We are in hour six of a twenty one hour drive to meet the grandparents who are doing a seventeen hour drive. We will spend most of the week recovering and prepping for the drive home as the kids get spoiled rotten. I’ll mostly be offline until next Monday.
Enjoy talking about some of your questionable road trips…
Baud
I suddenly don’t trust anything you have to say about health insurance.
Nicole
I worked a children’s theater tour in the fall during the 1990s that took us through the midwest in the autumn… during the monarch migration. Every time it was my turn to drive the van I felt like I was driving a big butterfly death machine. It was awful.
Valdivia
That’s a lot of driving. The longest drive I ever did was from Atlanta to NYC (and the other direction), it wasn’t as long as yours. Maybe 15/16 hrs with a couple of stops.
KG
most of my road trips have been then SoCal to Vegas or SoCal to Phoenix types. There was one “questionable” one to Phoenix that I did where I left shortly after midnight on December 23, knowing I’d have to drive back home on the 24th for Christmas. But that particular girl was absolutely worth it.
Longest trip I ever endured was when I was maybe 8 or 9, backseat of a car with my sister (two years younger than me) and my cousin (6 years older than me), my truck driving grandmother driving, my mom riding shot gun. SoCal to Bellingham, Washington (which is closer to Vancouver than Seattle).
John Revolta
@Baud: Or soccer, either. Too.
Corner Stone
When I was younger and possibly stupider, I once drove 22 hours straight through from Houston to the CO/UT border. The drive up was fucking nuts as the entire state of OK was covered in snow and I crossed through at night, but the drive home my passenger seat person actively argued with me for six hours in an attempt to keep me awake.
Corner Stone
Speaking of crazeballs, this NBA Finals Game 2 is nuts. It’s almost like Cavs don’t want to win or GS has some mind control shit over Cleveland.
srv
You healthcare overlords apparenlty don’t rate first class anymore under Obama.
This will have consequences for all of us.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
You drove back with Cassidy?
Zinsky
Took a recreational chemical-fueled road trip from Iowa to Phoenix back in the 1970s with a buddy. It was not a high intensity trip – stopped in Amarillo and got sloshed on the railroad tracks. Spent two days snowed in at a cheap hotel in Flagstaff, doing mescaline and laughing at Mayberry RFD reruns. Spent two weeks in Phoenix with my buddy’s cousin and drinking beer and smoking weed by the pool. The drive home was equally blitzkrieg. So, yeah.
Warren Terra
Might I recommend air travel?
Seriously, the price might be competitive …
Hill Dweller
The Warriors have never looked comfortable in this series, IMO. The MVP has disappeared in this game.
Tree With Water
Just last night I heard it said that no place in Britain is further than 150 miles from the sea. So it’s a good thing you folks aren’t British, or you’d drown ha ha. For many years from the age of four or five, I used to spend 30 hours per summer under a broiling hot sun while trapped within a GMC Rambler with no air conditioner. The trip was to my grandparents house in Salem, Oregon, and my grandma, god bless her, always had a perfect 5 & dime toy picked out and waiting for me. No toy awaited me on the trip back, but the pay-off was always as appreciated, and that was the cool fog-feel we’d always run into as we neared the Golden Gate bridge. It was San Francisco’s natural air conditioning bidding us welcome back..
cmorenc
For my wife and I, our actual honeymoon in June of 1980 was an epic 7-day road trip from North Carolina to Oregon (we were moving out there). Our ride was her Ford Pinto, which had been passed down to her by her parents (my car was already out in Oregon).
NotMax
Longest straight through drive (solo, stops only for gasoline and potty breaks) was about 21 hours. Xmas Eve, Minneapolis to Long Island.
Corner Stone
@Tree With Water:
I once met a couple young women from The Netherlands. They told me about their parents moving “all the way across the country”.
It was 45 minutes away from their previous home. Being from Houston, I larfed.
Doug R
When I was about five years old was the first time we drove from Victoria BC all the way down to Disneyland. Back in those days Disneyland was closed on Mondays and Knotts Berry Farm was closed on Tuesdays. remember the look on Clark Griswald’s face when they get to the park in Vacation? Fortunately my dad had a little bit more self control
Suzanne
@Corner Stone: If GS had mind control over the Cavs, GS would be leading right now.
It is an exciting game, tho.
Corner Stone
@Baud: I didn’t say they threatened to physically assault me, just a nice friendly argument.
Speaking of, that dude’s most likely in long term slam for domestic violence. Hope his wife and kids are ok.
SiubhanDuinne
@Valdivia:
I absolutely love driving long distances, all by myself. A couple of years ago I drove Atlanta-Phoenix/Tucson and back, and last fall I drove Atlanta-Boston and all six New England states. And as you know, I’m doing the Boston run again this summer. I frequently drive to Owen Sound, Ontario to visit my cousins, and am (for the third time) driving to Chicago later this year. As long as I’m physically and mentally up to long-haul trips, I’ll keep doing them. I’m not stupid, and I expect at some point I’ll have to hand my car keys over to someone, but until then it’s something that gives me enormous pleasure.
