As you may have read in the other blog entry, I was on an impulsive road trip that nobody wants to take. With my grandpa being in the nursing home with his health rapidly declining, I spent a lot of time up there visiting him in his final moments and was by his side, along with the rest of the family, when he took his last breath.
Although I wanted to spend as much time as I could, I knew sitting up there all the time would be insanely depressing. Also, he was slept a good amount of the time, so there was a lot of idle time of really nothing going on. Since I was back in Marshfield, my hometown, I decided to make the best of it and see whoever I could and do the things unique to Marshfield.
I made it up there on a late Tuesday morning. Since everyone was working during the day, I decided to log in remotely and work myself. One benefit of my job is a lot of things can be done remotely. Often times when I am on a road trip for work and I am waiting for something at a site, I'll continue to work on the stuff that I would have been working on at the office.
I worked remotely the rest of the week. This helped pass the time during the day when everyone was working and there really much to do anyway. Every night after I got done with work, I would go up and visit. By this time, other family members would also be coming up after work, so if he was sleeping, we could quietly visit to pass the time. Unfortunately, that Saturday night, he passed away. The wake wasn't until Wednesday night and the funeral was Thursday. I decided to take the next week off just to relax and decompress from everything that happened.
Sunday, I took a trek over to Steven's Point to get some Cousin's subs. They were my favorite sub place to go to, and I used to go there at least once or twice a week in college.
I got my favorite sub, the turkey sub.
Later that night, my buddy Jake and I decided to pull some antics like we did in the past. The same antics when we went through the rebel stage like the kids at Walmart with the rebel flag. Here we turned up a cheap lighter to make a big flame.
Tuesday, Jake and I headed to Wausau to try a new Cajun Restaurant called J. Gumbo's.
I had the drunken chicken. It was mild overall so I put a bunch of hot sauce on it that was rated at a million scoville units. I was definitely feeling the heat after that.
On the night of Thursday, I headed to Culver's, which is a Wisconsin-based chain that makes good Butter Burgers.
Of course, I got a Butter Burger.
After eating, I went cruising in the Cougar with Jake and his sister Caitlin. After I dropped them back off, I hit up Nutz Deep to catch up with some other friends. In the picture left to right is Dustin, Mike, me, and Brett. We ended up staying until past 1 in the morning. Time flies when you start shooting the crap.
Friday night Jake and I went out drinking. The town was dead as usual, but we had a good time. Saturday I had to pack everything up. I pulled the battery out of the Cougar and put the dryer sheets back into place.
Then the cover went on.
I tried getting to bed early, but I laid awake a good chunk of the night. I was up by 3:20 AM and on the road by 4 am. One thing about my car now having 215,000+ miles on it is some things are wearing out. The CD player no longer sucks in or ejects CDs. Most of the time I used an FM converter or just play the radio. Surprisingly 70 miles from Kansas City there really weren't any channels. I decided to switch over to AM and got this classic country station that surprisingly lasted all the way to Kansas City.
For some reason my GPS took me down Missouri 71 and then I44 instead of straight down I35. It was a change of scenery and I saved $10 in tolls. It did take an additional hour due to having to go through every little town in Oklahoma, but I guess that hour was worth $10. Traffic wasn't bad until I hit Round Rock. Of course Austin traffic has to suck, and they ended up having the interstate shut down. It took over 45 minutes just to get to the next exit. I finally made it home at exactly midnight, exactly 20 hours after I left.
Now for work I have some other road trips that are going to be coming soon. Looks like I'll be on the road soon enough with a few more stories to blog about.