so she seriously filled the cooler with granola bars and freaking wheat bread, which in itself made us laugh our asses off!  She packed bread… and nothing to put on the bread and granola bars.  WTF were we going to do with that shit?  By the end of the trip, of course all the ice in the cooler had completely melted and we were left with a cooler, filled with water, a loaf of soaked wheat bread and some soaked-ass granola bars.  My friends Seth and Kathryn were in the car behind us, his ultra-sweet Nissan Sentra (Seth, Kathryn and I were the three founding members of the Nissan Sentra Club - since we all drove the exact same car in three different colors).  I don’t know if Seth wouldn’t get off my ass or what… but at some point we decided to start making grenades out of the soaked stuff in the cooler, rolling down the huge back window in the Suburban and pelting them at Seth’s windshield on the highway.  Because we had the back window, we could get a direct hit every time, causing shit to go all over the windshield and make him swerve all over the road.  We were DYING laughing.  It did not take Seth and Kathryn long to wise up, start digging through their cooler and try to pass us on the road and pelt our car with food.

This went on for OVER an hour until we ran out of shit to throw at each other.  That is when our car decided to call a “truce” and act like we needed gas.  We pulled into a gas station/convenience store and got some gas, while T.R. and a few others went in and stocked up on the TWO things, that we discussed would win this war for us.  Eggs and Potted Meat.

We did the best we could hiding our arsenal and getting back into the car before continuing our journey home.  We all felt confident that our plan was going to be the better plan… and honestly we were laughing like complete f*cking idiots.  I mean who does this shit on a highway?  They had also gone in the store, and we could only imagine what they had decided to buy… there was this eery silence between the cars.  Everyone knew this was not a truce and gas stop, it was a “re-up” stop for more ammo.  Everyone was back in their cars and we were back on the road.  We got a few miles down the road, when Seth tried to speed in front of me on the highway, cut me off and throw what they had purchased onto my windshield.  What was it that hit my windshield?

A freaking Hostess Fruit Pie.  THAT is what they decided to buy to continue our on-road, vehicular food fight.  That is when we unleashed an attack on them that should have gone down in the history books alongside The Battle of Gettysburg!  We sped in front of them and with much thought and planning, took out the two dozen eggs we bought and specifically started aiming for the front grill of Seth’s car and the cracks around the hood… each hit oozing egg down into the engine of the car and getting into the vent system.  Because of the extreme heat, the eggs spoiled and fried immediately, sending the most foul “egg-fart” smell through Seth’s car.  We had taken out their air conditioning with the smell and they were forced to ride with their windows down for the remainder of the trip home, or be forced to smell the eggs, have cool air and then vomit because of the smell.  Next up… the potted meat.  We scooped this out of the cans, and aimed for the windshield.  When this stuff hit, it just splatted and spread.  When Seth tried hitting the windshield wipers to clear his line of sight… the windshield wipers smeared a layer of disgusting. meaty grease across the windshield.  We had TWELVE of these pots that we unleashed on his windshield.  Seth and Kathryn were DONE.  We had won and it was such an amazing victory, considering that we had seriously almost wrecked like 30 times as we hit speeds of over 100mph and kept repeatedly trying to pass each other and cut each other off to “get the next hit” in.

Seth had to drive the last hour of the trip with windows open, a car WREAKING of rotten eggs and with his head out the window so he could even see the road because his windshield was WRECKED.  His car was covered in wet granola (think oatmeal) and bread, fried egg and potted meat.  My car was covered in leftover sandwiches and stuff from their cooler and looked like it had been hit with a fruit pie machine gun.  I can only imagine what other cars driving near us were thinking.  When we got off the highway in Virginia Beach, we headed straight for a car wash, where Seth and I both pulled in and we all got out laughing our asses off and seriously telling each other stuff like “good battle” and shaking hands.  It took almost two hours for all of us to scrub both cars clean - but it was TOTALLY worth it.  It went down in history as being one of the all-time best road trips in all of our lives.  Epic even.

Yesterday was Sunday… which meant it was typical Sunday stuff on the agenda - going to my parent’s house and watching football with the family and having Sunday night dinner together.  My sister is up from Florida, which makes Sundays even more enjoyable for the time being.  It was great conversation day yesterday between my sister and dad:

DAD: Why do all these guys have so much hair coming out the back, it should be an NFL rule to cut it off.

KELLY: Why does it matter?

DAD: It’s a bad influence on the children.

KELLY: What?  How is that?  Are they going to do drugs now as a result of NFL players having long hair?

DAD: It doesn’t fit in the helmet right.

KELLY: Again, how is that negatively influencing our youth?

DAD: Look Kelly, you act like I’ve never worn a helmet, if it doesn’t fit right…YOU DIE!  And if you have facial hair your breathing mask won’t seal right!

KELLY: Dad you were a pilot in the Navy, these guys are playing football and don’t have breath valves.

DAD: It’s just unprofessional!

KELLY: But some of these guys are religious, or it’s part of their culture.

DAD: Than they need to go back to their country and study religion.

(Kelly leaves the room and conversation is abruptly ended.)

Ahhhh… it’s times like these that I love my family!  :tear:

Made from over 8,000 photos on my Flickr account - very cool to see a my life flash before my eyes.