Corner Stone
@Suzanne: Cavs should be up by 12. GS just seems to keep popping in 3’s and staying within a couple buckets. Biggest lead has been like 7.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
You’re tough. How far do you drive each day on your trips?
Corner Stone
JR Smith for the big 3 ball! Ten point lead!
rikyrah
awe to the long drive.
did many of them growing up.
have fun!
NotMax
@efgoldman
Yeah indeedy, that age thing is a bear.
Distance not a problem for this geezer (especially considering I’m on an island). However, much less comfortable driving at night than used to be.
Suzanne
I hate distance driving. We’re planning to go to Rocky Point this summer, which is 4-5 hours, and I am dreading the drive. Eh.
PhoenixRising
5 years ago, kid was 10 and we were…in the final months of being a couple in our 40s.
So the drive from Albuquerque to LA to San Diego, then home with the new puppy, wasn’t bad. What was bad: Our departure 8 days later, surrendering the house, pool & puppy to the young cousin returning from Peace Corps service…for our long-awaited trip to Glacier/Waterton NP.
Probably the 12 hour day to Helper, UT was ok. The next day, we spent 3.75 hours in the parking lot of the Home Depot in Pocatello, ID. I’ve never before been in a Home Depot that refused to let me pre-cut lumber or do it for me…so it was a lot of sawing to get things road-ready. Slept in the truck overnight stop outside Dillon, MT.
Montana is f’ing enormous, in case your map is broken like ours was.
I’ve never needed relaxation as badly as I did after that 3 days in transit, of which 20-some hours were driving.
Valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne: See, always knew you were cool :)
I think there is something romantic about long trips, especially cross-country ones. I just don’t get to do them since I rarely drive these days (I think it’s a having lived forever in nyc thing)
Origuy
I think he’s updated it from tape by now.
Corner Stone
@Suzanne: My son and I agree on about 3 to 3.5 hours at a time. We went to Dallas a couple years ago and stopped about halfway (2 hours), and went to a few stores, had lunch and walked around for a bit. We make the 2.5 hour Austin run with ease.
He goes to Corpus Christi area (3.5 hours) with family once in a while, but that’s their problem.
Betty Cracker
I once drove from Pensacola, FL to Tucumcari, NM in one straight shot.
Corner Stone
Anybody else watch Sense8 on Netflix? I’ve watched the first 7 or so. They slow way the hell down after about the third one.
Mike J
I did Memphis to Boston a half dozen times. About 18 hours. And of course DC to Seattle. That was four or five days because I stopped at relative’s houses, national parks, etc.
I got pulled over doing 75 in a 55 when I was driving home to Memphis from Denver. Cop let me go because dealing with an unlicensed 15 year old 20mph over the limit was too much trouble.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker: Just getting across TX from side to side is about 13 hours, and getting from FL to east TX is close to 8 or so from the FL border. Nicely done.
Suzanne
@Corner Stone: Spawn the Elder had to go on a PHX-SF road trip with my ex, and I felt like that was borderline child abuse. My ex’s other kid is supremely irritating, and I felt badly for Spawn, being stuck in the backseat with her. Not my problem, though.
PhoenixRising
@Origuy: That is just…I forgot about it.
This one time in 1990, on day 4 of 7 (Boston to Oakland, teaching then-GF to drive my new manual-trans Civic, Iowa will never be the same) a tape got stuck.
Every time I drive through that canyon in CO, which has happened a number of times in the past 5 years, I have to grip the wheel tightly.
It was MCC, ‘State of the Heart’. 2 months ago she played one of those songs at a show in Santa Fe & my 15yo asked if I needed to leave my seat for a moment. I looked peaky.
Suzanne
@efgoldman: Nope. Rocky Point, aka Puerto Peñasco, Mexico.
Corner Stone
@Mike J:
I had an officer follow me for over 10 minutes in the middle of the damn night outside Denver heading to KS before he pulled me over. Was ball freezing cold and snowing. I think the state got like $65 out of me? I always wondered why he pulled me over as a lot of times in TX cops won’t even pull you over for running stop signs if it’s raining.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
Friend with whom I chat often was raving about it. “I know you don’t have Netflix, but see if you can find it.”
Two nights ago he said, “I take it all back. Never mind, skip it.”
Was intrigued enough by the first episode of Mr. Robot to keep an eye out for it when it begins airing towards the end of June.
Corner Stone
@Suzanne:
See what I’m saying?!?
scav
We somehow managed one twenty-hour plus constant travel stints on most family vacations we ever took, usually driving but one extra-memorable one by ferry-bus-ferry-train-taxi-ferry-train-train-rental-car. If trapped in a small area, we somehow nevertheless managed it by determined zig-zagging. They, of course, are often the bits of the vacations we remember best and drag out most often (with suitable embellishments). One was inexplicably entirely due to a lack of available hotel rooms between Iowa City, IA and Maysville, KY.
Schlemazel
Back about 1970 my best friend had to be back at Camp Pendleton late the next day – he had been blind drunk so long he forgot until the last minute. We drove from St. Paul to San Diego in something under 30 hours with him badly hungover most of the way there. But I had so little money I couldn’t afford to stay anywhere so I turned around & drove back. I slept in the car at a truck stop outside OK City and honestly do not remember most of the trip.
