The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Albany, Part 1

Until last Friday, the last real road trip I went on with my friends was to Niagra Falls. That was three years ago, before Michele and Brianna moved up here and Nick started going on long trips for work. It was the end of an era, really, and I can't think of a better send-off than being asked to leave Canada. But that's a story for another time. Today is all about the weekend trip to Albany, which could be considered the start of a new era. Or not.

Noticeably absent this time around was Hedie, the primary orchestrator of most of our previous trips. When Nick first told her about it, she wanted to come, until she found out it was the same weekend she was whitewater rafting. Or just rafting. How many kinds of rafting are there? I'm pretty sure it was whitewater rafting. It's not like she was lazily floating down the Mississipi with Huck Finn and N-word Jim. Anyway, she was in Maine, leaving us to fend for ourselves when it came to trip planning and booking hotels. You know, the boring stuff she usually covers. and since this trip was my idea, I was left in charge of finding a hotel, for the first time in my life, I think. Jose made some dinner plans and everything else just sort of fell into place.

Also missing from this trip was my mom's minivan, which Jose inexplicably christened "Talula." After getting her windshield washer fluid caps ripped off by baboons on a previous trip, Talula was given a reprieve. Not that the baboon incident had anything to do with it, it's just that Jose, as much as he loves Talula (and he does), he was eager to break in his spankin' new Scion. Which I lovingly dubbed the Brave Little Toaster.

We packed up the BLT and were on the highway by 11:00 A.M. Michele was in the passenger's seat, because she said she gets carsick if she sits in the back. I always thought that was just a scam, but I was content with sitting in the back. Jose had the directions, but we also had a streets and roads program on Nick's laptop as a contingency. Lots of nice scenery out in western Mass and New York. No houses, no buildings, just lots of misty rolling green hills, broken up every so often by a barn and some cows, or whatever they are. There was one really cool-looking old silo that, if I was making a movie, I would pick that location for the setting and then work out the tiny details like plot from there. Maybe it would be like, where some kid died fifty years ago and now their restless spirit gruesomely slaughters anyone foolish enough to venture there. Or maybe there's a singing pig. The possibilities are endless.

Surprisingly, we didn't hit any snags. No detours to Booneville this time. Things went fairly smoothly. At least on our end. The plan, if not the whole point of the trip, was to finally meet some people we'd known online for years from a Farscape website, among other places. Nick, Michele and myself were in town for NYPinTA's charity screening of Serenity. Jose had arranged to meet with Alicia and Lance, aka BC and the jolly LaBomba, respectively, at the Albany International Airport where his lady Christy would be arriving from. The movie wasn't until eight. so we were all going to tag along to meet Christy.

I had my iPod going for most of the ride, but at some point while we were driving through western Mass, Jose got a call from Christy saying that her flight was delayed. She had already safely landed in New York from South Carolina, but she still had a connecting flight from NYC to Albany to deal with. Her layover was already four hours, and now there was another hour on top of that. So she was stuck for five hours at an airport that was two hours away.

By the time we got to Albany, Christy's flight still hadn't taken off and Nick had finished reading Election, the book he started when we got on the highway. We got a call from Ali and Lance to meet them in the parking lot by Sears in some dumpy mall. Lance was wearing the same Can't Sleep...Clowns Will Eat Me shirt that I have. Eerie. While we were waiting for them, Michele went into the mall to look for a bathroom. They pulled up behind us not too long after that and we all took a look around the mall.

The mall was in what I'll call a transitional phase. It was in the middle (or actually the begining) of remodeling, to make it more competitive with the newer, modern mall that I'd image was a few blocks away. So by this time we'd all made our acquaintances, but Michele was still AWOL on her bathroom quest. We were standing in front of an FYE, which neither Nick or I really care for because everything's needlessly expensive there. But it was the only store that sold movies and games, so we went inside. The others stayed in front of the store, and since Ali and Lance hadn't met Michele yet, I described what she looked like and said to flag her down if they see her.

I wasn't in the store for very long before I happened to look up from what I was doing and noticed Michele on the other side of the mall trying to find us. I ran out to get her and introduced her to the group. At which point Lance started laughing, because he asked Jose if that was Michele when he saw her go by and Jose said, "No."

We had lunch in the food court and hit a couple more stores. Jose wanted to get something for Christy before her flight came in, and Michele was eager to check out the As Seen On TV store, perhaps more eager than what is deemed appropriate when referring to said store. I also paid a brief visit to the scary, scary bathroom at the end of the food court, where none of the stalls had doors, except for the very first one, which was occupied by someone taking trumpet lessons. Or at least that's what it sounded like.

As we were about to leave to mall, a heavyset lady about thirty feet in front of us dropped to the floor. She just took a dive and we all stood there and watched, like the last episode of Seinfeld, which always annoyed me. But I wasn't sure what I should do. I didn't want to run up and help her, because if she just slipped, she'd probably be really embarrassed and wouldn't want to draw much attention to herself. On the other hand, what if she had a stroke or something? Heady stuff. Everyone stood around and watched as she rolled around like a turtle on it's back, presumably waiting to see if she'd get up. Nick put his headphones on. I nonchalantly walked back into the As Seen On TV store and pretended I didn't see anything. She got up and walked away. As best as we can tell, she dropped her drink and went down with it to try to salvage it. She must have been extremely embarrassed, but lesson learned; sometimes you just have to let it go.

Before we left the mall, Nick got a call from Boosey. Boosey as in Caboose, then name he was given when he joined the projects team at Best Buy. They were naming the new guys were named after Red Vs. Blue characters at the time. I don't think I even know his real name. I think it's Brendan. Or Brandon. Or Steve. Anyway, he asked Nick what he was doing that night and Nick said he was in Albany to see Serenity at eight. I couldn't hear the other end of the conversation, but it was something to the effect of "I'm there!" Which was great, because for some reason I thought he was going all along and already told NYPinTA we'd have four people. It was four o'clock at this point, and we didn't know if he'd be able to make it here in time for the movie, but he was coming anway, becaus even if he couldn't make the movie, he had a buddy in Albany that he'd meet for drinks. He hung up and we drove to the airport.

The Albany International Airport looks an awful lot like my old junior high school. Even the inside looked like the library. If someone was watching my life on TV, they'd probably think we were too cheap to get new sets and just recycle old ones, like how Lost in Space used old sets from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Anyway, we were at the airport for an hour or so. Despite being there to meet people, I reverted to my "frightened of people" state and mostly stayed in the corner, talking with Nick and Michele. But Jose didn't seem to have a problem, oddly enough, and he chatted up Ali and Lance, who conveniently blocked the exits to keep him from backing down.

When I first met Michele at the airport when she came here from South Carolina, (C'mon! Not only are they using the same sets, but now they're just rehashing old storylines! This show is going downhill.) I wasn't really nervous, which was unusual for me. But the first time I saw her, I wasn't quite sure that it was her. She looked like her picture, but I still wasn't sure if it was just someone who looked like her. So to safe, I stood behind her and waited for her to turn around. Pretty romantic, huh folks?

Speaking of romance, while we were waiting for Christy at the airport, Michele came up from behind me, reached her arms around me and gave me a big hug. Except it probably wasn't the best time to do that, as at that moment I was silently...she wouldn't even have known if I wasn't giggling like an idiot. Anyway, from that point on, Michele said I needed to have a safety word to warn her. So for the next two days, every once in a while I'd blurt out "You can dance if you want to."

Well, finally Christy's flight came in, and wave after wave of people stepped out of the gates, but no Christy. I hadn't even seen a picture of her, so I had no idea what I should be looking for. Finally, Ali spotted her.

There will now be a brief intermission