Crashing the Party and Riding the Rails
Umm... yeah. A party was crashed. Rails were ridden. Just read it.
We crashed a party on Saturday!
My sister called me the day before to tell me she had some decent-sized moving boxes for us from work; and then she mentioned that she and our mom were taking Liv and Hannah to our Uncle Roy's train club the next morning.
And, while she didn't know the likelihood that I'd manage to get Athennia and Riley up and moving in time for us to make it out to Collegeville for 10:00 A.M., she thought it'd be funny if we showed up and surprised everyone.
So... we did!
Big difference: This isn't a bunch of tweens playing video games on Twitch in their parents' basements.
For starters, even though we got on the road almost half an hour later than I had wanted to, we took the turnpike while Kelly and my mom did not; so, we made much better time than they did.
And then, because I'd been here a couple years back when my family was in from Indiana, I knew exactly where to park and which way to walk to get to the club... but Kelly and my mom ended up walking 10 minutes in the wrong direction!
...And showed up 15 minutes later than they did...
But we still got there first :)
Obviously, nobody (except Kelly) had been expecting us; so, Uncle Roy had to do some rearranging and grab some extra seats to accommodate us all.
We contented ourselves with waving to the other passing trains for a few minutes...
And then, it was time to ride the rails like a bunch of Oklahoma hobos!
Ready? Here we go!
Riley opted for the caboose.
The rest of us pretty much just piled on wherever we could fit.
And, either these next two pics were taken half an hour apart from each other, or I sat on Athennia and Hannah to get a good seat...
Use your imagination.
And then we were off!
Riley actually had a blast... The sun must've just been in her eyes for this pic or something.
The club sits on about five acres; so, they have a pretty decent variety of features: bridges, tunnels, curves and elevation changes, and a fully-operational signalling system...
After a few rides around the entire track, Uncle Roy suggested we change things up. We brought another car out of storage, and Riley got out of the caboose to give her back a rest...
Naturally, we thought, who better to replace her back there than my 69-year-old mother?
This guy showed up at some point, and I whispered to Riley, "Man, that guy must really be thirsty. Look how much water he brought!"
I shot a short video—and sold my soul to make a YouTube account so I could share it here, privacy be damned...
Special thanks to our engineer for a wonderful day!
As fate would have it, Kelly stumbled upon a pizza place when she pulled a Fievel and went west instead of heading east to the train club.
But then, the "Fievel" bit wouldn't work; you know?
So, Uncle Roy dropped us off at the front gate, and we headed over to Vincent's for lunch.
I ran into these numbskulls once we got inside...
Why do Riley and Liv look like a couple of two-bit smot pokers?
Half rapscallions, half pepperoni? Is that how you roll?
Let's try that picture again...
That's more like it.
Anyway, Vincent's was awesome: Quite possibly the most enormous slices of pizza any of us had ever seen...
And, since we probably tripled their business for the day, the owner brought us out a few slices of a "breakfast pizza" with ham, egg, and cheese.
"It's not on the menu, but I make it for myself," he said.
But... it was phenomenal, and I told him it absolutely should be on the menu. Then I made the most valid of valid points ever made...
If Taco Bell, of all places, can serve breakfast, then you certainly can too.
He pretty much had no choice but to concur :)
Liv was getting antsy by this point; so, I chased her around in the grass for a bit...
...And despite all the close proximity and picking her up that I did all morning and afternoon, Kelly waited until later in the evening to let me in on the 110% chance that Liv had COVID.
Exhibit A: An undeniable case of COVID...
But I guess it was only fair, since I'm the one who gave Liv COVID to begin with—for Christmas three years ago, as a souvenir since she was born right smack in the middle of the scamdemic ;)
Speaking of COVID—and, more specifically, people who should contract it—we got stuck behind this assclown for the last five minutes of our drive home...
Why is your entire rear bumper trying to go rogue?
Fissure-Price here was weaving all over the place and cutting people off on the highway—not that that's at all surprising from a Jersey driver. And then, for the icing on the cake, we found out he lives in the next complex over from ours.
Lucky us.
That means we'll probably have the pleasure of running into him again sometime.
But, who knows? Maybe by next time, his bumper will have fallen off entirely.
Athennia prepared chicken, carrots, corn, and greenbeans in gravy for dinner later that evening...
It was delicious. And that's about all there is to say about that.
Sunday evening, my parents invited us over for London broil.
We had just crossed over the Churchville reservoir and were making the right turn onto Bristol Road, when this jackass across the intersection decided he'd just cut us off to make his left as we were halfway through making our turn...
Athennia laid on the horn and lit him up in front of close to two dozen other cars; and, for good measure, I flipped him off as he made his next stupid turn (onto stupid Bustleton Pike a block up the road).
And, of course, I snapped a pic so I could immortalize him here on the blog until the end of time.
Congratulations, spare-parts! You're famous now :)
But, not as famous as Liv—who was in rock-star mode when we got to my parents'...
And Hannah was in awe at being in the presence of a celebrity...
Within a few minutes' time, I'd snapped pictures of just about everyone...
There was just that one ever-elusive Molerat that's so hard to photograph.
First, she simply went with the hand-over-her-chin strategy; but then, she resorted to the all-out demonic flicker she somehow does, where literally every single thing in the photo is in focus except for her...
But, she finally let her guard down and I managed to get a nice, normal-looking shot.
Good thing, too! It'd be such a tragedy if her greatest fear came true and she looked like some weirdo on the private family blog...
Seems like it'd almost be easier to just smile for one or two and get it over with; doesn't it?
I'm sure someday Riley will be able to look back and laugh at how silly she was trying to block every shot :)