As a reward he sent me a ceramic elephant from Viet Nam. He told me it would be good luck if I smashed it in a feild & buried the pieces. When I smacked it I found about half a pound of very good bud.
Eric S.
Last June I flew to Portland OR, and drove back with my father. He was moving back to central Illinois. We had his Nissan Murano towing a u-haul trailer with four cats in the back of the Murano. We couldn’t get above 55 mph because the trailer started dancing. It was hell. I’m happy to have him living closer to me but … HELL.
Valdivia
@efgoldman: I am now imagining a very chic driving cap. :)
I am really very excited that I am getting to meet her. And if you make it the Virginia way I will make sure not to miss it this time!
Suzanne
Damn, this game is crazy.
Omnes Omnibus
Like many of you, I enjoy long drives. One of the keys to making it fun is the proper soundtrack – which is whatever works for you at the time.
NotMax
@Schlemazel
Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way
Corner Stone
LeBron HAS to take that fucking shot! Can not pass that BS off to Shumpert.
Tree With Water
@Corner Stone: After Pearl Harbor, a group of RAF fighter pilots who had fought the Battle of Britain were sent stateside to help train our AAF.. Somewhere down in the Carolinas, one of them had his fighter playfully bounced by a couple Americans, and they all had a friendly dogfight. The Americans finally waved goodbye and left him alone, and the Brit continued on his way. But he’d been turned all the hell around, and got lost looking for his airfield. He was absolutely astonished by the distances he flew without laying eyes on anything. In all his time as a pilot up until then he had never experienced that sensation, as he was never far from a spot or airfield he could call home (imagine how the Luftwaffe felt in Russia). He finally found a suitable road to land on before running out of fuel, and then he went looking a phone.
the Conster
O/T but Soonergrunt is not in a good place. At all. {{worried]]
Corner Stone
LeBron has to force the ball. Has to make the refs go non-call for OT.
Corner Stone
Overtime!! Again!!
Suzanne
@Corner Stone: I am loving this game! Gooooooo GS!
Valdivia
@efgoldman: oh so we’ll be neighbors, maybe. If I am still here, which probably I will be.
@the Conster: saw that on twitter and was worried too.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus:
A friend and I were taking a road trip to Florida and we both insisted on playing Radar Love when it was half past four and we were shifting gears.
I’ve always considered Little America by REM one of the definitive road trip songs. Another Greenville, another Majik Mart.
Mike in NC
In 1980 drove from Boston to Orlando with a buddy, but by the time we got there we wanted to kill each other.
Suzanne
@the Conster: Is there someone nearby him who can commit him or call the authorities?
Hill Dweller
GS is shooting too many quick jumpers. Go to the rim. Thompson has 5 fouls. Put the onus on the refs in your building.
satby
@the Conster: I hope he gets the help he needs. Did you get that from his Twitter feed?
Corner Stone
Neither team can hit a damn thing in OT.
Tree With Water
I’m not much of a hoops fan, but the Warriors have always been my team. Still, the fact that Cleveland has played them so tough tonight is a real testament to the Cav’s professional pride. Nothing like hearing for three days how fucked your team is now, and all because most fans think you more than likely can’t cut it well enough to hang with Golden State. Win or lose, they made a statement tonight.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: one of the things I truly miss about driving is that, the music.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: Radar Love causes an instant twitch in my right foot and another 15-20 mph.
@Valdivia: The four disk punk compendium, No Thanks, is useful for long drives. Beethoven’s Ninth plus Vivaldi’s Four Season lasts basically from my place to my parents’ driveway.
Hill Dweller
GS fouled Lebron, but he took 37 steps beforehand.
Mnemosyne
Longest road trip for fun was when my BFF and I drove from Los Angeles to Monmouth, OR, for a four-day 4th of July weekend. (Her sister was taking a summer seminar in Monmouth and was desperately homesick.) Since both of us suck at map reading, we didn’t realize it would be an 18-hour one-way trip.
We arrived in Monmouth, napped for an hour or so, and then continued on up to Seattle. Wandered around the waterfront for a short time and then drove back to Monmouth. We also managed to see both U of Oregon and Oregon State during the trip, plus made an overnight stop in San Francisco where we could crash with a friend.
In other words, the good ol’ days, with my good ol’ car, a 1988 Toyota Celica. I still miss that car.
Ruckus
Longest drive, no hotels, etc was a solo in what is called a toterhome, a medium duty truck, 300 hp diesel with a motorhome for a body and set up to tow a trailer, 27 ft with a 53 ft trailer. OH to southern CA 53 hrs total. Stop twice for fuel, sleep for 2-3 hrs at a time in the rig, eat while driving. Have done east coast to southern CA a few times solo in a car but stopped each night in hotel. 3 days was the norm. Don’t want to do that again. Have also driven cross country twice on a motorcycle but that was 12 days and I considered those lazy days, 250-300 miles a day. Once rode over 4000 km in 3 weeks all over NZ.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: Hugs. How you holding up?
