Freeway Madness
Guest Author - Ross Jones
I woke up this morning ready for the next phase of our USA adventure feeling much better than the last few days. While it was a cultural experience, driving the porcelain bus for long periods in the USA it is very similar to the experience in Australia. We awoke with our toughest choice being “….. do we take the video camera or the still frame camera?”. In hindsight, choosing the still frame camera was the first of the many things that went wrong today.
When Molly arose, she had developed a number of spots that could be nothing other the dreaded chicken-pox, graciously passed on by Toby. Our plan was to pick up some hire cars and head down the coast to visit a church and stop in at some beaches between Huntington Beach and San Clemente. Ben and I headed off to Hertz to pick up the cars, only to wait for a couple of hours before being “super-sized” to a couple of SUVs that in Australia would have been classified as B-doubles. Our 2-hour wait meant that we had missed the church service, but we blew our air-horns, gave a “10-4 big buddy” and headed off to enjoy the delights of the Southern Californian Coast.
Molly was curled up in a ball on the front seat, feeling very sick when Maisy piped up very meekly that she had a sore stomach. Because we were so high up in the behemoth vehicles, I thought it could have been altitude sickness but whatever brought it on, Maisy was soon hurling in a shopping bag (appropriately from The World of Colour), held valiantly by Sarah. Unfortunately, as in war, valour can sometimes lead to tragedy. The bag was porous!!! Sarah felt the warm sensation of last night’s dinner drip on her leg after she carefully balanced the bag while I looked for a service station to bin the bag.
At the service station we had a National Lampoons Vacation moment when we were in the choice position of going back to the hotel and putting our two sick girls to bed, or forging ahead to Huntington Beach. Some of you may say that there was no real choice. Not us …… stupidly. We kitted up with extra plastic bags and headed to the coast. We arrived at the famous Huntington Beach. It had a great cafe atmosphere. Very cool, lots of people and very different to most other places we had been. That was looking from the beach back up the main street. When you turn around, you are shocked by the number of oil rigs not very far off the coast. Anyway, we berthed the trucks and then realised that Molly was contagious and couldn’t go into a crowd. Sarah selflessly urged me to take the boys and Maisy while she and Molly waited in the car reading books.
Maisy asked if she could go on my shoulders; a concept that struck me with fear after her technicolour yawn in the car. So we headed down the street, knowing that every step could be my last without Maisy’s breakfast raining down on me. We made it to the end of the street and saw some great bars, shops and cafes. We ended up at Subway for lunch. Believe it or not, Subway is the closest thing we’ve found in America to fresh food. Even bread from the supermarket has sugar on it (I found some Sultana Bran in the supermarket only to find out when I poured it into my bowl that each sultana had been dipped in sugar aaarrrrrggghhh!!!!)
After lunch, Maisy said those meek words again that brought back the earlier horror in our SUV. I quickly scooped her up and in one majestic motion, cleared a park bench and dived toward a roadside “trash can” to gently hover Maisy over the bin in-time for a massive dry-reach. My choice was made; it was time to go back to our hotel and cut our losses. We set off back to the car. Toby then tugged on my shirt and said, “I’m busting Dad.” I gave Maisy to Sam and directed him to the car and then went in search of a “restroom”. Little did I know that Huntington Beach would house the world’s most disgusting public toilet. An acrobat with dysentery had obviously been in before us. We quickly shut the door and went in search of another dunny. I ended up having to sneak Toby into a bar through a back door so that we could use the toilet in there.
We arrived back at the car to find that the plans to go back to the hotel had been kyboshed. The sat-nav had been set and we were heading down the coast (remember the previous 3 words) for some more sight-seeing. Against my better judgement we headed off with the sat-nav directing us away from a perfectly good Pacific Coast Highway (the road hugs the coast between Huntington Beach and San Diego) to the east to find the only toll roads we had come across in America. After driving some 30km, our sat-nav worked out that it should have been an I-pod and turned us around, only to put us off an exit and back on the tollway, each costing us $5.50 in exact change ….. which we didn’t have. There were 3 options:
1) Scream
2) Punch the sat-nav
3) Trust my instincts
I chose all three!!!!!
We thought all was well until Molly said that she had a headache. We stopped and cracked open the Panadol. Unfortunately, Molly struggles to swallow tablets so I crushed them so she could have a couple of goes at the powder and wash it down with water. Molly usually takes fairy bites of things but this time she skulled the powder and sat there saying “…. this is disgusting”, while the bitter taste in her mouth lingered until she could spit it out the window. We pulled into a service station and bought some Tylenol. We popped two in her water bottle and waited for them to dissolve. That took 5 minutes. Then we experienced another half-hour of teenage angst as she protested against drinking medicine that would make her feel better.
While this was going on, Maisy let out a little, “Oops, I think I wet my pants.” Maisy hasn’t done that for a long time, and having been in bed with gastro for a few days, I had suspicions that there might be more to it that wet pants. It was only a short time later that Sarah tried to make her feel comfortable and found that my suspicions were confirmed. You have never seen a big rig like our SUV find a shopping centre as quick as we did. It was like a military operation. All our training had prepared us for this time. We pulled into the parking lot. Without speaking we slipped into action. Sarah and Sam quickly surveyed the perimeter before attacking the mall head on. Their mission; capture the package (a new dress, undies, wipes, garbage bags etc). I had exited the vehicle and evacuated Maisy to the rear of the Hummer-like SUV while avoiding any contact with the contaminants. By the time Sarah and Sam were back with the essentials, I had removed the toxic clothing from Maisy and was handed the wipes just in time to clean and bag any excess mess. Our mission stalled slightly when we realised that Sarah and Sam had neglected the dress. At that stage we suffered some friendly fire as I accidently pulled to rear door of the SUV down on Sam’s head …. only a flesh wound. He’s a tough soldier and was back up again straight away and into the mall. He and Sarah returned with a wonderful floral number. Mission complete with no major casualties.
It was now way past time to head home so we used the sun as our guide to help us through the LA spaghetti freeways to arrive back at the hotel realising that had we chosen the video camera at the start of the day, we could have made a feature film in the National Lampoon’s Vacation series and retired rich …… sliding doors have foiled me again.
