My brother called me last night to say they would be by in the morning for breakfast and to say goodbye before we left.  I told him that I wanted to be gone well before noon.  He said that was fine – they would be there earlier in the morning.  Great…..

….In theory.  About 10 am, he calls.  His daughter just laid down for a nap, they would be by after she woke up.  By this time, I’m a bit annoyed.  I was begged to stay an extra day so that I could see my mom.  Turns out, my mom needed to work today – at 7am.  I saw her for about an hour last night.   So, I got another crappy night of sleep just so my mom could see us for an hour.  Now, my brother has decided that “early” is most decidedly not early, in my opinion.

While I’m waiting for them, I start packing everything up into and onto the car.  This annoys my dad for some reason who feels it is me being anxious to leave.  Yeah, I am anxious to leave.  I haven’t been home most of the week, and I wanted to get home so I can get some things done around the house before the week begins.  Call me selfish, but I’d like to use some of my vacation time too.

My brother and sister-in-law show up closer to 11 am.  We make breakfast and eat. I notice we are now approaching the noon mark, so I finish pulling everything together so we can leave.  Again, when I said “before noon”, I wasn’t talking 5 minutes before noon.  I guess what annoyed me most was the lack of respect for what I wanted to do.  I was expected to work to their schedule, not to mine even though mine was laid out for them.  Yes, I’m on vacation, so do I really have a schedule, but getting home earlier today means less laundry and other fun work tomorrow.

The great irony to the whole thing was the fact that my brother the day before had complained that my dad has no sense of when “soon” is.  If he says he’ll leave soon, it means in the next 4 hours.  My dad had the same complaint of my brother.  I just find it hilarious that they can even complain about the other since they seem to be on the same schedule.

So, I’m already annoyed when we leave.  You can imagine my further annoyance at the crazy ass drivers on the road.  Most of the drive is on a two lane highway with occasional passing lanes.  When people use the passing lanes appropriately, the drive is not a problem.  In fact, it is a good drive.  Today, the idiots were driving.  Tailgating was pretty much par for the course.  Drivers going the other way passing when it clearly isn’t safe to pass.  (I ended up with a car in my lane twice where I ended up slowing down so they can get back in their lane.)  People pulling trailers and going 45 – and refusing to turn off to let the other drivers pass.  These are just a few examples.

I’m already annoyed – I’ve mentioned that.  I also have a temper thanks to the good Scottish blood in my veins.  I really am not in the mood for this shit – not today.  Further complicating this is the fact it is storming out.  Lots of rain, lots of wind, and lots of snow in the higher elevations.  Oh, and an insane amount of road spray today which made seeing the lanes even more difficult.  All in all – not a good day for me to have a 2.5 hour drive.  After getting through all of that crap, I reach the freeway.  I’m home free.  I know I’ll be at the house in 15 minutes tops.  Yeah, right.  There was a stall somewhere – cleared out of the way by the time we got on the freeway, but the damage was done.  Thirty to forty-five minutes later, we were finally home.

So, I leave you with a picture taken as I was going through the pass. I literally lifted the camera up and snap a picture blindly.

I like the fact I got the 6% Grade for the next 5 miles sign.  It would have been better if it were the “runaway truck ramp” sign – or the runaway truck ramp that was clearly used recently.  I usually try to stay away from semi-trucks on the way down the mountain for this reason.  That ramp clearly gets a lot of use.  Better they use the ramp than cause an accident, but I would feel safer knowing they had properly functioning breaks.  I’m just saying.