Corner Stone
They are giving LeBron nothing here in OT. These refs are letting them play, that’s for sure.
You can’t fucking do that, asshole!
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
You know, not all that much. Maybe 500 miles a day — sometimes a lot more, sometimes considerably less. As long as I don’t have to be somewhere at a particular time, I can take secondary roads and explore quirky local attractions and just take my sweet time. Or, if I feel like it, I can just peel out on the nearest interstate and drive straight through until it gets dark. I rarely make hotel reservations in advance — just wait until about an hour before I’m ready to call it a day, pull over, check hotel listings on my iPad, phone to make sure a room’s available at a price I’m happy with, and drive my last leg of the day. I always pull into roadside rest stops and stretch my legs for a few minutes, whether I think I need it or not.
Valdivia
@efgoldman: :D
I should have clarified: the combination of driving with music. Picking something specific for a certain drive. Though I walk a lot and have certain playlists for certain kind of walks (in nyc I had certain playlists for certain subway lines), I find it is not the same. engine roar+scenery+music.
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
When I was still working, I considered it an excellent start to the day if I could do my morning commute in < 45 minutes.
Howard Beale IV
I drove from The Twin Cities to Traverse City. Took the ferry across.
Mike J
@Valdivia:
No
Sleep
til
Brooklyn
Corner Stone
Rattles the second one in!
Suzanne
This game is too damn much.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Mmm, I-10.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Warren Terra:
It isn’t. I priced the cost of flying from Minnesota to Oregon v driving. Driving is cheaper….with only one person.
Richard has a wife and a couple kids. Clearly cheaper to drive.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
So-so. I just replied to everyone in the thread below. The suckiest part was that I was the one who had to break the news to my 9-year-old niece as soon as she woke up. Everyone else was too distraught.
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne: The Greater Houston Metro Area is a big, stupid, sprawling BS of a city. On a Sunday morning you can drive from east to west or north to south and take well over an hour to go from city limit to city limit.
Olivia
Drove from MN to CO through IA after my dad’s funeral in an ice storm in an AMC Hornet with 3 adults 3 kids, the youngest being 11 months old. We were employed but extremely poor and had 2 days to get back home to work. The baby got diarrhea shortly after we left and it didn’t stop till after we got home. We finally stopped at a Motel 6 after 6 hours because of the ice, not the diarrhea. Fun times.
Corner Stone
Tied at one a piece!!
Hill Dweller
Curry was awful at the end of that game.
SiubhanDuinne
@Valdivia:
@efgoldman:
Y’all are too kind. I’m not all that cool.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: Well, nothing any of us can say will make it better, but you and yours have been in my thoughts today, FWIW.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: You’re cooler than Martha Stewart.
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
Regarding the above road trip, I forgot that that was the trip where we were pulled over in a speed trap while my friend’s sister was driving my car. She had lost her driver’s license in the airport pretty much as soon as she arrived in Oregon, so my friend had to palm her own driver’s license up to her (they look a lot alike even though they’re a few years apart). The cop was so confused by the fact that someone with a Michigan driver’s license was driving a car with Arizona plates and registration that he let us off with a warning.
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: You are the shit, lady. Love you.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I always have been.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Thanks, I really do appreciate it. Shit has been going down here that I can barely believe but will post about later when I have a little more sleep under my belt. I’ll just say that my brother’s estranged wife meets pretty much every clinical criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Sense of entitlement? Lack of empathy? Exploitative of others? Check, check, and fucking check.
Corner Stone
@NotMax:
I’m going to finish the last 5 or so for the first season but it got Matrix 3 level meta on me about the 4th or 5th epi. I want to like it because I’m already in love with Doona Bae, and the idea leaves a lot of open road to cover if they would just kick some more ass along the way.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ha! A lady with whom you and I share a birthday! But you knew that, didn’t you?
Valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne: oh I am sure you are! :)
@Omnes Omnibus: see that’s what I am talking about. Not just length matched to trip, but music appropriate to trip mood/setting. You begin with Beethoven and then do Vivaldi? Or other way around?
@Mike J: :)
I was mostly on the A. Which meant when I wasn’t it required musical planing!
Also: apropos of nothing I like Requiems. But those are Sunday morning kind of listening.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Well… Okay.
SiubhanDuinne
@Valdivia:
Please, stop!
:-)
SiubhanDuinne
@Suzanne:
Mwah, and right backatcha. Sure hope I get to meet you next year when I do another drive to AZ.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Of course. She wasn’t picked at random.
srv
Dirty Harry isn’t going to put up with your PC:
Schlemazel
@the Conster:
so whats going on? I know he posted about his issues & it seemed like he was getting help and going to be taken care of/
Cacti
Two days after Christmas, I moved from Tempe, AZ to Puyallup, WA with two kids under 10, two dogs, and my personal vehicle on a tow dolly behind the moving van while my wife drove the family vehicle.
And to top it off, the transmission on the rental truck burned out near Mt. Shasta in Northern California, so I had to spend the night waiting for the replacement truck and a moving crew to come all the way up from Sacramento to swap everything out.
