The Ride » Wii

April 4th, 2008 by Jarrod

I missed everyone last week! With the weekends filling up, I forgot to file my blog. Last weekend, I left the office and set sail with my family down to Homestead-Miami Speedway for the opening weekend of the 2008 IndyCar Series season. It was quite the adventure!

Megan and Van are with me for this trip because I decided to stay in Florida between the first two events. My cousin Ed, his wife, Heather, and baby girl, Makenna (who is a month younger than Van), are spending the week with us in Sanibel. While I am trying to chill out as much as I can and get quality, family time, I still find myself on this friggin’ laptop, working. I guess that is what to expect in the first couple of races of the season.

The beginning of my trip was fun. Megan woke up at 4 a.m. last Friday, March 28 for our 6:30 plane flight. Our hotel didn’t have a room for us when we arrived. Cousin Ed looked like he was going to get the pole but he was penalized for (can’t really say what it was, but it wasn’t a big deal), and he charged to a fifth-place finish. Go Ed!

Sunday morning we started early and hit the road. We didn’t have any tunes because our rental car radio only got 88.5? Weird. The Ford mini-SUV even has a special-edition Hertz Sirius radio unit that doesn’t seem to work, either. So we traveled across Alligator Alley in our packed SUV. I had no idea what it really took to pack for a 20-pound infant. His bag was bigger than Megan’s and mine put together.

We made it to the hotel before the Carpenters. They had a late start, so we spent time out at the pool until they got to the “resort.” As we were setting up, the babies were hanging out, and Ed and I were trying to figure out what we were going to do about the Wii situation. Apparently the hotel doesn’t allow visitors to be gamers, as well. So what to do in this situation? We rolled down to Wal-Mart so that the parents could enjoy Wii time once the little ones went to sleep.