Goin' Out To Cally – Part 59, Time Mismanagement

The long journey home through Colorado, Kansas and Missouri was as boring as the trek through western Texas, except this time our nerves were all frayed and exposed. Tim and I had discussed, prior to the trip, of trying to visit as many baseball stadiums during our journey as possible. Our first attempt in Dallas to see the Rangers play the Red Sox was nixed when we found out the teams were in Boston.

We looked at the schedule of the Dodgers or Angels while in Los Angeles, but none of the games coincided with the times we had not already booked. In San Francisco, we didn’t have enough time to watch the A’s or Giants play. And as we drove through Kansas and Missouri, our chances of seeing the Royals in Kansas City or the Cardinals in St. Louis evaporated along with our dreams of ending this trip on a successful note.

We finally made our way to Illinois and by seeing the world in five hour increments, which was the amount of time a full tank of gas would last, we knew we were three more gas stops away from being home. We were getting anxious to finally escape the Acura that had turned into a blue cocoon for all of us.

During one of our stops to get gas Sunday and I pooled our change together and had just enough to buy a loaf of bread and a small jar of peanut butter. We were less than 15 hours from home and we felt we could easily survive eating and smelling like peanut butter for the last day in the car.

After filling up with gas, Tim and Beth, whose wallets were stuffed with Sunday’s San Francisco cash, decided to stop at a McDonalds and indulge in a hit of McLunch before heading south. Or so we thought.

Tim and Beth entered McDonald’s while Sunday and I remained in the Acura meekly making our peanut butter sandwiches, struggling to get the little plastic knife to retain its shape as it tried to move through the thick, crunchy peanut butter. We looked up and, instead of finding our travel companions in line to get something to eat, Beth was on the phone talking to her parents.

Her body language and hand gestures were large and expressive as she was conveying her frustration at the current state of our trip. Sunday and I looked on, swallowing our anger along with the peanut butter, as the conversation wore on and on. Minutes turned to over an hour with Beth still on the phone, apparently recounting the entire trip.

I was furious. In the amount of time she spent on the phone talking to her parents we could have been home and she could have told them in person! Each minute that passed while we were in that parking lot was another wasted minute in the 15 or so hours that awaited us on the road. I was so pissed off I could have spit fire.

Sunday and I stewed in the car as two hours passed with Beth talking on the phone to her parents. Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Seven thousand two hundred seconds… wasted in a McDonalds parking lot in Illinois. Shortly thereafter, Beth finally hung up the phone and, despite my overflowing anger, I was just happy to get back on the road. The sooner we got back home the better.

That’s when things got just a little worse, like pouring salt into an opened wound or, more accurately, slowly pushing a hot iron into your skull through your eye socket. See, after spending two hours on the phone recounting a trip that we had not yet completed, Tim and Beth decided that they wanted to eat something before they left. Could they have eaten while they talked on the phone? Sure. Could they have gotten the food to go so we could get on the road? Sure. But they didn’t. Instead they sat down and ate in the restaurant, the clock ticking, minutes passing, rage building.

At this point, I wanted to be home that instant, utilizing a Star Trekian transporter, if necessary. However, with such technology unavailable to me, Sunday and I just sat, waited and hated.