We just completed the drive back from Dragon*Con through an unceasing barrage of rain all along the Eastern seaboard. Sixteen hours of driving on a trip that normally we can do between 12 and 13 hours.
Once my brain is functioning better I’ll do a full write up.
PAD
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Glad you got home safe and sound. It’s not much fun doing that long drive in crap weather. I remember driving down to Wilmington, North Carolina to do a set visit en route to see my parents in Hilton Head and I caught the lesding edge of Katrina which was just starting to pick up steam. When I got to the studio, it was a beautiful day, and by the time I got to my car that evening, the water was two-thirds of the way up my tires. I managed to drive the 300 miles to South Carolina the next day without too much trouble, because Katrina had moved off a bit, but when I drove back to NJ a few days later, the gas prices on I-95 were literally going up by the hour. I paid more than three times more in gas on the trip back than going down. So I sympathize; making that north/south/north trip during hurricane season is a drag.
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Yeah, the trip home for us today was much the same. Glad you guys made the longer trip safely.
Here’s the writeup of the trip home.
Rain.
More rain.
Lots of rain.
Suddenly need to potty.
Rain.
Still raining.
Need to buy catheter so I don’t need to keep stopping for potty breaks.
Wait, that’s gross. Scratch that.
More rain.
Hey! Kath! Guess what? Yep! Still raining!
…Anybody mind if I just step out of the car for a minute with a bar of soap and some shampoo? Oh, you do? Too bad!
The officer was surprisingly understanding about the shampoo, and quite gentle with that rubber glove.
I think the angels are peeing on me. Stupid rain.
Oh! Finally home! I’ll put on some music and relax.
Hey, who’s this artist? Sounds Korean…
OH GOD! IT’S RAIN!
…Am I close?
More or less, except for the part about the officers. Although the police were omnipresent; while I was diligently maintaining a safe speed for the conditions, there were people blowing past me driving 80 MPH in pouring rain…and invariably I’d see them pulled over and getting the full attention of state troopers and their citation books.
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And around 3 in the morning I felt myself losing focus at the wheel and pulled into a rest stop. I slept for about an hour and when I woke up there were a few troopers around; since there was a two hour stopping limit, I suspect they were there to make sure people weren’t overstaying their state-allowed welcome. But I was long gone before that limit was reached.
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PAD
Makes perfect sense. It’s much more important to get those over-tired folks back on the highway where they can create a multi-vehicle accident, rather than park for a few hours to get some much-needed sleep.
I’m struck with some kind of travel curse, in that about half the trips my wife and I take we get causght up in a weather or traffic delay. The most legendary was a should-be 4 hour drive from Staten island to Wakefield RI that took 8 hours. In driving rain. painful to even remember.
For what it’s worth, flying through the unceasing barrage of rain was all kinds of not fun.
sorry to be OOT but is rictor really getting his powers back from wanda? i read about it from articles about the children’s crusade.
Hi Peter, i’m sorry for going off topic here but i just wanted to thank you for writing ROM Spaceknight (as human) into HULK #418 (1994). that was the last actual appearance of the character. although many ROM fans were glad to see the mythology surrounding the character continued in the Annihilators we’re also aggravated with the licensing issue. i wish i knew some way to address this with marvel directly and actual give the matter some actual consideration. couldn’t they have him come back as human and just rewrite his name as Romm or Rahm? would that be any different then for example Wolverine holding what is obviously a can of Budweiser with a couple of his fingers covering part of the logo?
Rain? What is Rain? Here in Austin Texas we don’t have this rain that you speak of. Due to wildfires in my area I have an emergency bag packed and wondering how I will react if my house burns down with my 36 boxes of comics (been collecting since 1982).
I should put them in storage, but they are on the third floor and really cannot waste the time and money for a truck and a storage unit. Fingers crossed and my two hoses are ready,
You know what this country needs? Giant aqueducts. Build a gargantuan sink in the Northeast with a drain in the bottom, have it catch all the rain, and then siphon it via aqueducts to the midwest where it will be fed into a series of humongous colanders which will then pour water onto the waiting populace.
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PAD
Alas, I think the Italians/Romans copyright that back in Long Ago BC. *Shakes fist* Blast you, Ceasar !
Redistributing rain? What kind of socialist nonsense is this?
I was really unhappy about having to leave out first thing Monday morning. Normally Monday is my favourite day for panels, because you can walk right into all those celebrity panels that you have to spend a couple of hours in line for during the rest of the weekend. But this year we had to make sure we were back Monday night, so we’d be ready for my son’s first day of kindergarten in the morning. And by doing so, we apparently dodged most of the rain. We drove through it for about an hour in Georgia, and then it was clear until after we’d passed Fredericksburg, Virginia (and we live in DC, so were almost home by then).