Family gathering
Last weekend from Friday 'till this past Monday, my mother and sister visited me here in Carmel. It was a great visit but oh, what an adventurous time...
They were supposed to fly in on Friday night at 10:30p.m. I didn't actually see them come through the gate until 12:30a.m. that night. There was almost a four hour delay in New York's LaGuardia airport because of foggy weather. My sister said people were so fed up that after a while a bunch of folks just laid down on the floor and slept at the gate waiting to board.
When my mother and sister finally got on the plane, they flew to Chicago and then took another connecting flight to Indianapolis. Needless to say, they STILL had problems when they got to Chicago.
There was another delay coming out of Chicago since they had missed their original connecting flight tim and so they didn't touch down in Indianapolis until 12:10a.m.
When they arrived, they had to wait for another plane to leave the gate and so they sat on the runway for an extra 20 minutes.
By the time it was time to get off the plane, my sister said people were literally RUNNING off the plane because they were about to go crazy. People were running so hard that the plane was actually shaking! That's pretty funny. I can imagine how frustrated people were.
Thankfully my good buddy, Rob was with me, as I waited and we had a lot of fun while doing that. Basically, we stuck it to the man by getting free parking at the airport. :)
It's free parkng per half hour, so after we found out that their flight was still waiting to dock at the gate, we went back out to the parking lot, got our ticket stamped, drove my car out of the lot, made a big circle around the airport again, and then came back to park in the lot-FOR FREE! SCORE! STICKING IT TO THE MAN, BABY!
My mom and sis were naseous from all the nasty, stale, airplane air and were also hungry. After I dropped off Rob, we headed for the only restaurant that was open at the time, Steak 'n' Shake. When we got out of the car, it was freezing, but both my mom and sis didn't really care since it was fresh air and they thrilled to breathe it in after hours of being stuck in an airport and on a plane.
We didn't get home until 3 a.m. that night and we just passed out...I had planned for us to visit the children's museum and eat some good food in downtown Indy, but with the flight delay, I didn't really think we had the energy to do that. We all ended up waking at around 1:15p.m. or so in the afternoon.
We had our breakfast, got ready for the day and set out at around 3:30p.m. for downtown. And then the fun began...
On our way down to the Children's Museum we hit a HUGE pothole and my tire instantly burst. The thing just went totally flat and we had to stop right away. There was a huge gash on it and we had to call AAA to bring out a tow truck since I thought we didn't have a spare tire in the car.
"How can you not have a spare tire?" "Trust me mom, I don't. I've looked several times and there isn't one." I was so confident. Then my sister piped in: "Mom, it's not like we're going to magically find a spare tire in the next few minutes! Leave it alone!" Then I came to the page in the car manual that explained how to take the spare tire out of its compartment, located right in between the middle two seats of the mini-van. Doh...
Andrew, my roommate pulled up literally minutes after we made that magical discovery and so did the AAA guy! I felt so bad he came all the way out just to be sent back since we didn't need him anymore, but he was nice enough to check the tire gauge on our spare tire to make sure it had enough air pressure. And he did that for free.
Needless to say, we got it all changed and it was fine. I called up the non-emergency police line though and made sure that they would take care of the pothole. A really nice neighbor who lived right by 49th St. on Meridian, came out to help us and told us that in the last two days she's had at least two cars get flats as a result of that pothole. She also found six hubcaps on a Saturday morning once!
She's tried calling the town hall several times but to no avail. She put an orange cone around it-gone. And she's tried putting signs around it-also gone. So hopefully after this time it would resolve the situation.
After all that, there was no way we could go to the museum and were just too tired to really be up for much else. We just decided to treat Andrew to dinner since he helped us change the tire and then just went to the mall and then headed home.
I really enjoyed the fact that my mom got to see myself in my new life, around new friends, and for her to see how I live now and that I am independent and doing fine without her. I don't say that to be mean, but for her to hopefully realize soon that I'm not her "little boy" anymore and that she needs to have a life of her own.
This is probably something I need to further explain, but long story short, my mother hasn't really lived her own life for a very long time and I really hope she can do that soon once she realizes my sister and I don't "need" her anymore in the sense of being taken care of. We're both autonomous adults, fully capable of taking care of ourselves apart from her but do appreciate her for the things she does but we can no longer be dependent on her, and she can no longer expect us to be dependent on her for our livelihood as well.
Anyways, just thought I'd share that story with you since I found it to be quite entertaining and some story. "It's not like we're going to magically find a spare tire, mom!" Classic. My sister laughed about it right after and so did we. At the time it was pretty sucky, but looking back on it now, it was pretty funny. One of those moments we won't forget for a while.