That was a hell of a trip.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia:
That was the order in which it was first done. It was pure chance. After the Ninth, I wasn’t feeling like going for a contrast* like punk, the Stones, or anything like that, so I scrolled down to some of my Vivaldi and went with it.
* OTOH VU would have worked well.
PhoenixRising
@Mnemosyne: Hugs. That’s rough on you, not to mention the 9yo. Good thing she’s got Aunt Power to the rescue!
We hit the DSM today too–my BIL’s first wife, mother of his (critically injured) child, meets the criteria for several personality disorders at this time. However, under these conditions so does he, and my wife may also. Crisis makes us more what we were, and apparently we were a half bubble off plumb all along.
Cacti
The longest drive I’ve ever made without stopping was St. Louis to Salt Lake City, sharing driving with a friend.
It was a 1,321 mile jaunt. I think we finished it in about 18 1/2 hours.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
You couldn’t have picked, I dunno, P. D. James or Rupert Brooke?
srv
Wow, Obama wants to classify 3D weapon printing under ITAR.
Thermonukular weapons tech and digitally printed 1911’s…. same thing…
This is going to be fun.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Do you want me to say you are cooler than Tony Bennett?
ETA: I wasn’t aware of P.D. James. WPT did episode 1 of “Death Comes to Pemberley” earlier this evening.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Have been thinking of you. Get some sleep when you can, vent when you will, be there for you family when you must.
Hugs, goddess of memory.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
You could say it, but who would believe it? Ain’t nobody cooler than Tony Bennett.
Now Jay North…..
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, and also the (British) actor Edward Petherbridge.
SiubhanDuinne
@the Conster:
I saw some of his tweets. Yes they are worrying.
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
Not unlike Atlanta.
Glidwrith
@Cacti: That reminded me of a trip from hell: traveling from southern Oregon down to Reno, Nevada to get my brother down to San Francisco for a pilot’s exam the next day, the temperature regulator jammed shut and blew the radiator hose in our teeny Toyota pick-up.
This happened just north of Susanville on late Sunday afternoon. My mom got a ride into town, but no shops were open. She decided to have my brother drive up from Reno then they drove up to the truck. By then it was around midnight and we were changing out radiator hoses. Of course, the regulator still wasn’t working, so we stopped every two miles or so to let the truck cool down.
We left the truck in Susanville, then continued on to Reno, got in around 3 in the morning. Then it turned out my brother hadn’t studied enough, so we lit out of there at about 6 am to be in San Francisco in time with my mom drilling him while I drove.
Even better on the whole drive down (and back the same day) I could feel that car vibrating, like something was off balance. Turned out brother dear had been in some kind of accident, didn’t tell us and the drive shaft was damaged. Fun times.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: It makes sense to me. I think Vivaldi would have been to baroque to begin with. I was thinking what else would have worked after Beethoven. Maybe the Dvorak Serenade for Strings, but you may have had some time issues.
Frank in midtown
The BLM maintains a bunch of roads and a handful of them are designated as Back Country By-Ways. The route from Cripple Creek to Canon City is pretty special. We did it in a Prius, so the signs saying 4WD High Clearance Vehicles is wrong but it is a one-lane dirt road that hugged a mountain up and over a 10,000 ft pass. The Ruby Road in MT is also wonderful. We didn’t hit any of them in UT, but I would guess that they are awesome too.
FlipYrWhig
I drove from Williamsburg, VA to Salem, MA once. Nothing interesting happened. It was just fucking interminable. The worst was how much longer it took just to get from Boston to Salem.
Valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne: @Omnes Omnibus: I know this is none of my business but I would have chosen PD James over Martha Stewart, both in terms of cool and general culture (and because I adore her books)
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@PhoenixRising:
NPD and BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) have a lot of overlap. The main difference seems to be that people with BPD can sometimes be brought to a sense that their behavior is damaging and make some corrections, while the grandiosity of people with NPD means they can never understand why they shouldn’t do something they want to do.
Obviously, we all have some of the traits to some degree, which is probably why you’re seeing them pop up in a crisis. But to be a true personality disorder, it has to be consistent even when not in a true crisis (as opposed to the NPD or BPD manufactured drama they call a “crisis”).
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thanks — 2015 has already been one fucked-up year, and we’re barely into June.
srv
@Frank in midtown: In Utah, we had a saying. What’s the difference between a jeep and a rental car?
A rental will go anywhere.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia:
Bigger problem is that it’s not on my iPod.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: Ugh.
When you feel up to typing about it, we’re here to lend a digital hand or at least a virtual shoulder to cry on.
NotMax
@Valdivia
Far from everyone’s cup of coffee mit schlag, but have found this compilation to be pleasant driving music when tooling around the countryside on the open road.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Lord Peter Wimsey!
@Valdivia: I didn’t know she (James) shared our birthday.
@NotMax: Brings up too many memories of being in a boy’s choir as a kid.
mclaren
Explains everything.
Any loon who thinks this is reasonable would be delighted with the clusterfuck misnamed the ACA and the epochal disaster known as the American medical system.
