The next morning, Jolene and I went to breakfast. We sat around, we wasted time, and then we went to lunch. After lunch, we decided that she had to leave. She was still planning on visiting her roommate, and they lived about 5 hours from where we were. (Their house to her parent's house is about 2.5 hours. By coming to visit me first, she added about 10 hours to the trip. Isn't she great?) If she wanted to get there by dinner, she would have to leave by 1 at the latest.
We were walking across the parking lot to her car, intending to leave, when she said 'Why don't you come with me?'
That wasn't the first time she had mentioned it. When you're in a primarily long distance relationship, any time with your significant other is good time, and by definition, is never long enough. The difference was that up until now, those suggestions had been jokes. This time, however, it was serious.
Go with her? I couldn't do that. I had a recital in 5 weeks that I wasn't ready for. (You're never ready, no matter how long you've been working on it.) I didn't know the people she was going to visit, and on top of all that, I hadn't been invited. (It has always annoyed me when I invite somebody to do something, and their significant other tags along. Especially when I don't like said other, but that's besides the point.)
Jo assured me that I would love them, and that they would love to have me come. (As it turns out, she was right on both counts, but more on that later.) I thought about it, weighed the pros and cons, and finally threw the cons out the window, ran inside and packed some clothes.
We got there around 7:00, roughly 3 hours later than Jolene had originally intended, and with an extra person. Fortunately Catherine and Ryan are the epitome of spontaneity, and they took it all in stride. We had chicken fajitas for dinner. The only cheese they had in the house was swiss, and they couldn't figure out where or why they had gotten it, because they both hated swiss cheese. They offered it to us, as they had apparently done to every other visitor they'd had in the past month or so, but we politely declined.
That evening we went night sledding. This was new for Jo and me, but apparently not a first for Catherine and Ryan. Sorry there aren't any pictures. (Keep in mind that it was night.) We put on our snow clothes and headlamps and went outside. They had two options for sledding, and two sleds. You could sled down the driveway, if you were careful to make the turn and stay on the snow/ice along the edge, or you could sled down 'The Chute'. The Chute was a dry creek bed/runoff ditch thing that started at the top of the driveway and reconnected at the bottom, after a sharp turn with rocks and logs and various other obstacles. (see the tricycle pictures later to see the driveway. The Chute started about 20 yards up past the turn.)
They had two sleds. One was blue and said something about H20 on it, so obviously they called it the Ho. The other was purple, and thusly dubbed the Barney sled.
There aren't words to describe the mayhem that happened that night. We each almost died on several occasions, Jolene and I became the first people to shoot the Chute headfirst (and at night, no less), Ryan became airborne after flying into their front yard, and I nearly face planted into the snowman after swerving to avoid the pile of snow that they were slowly turning into an igloo.
After we had our fill of adventure for the night, we went inside and dried off. We looked at pictures of their wedding and of when they hiked the Appalachian Trail, then ended up watching Office Space and going to bed.
Most of the adventure took place the next day. But first, here are some pictures, since you're getting sick of just reading text. Ryan found the trike in a stream here at school. The lettering had worn off, so it said 'hore' on it. They painted it black and named it.
Behold, the Black Hore.
The driveway. Good for driving up, sledding down, and...
Horing.
