Labor Day weekend adventures

Jack thought he was hallucinating Friday night when he arrived at the Telenko family home in Pennsylvania and came face-to-face with a coyote. Well, a stuffed coyote head, anyway. Like any respectable Keystone-state resident, Shannon's dad has a couple of hunting trophies in appropriate places (e.g. the den.) Jack thought the coyote was a great distraction after his less-than-steller debut as a road warrior.

It is well established that Jack hates traffic. With this in mind, we decided to break up our road trip to see Jen's family in Ohio into a two-part drive. Part 1 would get us about halfway there on Friday and allow us to stop and visit with Shannon & Steve and their twins at Shannon's parents' home, a short hop off the PA Turnpike. Of course, we're dunderheads who didn't head out the door until 2:30pm. On Labor Day weekend. Leaving DC. It's 75 miles to Hagerstown and it took us 3 hours to get there, with another 125 to go. Yeah. So Jack wasn't so pleased about all that.

Although the hospitality was wonderful and the twins were a hoot (should have some video of them up soon), our confidence was completely shot. Maybe our boy wasn't cut out to travel, or maybe we just were terrible parents who couldn't convince a baby to enjoy a car ride. Either way, we thought it would be nicer to stay with the Telenkos or just turn around and drive home rather than continue our journey to Ohio.

With great trepidation, we decided to press on. And then, The Innovation. Jack was starting to fuss about 20 minutes into our Saturday morning drive (part 2 of the trip) when dad thought, "What the hell, I'll open the sunroof." Magically, the boy quieted and peace settled into our car. After a stop on the turnpike for a feeding, we continued with the top popped for 2 hours as the boy peacefully slept all the way to the Ohio state line. At one point, we were passing through a construction zone which dropped our speed and wind noise, prompting me to quip to Aunt Niki: "The bus can't go below 50!" as if our little Jack were the bomb on the bus in Speed (Keanu Reeves finest hour.)

There's a lot more to come from this trip-- pictures, videos, descriptions of the people he met at fun picnics. But that's for another night. Dad is tired and ready to sleep!