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: Just tell me when and where, and I will buy you lunch. AZ meetup tiiiiiiiiiiime.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Spend time with the niece. Good for you, good for her.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
Not directed at any one person, including you. Making drastic changes, which is what sooner sounds like takes time, energy, time, and then more time. And it’s never a straight line from where one is to where they are traveling. I read his tweets and yes they are worrying, but he is very specific that he is still going forward. That is a good sign, he recognizes what he is doing and where he’d like to be, and that is very important.
Now all of that said, I hope he is getting professional help, from the sound of it he does need it. I wish him the best and as we’ve all told him on more than one occasion, we’ll help in whatever way possible, if we can.
srv
@Mnemosyne: Condolences.
Fuck cancer.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus:
I haven’t seen the tweets, but I do hope that you are right. To me, mentioning moving forward is a good thing.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: rarely anyone does. I have a thing for pairing Dvorak with Brahms or Dvorak with Beethoven (it’s weird I know)
@NotMax: Waltzes remind me of my grandmother who loved them.
Ruckus
@Frank in midtown:
A friend and I tried to drive his dad’s 36 hp VW beetle up to see where he worked in a Tungsten mine in the mountains outside of Mammoth Lakes, CA. The entrance to the mine was over 10,000 ft. up a dirt switchback road that the dump trucks could not turn on. So the trucks would drive down, fully loaded, to the corner of one section, then back down to the next corner and so on. For miles. Back to the VW, it didn’t have enough power at altitude to make it up the hill so one of us would get out and push while the other drove. Didn’t have to worry about traction, couldn’t even spin the wheels in the dirt. We gave up after a couple of miles, even though it had been obvious that we were never going to make it after the first switchback.
Valdivia
@Mnemosyne: I am so sorry. I hope you get some time with your niece, and time away from the SIL.
Omnes Omnibus
OMG! OMG! OMG! A silent version of Scaramouche is on TCM. I was going to go to bed, but now I have no choice but to stay up.
Howard Beale IV
@SiubhanDuinne: I pinged for some some backup.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: But will you do the fandango?
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
It is a very good thing. When you can see a goal you have hope. When you can see nothing at all you have lost everything and need professional intervention. You usually know you need it but may not be able to tell anyone and unless you are acting out, how will anyone else know? However just because you can see a goal doesn’t mean you see or understand the road to get there. That’s what professional counseling is supposed to do, show you that road. But it’s not a map, it unfolds not all at once but bit by bit. You still have to want to see it and to travel down it before you get to that goal.
After all you went down a road that got you where you are and that journey may have taken a long time to take. Now you’ve come to a stopping point, maybe even a fork in the road or a real dark place, and you have no idea what to do next. And what you’ve been doing hasn’t worked so you most likely lack the confidence to even try. It’s truly a bitch.
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: Last reply to his last tweet (2h) was 16m ago.
I’ll be up for the next 1/2 hr then I’m offline.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: You need to tip for it. You know that.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Ramon Navarro had a well-honed sense of comic timing, when it was allowed to come out.
Maintain that the Ewoks’ “Yub! Yub!” was stolen from Navarro gleefully ending his song in The Pagan the same boisterous way.
Tree With Water
@Schlemazel: I truly hope your buddy’s name isn’t on The Wall, and that he’s prospered.
Suffice to say, if the soul-sick lunatics of today’s republican party once again succeed, the sky is the limit on how many just like him will (once again) soon be ordered to wage war. Given what we now profess to understand- that wars can be successfully plotted and waged- we ignore that fact at our own peril. The republican party is the party of war.
Yet the democratic leadership still remains in thrall to the lie that Bush-Cheney did not plot the 2003 War in Iraq. Just why that is, I neither know, nor care to have explained. Whatever the reason, it’s not good enough.
Their silence in the face the 2015 republican cries for war (indeed, for their promises! to war) is as abject today as their votes to wage war in 2003 were catastrophic. Their continued silence is tantamount to a betrayal of country.
I take no solace in knowing that next time not a single one of them will be able to plead having been misled by good people and faulty intelligence.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: smelling the fallen handkerchief was a nice touch.
rikyrah
@the Conster:
Prayers for him.
SiubhanDuinne
@Howard Beale IV: Thank you. Feeling helpless, so if you can think of anything useful that a virtual friend could do, please say the word.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: He just responded to me. A couple of times.
ETA: He is a tough guy. And he is brave enough to be seeking help.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: I told him that we were concerned and that if he thought a post here would help…
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Heh, I just turned on the TV a little while ago and saw that was on. Didn’t know whether to mention it to you since it had already started.
. . . Hello,
KittyClimène! This is quite the vixen we’re seeing here.Valdivia
@Steeplejack: Hope you had a good trip.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
My concern is that he is getting the help he needs and that too much outside influence, even though absolutely well intended, may not be beneficial. It’s a tricky thing and different with everyone. Even positive attention doesn’t always have the desired affect.
Gin & Tonic
@Frank in midtown: Coming in late, but you should look up Ruta Provincial 52, from Uspallata to Villavicencio in Mendoza Province. Drove a rental down that road and had cramps in my hands from gripping the steering wheel for dear life.