...or “Misty’s Specialty!”  Nadine jokes me CONSTANTLY about not having a filter on my mouth.  CONSTANTLY.  In fact, several months ago, it dawned on me that all of a sudden I was not friends with her daughter on facebook anymore… when I mentioned it to her casually in conversation, she responded with “oh yeah, I kicked you off because you have no filter on your mouth.” - SERIOUSLY?  I WAS SHOCKED (not really) and then started laughing my ass off.  She is right - I have no filter when it comes to half the shit that comes out of the hole in my face and quite honestly, I can take any conversation and immediately take it in a whole new direction in 2.5 seconds flat - I swear to god if there was a job for that, I would be RICH - RICH I TELL YA!  I sent Big Kev a news link earlier this morning about free land available to people, which he posted on Facebook.  It was nothing bad, completely innocent.

A small conversation started in the comments… again the conversation was innocent and was discussing the topic on hand.

ENTER MISTY STAGE LEFT:

My apologies to Kevin for ruining his comment thread, I can’t help myself sometimes and by sometimes, I mean EVER.

UPDATE:
Big Kev finally chimed in…

We had a good Thanksgiving this year - nothing big and fancy, just immediate family, which was nice.  I had dessert duty this year so I made a pie and at Kaiden’s request, because she does not like pie, I made some cheesecake brownies.  I wanted to choose something different for a pie instead of the normal apple or pumpkin, so I made a Hoosier Sweet Cream pie, served with whipped cream and toasted coconut.  It turned out pretty good and was super dooper easy to make.

Right after dinner I had to excuse myself and haul butt over to Nadine’s house for our annual Black Friday all-nighter.  We start planning for this weeks in advance, when the Black Friday ads start leaking.  We start making our lists and consulting with each other on game plans, which stores we want to hit, etc.

Here I am on my way over to Nadine’s house, looking all fresh-faced and in a great mood.  Ready to conquer Black Friday and all it throws at me.  Our first destination was Toys R Us.  They were opening up at 10:00pm on Thanksgiving night.  We showed up to get into the line at around 8:20pm.

We were actually quite happy with our placement in line this year.  Last year we were way in the back of the buildings, it was INSANE.  We waited in this line for quite a while - but did not mind at all this year, since the weather was actually cooperating.  It was almost 70 degrees and clear.  Last year it was in the 40’s and pouring rain.  Big difference.

Here we are in line… happy to be there and excited to be kicking off our night.  We had our lists in hand and had our gameplan down.  Nadine would take the cart and immediately get into the electronics line.  I would take both of our lists and run around the store like a mad woman, coming back every so often to make a dump into the cart, then we would switch, and so on, until we got into electronics to get the Wii and DS games we needed and checkout.  The big thing that Nadine wanted from here was a $79 netbook for Brianna, which we were too far back in the line to get a ticket for and that none of the Toys R Us employees were willing to try to get for us in exchange for a hand-job in one of the aisles (god knows we offered and offered)... but lucky Nadine “found” a ticket sitting on the counter as we were checking out and ended up scoring one.  I am pretty sure if I had kicked her any harder under the counter I would have broken her shin in half.

Next we hit the midnight opening of Old Navy for cheap jeans and leggings for the kids.  We thought we were going to have to go to the one in another city (25 minute drive), since it had an exterior entrance, unlike the mall location right behind the Toys R Us where we already were - like we had to do last year… but luck struck again and the mall was opening up for the sale.  WE WERE STOKED!

SO stoked that I ALMOST considered buying this hat for myself just to commemorate the occasion.  Then I got back to reality and remembered this night was not about me, it was about the kids.  The general public should let out a huge sigh of relief that I did come to this realization and am not walking the streets in that hat.  Nadine once again had a stroke of luck after searching the whole store for a certain type of jeans for Big Kev, we rounded the corner to the registers and there was ONE pair sitting out of place and just so happened to be the size she needed.  We couldn’t believe it!  After Old Navy we hit the 2am opening of Kohls.  There really was not anything we needed there, but we had to do something to stay awake until Target opened at 4am.

At around 3am we rolled up to Target, ready to wait in line again.  It looked like it had rained at this point… but being that it was our lucky night, we missed it.

At halfway through the night, we were not looking so bright-eyed anymore.  We were now relying on multiple cups of coffee to keep the momentum going.  We got through Target relatively quickly and painlessly, getting all that we could on our lists, and saving what we couldn’t get for Wal-Mart, where they would price match Target’s prices.

It was when we were almost done with Target that Nadine started going loopy and had me laughing so hard I almost wet my pants several times thanks to all the 20oz coffees.  After Target, we hit up the 5am opening of Wal-Mart where we crossed off the rest of our lists. 

We did have to make a quick trip back to Target again, but were in and out with no trouble at all - well, almost, I did collapse at this point from exhaustion.

In the end, we made out like bandits!  The kids will be very happy on Christmas.  We both stayed within our pre-planned budgets and saved a shit-ton of money.  My total savings were right at $497.55 - completely awesome and for me, was totally worth the night without sleep.  I probably would have done it regardless, because of how much fun Nadine and I have.  Time to start gearing up and planning for next year!  :coffee: