Day One Or The One Where The Puking Begins

The anticipation for a trip you’ve been talking about for years…it can be overwhelming.

I’m not even sure how it started, the discussion about Kel, Paula, and the girls joining us in Vermont for maple sugaring some year. I imagine it started around their dinner table in the adult conversation time we always had after one of our many shared meals.

I probably told some story about helping to gather sap, and Kelly probably said, “We’d love to take the girls to do that sometime.”

Then, this year, we finally made it happen. K & P committed to take the girls out of school if necessary. I committed to loading our crew into the car on short notice to begin the long journey north when the phone call came. And The Little Mother promised to share her sugaring data with us, and to let us know when it looked like the sap was ready, willing, and gatherable.

Eventually it became clear that the sap would very likely line up with Spring Break for K & P’s girls, so that became our target.

My crew and I packed up the car on a Saturday morning, watched Buds excel in his final CrossFit WOD of the 2015 Open, then we headed out for the great white north.

We didn’t get on the road until 10:30 a.m.’ish, and it was a different time zone and 10 p.m. when we finally pulled into the Holiday Inn Express in Woodstock, VA, where Buds had booked a room for us.

The goal was to get a great night’s sleep, then be in the car around 8 a.m. for the final hour of the drive to K & P’s where we’d meet up with Monkey’s Buddy Taryn, who was going to adventure north with us, and car pool behind K & P in their new van as many hours as we could.

We did get a good night’s sleep, but both girls were up with the shukes about 5 a.m. I believed at first that Yessa may have had sympathy pukes, but as time wore on, we came to believe that the meatloaf from the night before had not been a good choice.

True to her amazing spirit, Monkey napped for awhile, and we were on the road by 10 a.m., only a couple hours behind our completely arbitrary schedule. Yessa, also, rebounded with amazing speed, it seemed.

And thus ended the first 24 hours.

This is how Buds looked after his workout.

That was also how Monkey and Yessa looked when they woke up in the first hotel after the first round of pukies.

Spoiler Alert: The trip gets much, much better.