They were supposed to fly in on Friday night at 10:30p.m. I didn't actually see them come through the gate until 12:30a.m. that night. There was almost a four hour delay in New York's LaGuardia airport because of foggy weather. My sister said people were so fed up that after a while a bunch of folks just laid down on the floor and slept at the gate waiting to board.
When my mother and sister finally got on the plane, they flew to Chicago and then took another connecting flight to Indianapolis. Needless to say, they STILL had problems when they got to Chicago.
There was another delay coming out of Chicago since they had missed their original connecting flight tim and so they didn't touch down in Indianapolis until 12:10a.m.
When they arrived, they had to wait for another plane to leave the gate and so they sat on the runway for an extra 20 minutes.
By the time it was time to get off the plane, my sister said people were literally RUNNING off the plane because they were about to go crazy. People were running so hard that the plane was actually shaking! That's pretty funny. I can imagine how frustrated people were.
Thankfully my good buddy, Rob was with me, as I waited and we had a lot of fun while doing that. Basically, we stuck it to the man by getting free parking at the airport. :)
It's free parkng per half hour, so after we found out that their flight was still waiting to dock at the gate, we went back out to the parking lot, got our ticket stamped, drove my car out of the lot, made a big circle around the airport again, and then came back to park in the lot-FOR FREE! SCORE! STICKING IT TO THE MAN, BABY!
My mom and sis were naseous from all the nasty, stale, airplane air and were also hungry. After I dropped off Rob, we headed for the only restaurant that was open at the time, Steak 'n' Shake. When we got out of the car, it was freezing, but both my mom and sis didn't really care since it was fresh air and they thrilled to breathe it in after hours of being stuck in an airport and on a plane.
We didn't get home until 3 a.m. that night and we just passed out...I had planned for us to visit the children's museum and eat some good food in downtown Indy, but with the flight delay, I didn't really think we had the energy to do that. We all ended up waking at around 1:15p.m. or so in the afternoon.
We had our breakfast, got ready for the day and set out at around 3:30p.m. for downtown. And then the fun began...
On our way down to the Children's Museum we hit a HUGE pothole and my tire instantly burst. The thing just went totally flat and we had to stop right away. There was a huge gash on it and we had to call AAA to bring out a tow truck since I thought we didn't have a spare tire in the car.
"How can you not have a spare tire?" "Trust me mom, I don't. I've looked several times and there isn't one." I was so confident. Then my sister piped in: "Mom, it's not like we're going to magically find a spare tire in the next few minutes! Leave it alone!" Then I came to the page in the car manual that explained how to take the spare tire out of its compartment, located right in between the middle two seats of the mini-van. Doh...
Andrew, my roommate pulled up literally minutes after we made that magical discovery and so did the AAA guy! I felt so bad he came all the way out just to be sent back since we didn't need him anymore, but he was nice enough to check the tire gauge on our spare tire to make sure it had enough air pressure. And he did that for free.
Needless to say, we got it all changed and it was fine. I called up the non-emergency police line though and made sure that they would take care of the pothole. A really nice neighbor who lived right by 49th St. on Meridian, came out to help us and told us that in the last two days she's had at least two cars get flats as a result of that pothole. She also found six hubcaps on a Saturday morning once!
She's tried calling the town hall several times but to no avail. She put an orange cone around it-gone. And she's tried putting signs around it-also gone. So hopefully after this time it would resolve the situation.
After all that, there was no way we could go to the museum and were just too tired to really be up for much else. We just decided to treat Andrew to dinner since he helped us change the tire and then just went to the mall and then headed home.
I really enjoyed the fact that my mom got to see myself in my new life, around new friends, and for her to see how I live now and that I am independent and doing fine without her. I don't say that to be mean, but for her to hopefully realize soon that I'm not her "little boy" anymore and that she needs to have a life of her own.
This is probably something I need to further explain, but long story short, my mother hasn't really lived her own life for a very long time and I really hope she can do that soon once she realizes my sister and I don't "need" her anymore in the sense of being taken care of. We're both autonomous adults, fully capable of taking care of ourselves apart from her but do appreciate her for the things she does but we can no longer be dependent on her, and she can no longer expect us to be dependent on her for our livelihood as well.
Anyways, just thought I'd share that story with you since I found it to be quite entertaining and some story. "It's not like we're going to magically find a spare tire, mom!" Classic. My sister laughed about it right after and so did we. At the time it was pretty sucky, but looking back on it now, it was pretty funny. One of those moments we won't forget for a while.
This entry was posted by Christopher Wu, on
Wednesday, January 18, 2006.
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