Here’s a guy going up. I went down, and my mind kept seeing images of the car going end-over-end over the edge.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: I agree. I want to be helpful but I am not an expert. I am just another old soldier.
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
Yes, I did! I’m just starting to write about it in this synchronistic thread about road trips.
Short version is that I put 530 miles on the car in 36 hours: Washington > Philadelphia > Cape May > Philadelphia > Washington. Weather was great, I got caught up with my friend, had some great meals, and we listened to some great music (various SiriusXM channels). And I even feel slightly more optimistic about current affairs and the state of journalism after sitting in on a couple of sessions at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference yesterday. I may write something about that as well.
Will add more directly.
ETA: The score for this movie is very good. I wonder who did it. Usually retrofitted scores for silent movies are really cheesy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: It is fairly true to the book so far. Me likey.
CaseyL
I like a long drive if the traffic isn’t bad. Used to love driving up to Vancouver BC (from Seattle), especially once I was north of Everett.
The longest road trip ever was when I first moved to Seattle in 1976. Rendezvoused with traveling companions at World Con in Kansas City, then drove from there to Santa Barbara to spend some time with more friends. The car was a classic Pontiac or Buick, the really good old ones with tail fins and a backseat big enough to raise a family. You could get comfy and sleep soundly back there. I remember going through Texas panhandle, nothing but dry dusty dirt as far as the eye could see, and a constant smell of cow shit.
From Santa Barbara we caught another ride up the coast to Seattle, via a college ride board. A little old VW bug with 4 people, two of them college athletes – huge and male, and very sweet. Besides my friend and me, they were transporting a wooden tray filled with a mix of manure and dirt and what they hoped were psilocybin mushroom spores. The tray took up the entire footspace of the front passenger seat, so I spent about a thousand miles with my feet carefully balanced on the outer edges.
As the only non-driver, my job was to keep the driver awake. Which unfortunately meant keeping myself awake. I remember drinking coffee until black phantoms began appearing out the corners of my eyes.
Coming around the curve of I-5 North for my first glimpse of downtown Seattle, I blurted, “My god! It’s a real city, with skyscrapers and everything!” (having envisioned something more along the lines of a frontier town). My friend, a very proud Seattleite, was not amused :)
Gods, it was so long ago. We were so young. And Seattle was such a sweet little town back then.
NotMax
Switched from Scaramouche because the Tonys broadcast started at the top of the hour.
Priorities, don’tcha know.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Yours seem to be wrong. Just saying.
Valdivia
@Steeplejack: Sounds like a perfect weekend. And it would be very interesting to hear about the conference.
I was very tempted by what I saw of the movie but I have a morning class and 2:30 seems like a tad late for a school day.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Big Navarro fan, so it took some effort.
Heading to NYC again sometime this summer. Gotta get some inkling of what to see on stage.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: You should live in Central Time.
Steeplejack
As I just mentioned to Valdivia, this thread is synchronistic for me, because I just did a good-sized road trip this weekend: Washington to Philadelphia to Cape May, New Jersey, on Friday, then the reverse route yesterday. About five hours each way. Gave my playwright friend a ride to Philadelphia for a conference there, then we did a side trip to Cape May for a performance of her play about Molly Ivins and a talk afterwards. Back to the conference in Philadelphia on Saturday morning; I left her there and drove home by myself. She was going on to New York today to meet another friend for a week-long cruise to Halifax.
I love getting out on the road and driving, but there have been some bad trips in my history. In college (early ’70s) my roommate and I drove from Columbia, Missouri, to Troy, New York, and back over a weekend—1,150 miles, about 17 hours each way—basically so he could get laid, although that was not apparent to me at the time. And we went in his tiny, cramped MG or Austin-Healey Sprite. Can’t remember which he had.
I have driven between NoVA and Atlanta many times. That’s a long day’s drive, although I have read that road improvements have cut it from 11-12 hours to about 10. Let’s see . . . I’ve driven from Mobile, Alabama, to Austin, Texas, in one go, and when I got out of college I drove from Columbia, Missouri, to Fargo, North Dakota, in one run.
The absolute worst road trip I ever took—and it’s still the subject of rueful PTSD joking in my family—is when we moved overseas from Texas to Okinawa in 1967. The military allowed you to take one car, but because it is a small island you couldn’t take a big car. So my dad sold his Olds Delta 88, and the entire family—dad, mom, three sons, ages 15, 12 and 7, plus a dachshund—piled into a Ford goddamn Mustang and drove from Del Rio, Texas, to Travis AFB, north of San Francisco—1,600 miles.
It was horrible. The back seat was incredibly cramped. If you sat on one of the sides you could sort of turn your face into the window and try to zone out and pretend it wasn’t happening. If you sat in the middle you at least got to stretch your legs into the space between the two front bucket seats, but then you had the goddamn dog standing on your shins so he could stick his face into the (underpowered) dashboard air conditioner and pant and drool. Occasionally he would stand on your nutsack if you were by a window so he could smear pupkiss (h/t Sniglets) on the windows. And, yeah, occasionally he got so worked up that he vomited.
The salt in the wound was that my father was one of those Ahab-like maniacs who was determined to do 500-600 miles a day with minimal stops. And he kept his seat pushed back because driver comfort = driver safety. Duh. Too bad if you were sitting behind him.
The question has come up in subsequent family postmortems of why we didn’t fly to Travis and ship the car from Texas, but there has been no satisfactory answer. Maybe it was heinously expensive back then, or maybe it just wasn’t done. Who knows?
The only good thing to come out of it, from my point of view, was that when we finally got to Okinawa I was a junior and senior in high school who had access to a baby-blue Mustang for dates and tooling around. Schwing! (But not all the time. When we got there my dad bought a putt-putt Volkswagen and [later] a refurbished Jeep.) Top speed limit on Okinawa was 30 miles per hour, and the bottom third of the island was basically Tokyo-level traffic 24/7, so “tooling around” is a relative term.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I have some experience but it was a long time ago and as I said, everyone is different. When I was a counselor we had a rule because of this that if someone was seeing a professional we referred them back to the pro. Some were adept at hiding the professional part and occasionally we’d see someone and find out. You were supposed to bow out as gracefully as possible and refer them back to the pro. Had it happen to me once in 3 1/2 yrs. That was a very strange 50 minutes of my life and I haven’t forgotten it in 40+ yrs.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: yes, yes I should.
But because I do not I have to say good night if I want to be awake with a brain for my class.
Buenas noches Balloon Juice.
eta: @Steeplejack: see, no fair, I determine myself that I should go to sleep and you write something I want to read :)
I will be good and go to sleep.
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
It’ll still be here in the morning. Buenas noches.
Valdivia
@Steeplejack: True, true. Also: you guys might still be here when I wake up in a couple of hours! ;)
Now I do go. Adieu.
Little Boots
sleepytime in balloon juice. probably just as well.
Steeplejack
@Little Boots:
Not everybody, compadre. Song I’ve been saving for you: Paul Davis, “Cool Night.”
Little Boots
@Steeplejack:
you are awesome. and that is really a great story, by the way.
Amir Khalid
@Little Boots:
I hope you can see this one — Mustika by M. Nasir.
Steeplejack
@Little Boots:
I feel like I purged some baggage there. LOL.
Retro treatment of “Along Comes Mary.”
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
Success! Visible to me, at least. Nice song.
Little Boots
@Amir Khalid:
finally, the internet’s hatred of malay pop is lifted?
Little Boots
@Steeplejack:
good and good again.
not malay pop good. but good.
Steeplejack
@Little Boots:
In the same vein, “I Can’t Tell You Why.”
Little Boots
@Steeplejack:
just come upstairs already.
it’s been a weird week.
Little Boots
miss you, steeplejack. I’m never supposed to say that, apparently, but I do. I miss you.
Amir Khalid
@Little Boots:
Another one for you: Janji Manismu by Aishah.
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
Come upstairs as well, Amir.
ETA: Okay, that song tanked. YouTube blocky/frowny face.
Steeplejack
The music for that edition of Scaramouche (2000) was done by Jeffrey Mark Silverman. Good job.
FortGeek
My most recent road trip was a run from Pensacola, FL up to Atlanta in my slowly-dying ’92 Geo Tracker to pick up a spare engine for my ’81 Chevy Citation X-11. If it’d been a plain-jane engine instead of the high-output, I’d never have bothered.
Left on a Saturday morning, took 10 hours (stopping frequently to top-up the radiator, thanks to a coolant leak somewhere). Stayed in a hotel overnight, grabbed the engine (no one thought it’d fit in the back of the Tracker, but the little guy’s got plenty of space), and headed south. White knuckles on the steering wheel caused by sudden 25mph gusts trying to blow me off the highway, only made worse when I was passed by minivans, which seemed to have just the right aerodynamics to whip up an evil bow wave almost as bad as those wind gusts.
Got home late Sunday, worn out and damn near asleep at the wheel. Left that damn engine in the Tracker for the next 8 months because I didn’t want to screw with it anymore.
Denali
@Ruckus,
Thanks for your comments re goals and roads. It is hard to watch someone who is stuck in a very dark, rage-filled place and not know how to help them move on.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Valdivia:
FYI, TCM now has a streaming service that allows you to replay any movie that aired that month through your computer or mobile device. Check their website for details.
Valdivia
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): oh thank you! Perfect since I finally got home after teaching and need something to decompress my brain.
Valdivia
@Steeplejack: See, 12+ hours later I get to read your story. Having very long legs made me feel your pain about that car ride. I could feel the squish on my knees like I do when I am on a plane.
But as you say: at least you had a cool car for dates in Okinawa. Hope you got to deploy it a lot :)
burnspbesq
@KG:
I did OC to Phoenix and back yesterday. Good thing the Mets beat the D-Backs, or I would be really cranky today.
burnspbesq
@efgoldman:
If you don’t have an unlimited data plan on your cell phone, wait’ll you see what streaming on a long trip does to your bill. I’m glad I have 128 gigs of storage in my phone and another 192 in the Pono Player.