The Road Trip From Hell

Sorry that it’s been so long since my last blog, but read on and you’ll see why. Last I told you all, we were headed north for a little road trip so that Remi could meet my sister and niece for the very first time.

My sister lives in northern Cali and my niece (her daughter) lives in Palm Springs. So someone figured out we could meet somewhere in the middle, in a little quint town called Solvang.

Solvang is a cute little touristy place that looks like a movie set for an old Danish movie. But onto our trip…..

As my luck always seems to have it, I was up all night long the night before we left with a migraine. But I hadn’t seen my sister in almost two years and I wasn’t going to let a little brain splitting pain get in the way of our reunion or in the way of my girlfriend meeting her. This was pretty big for me.

So cranky from the headache and lack of sleep, Remi and I hit the open road. My headache got a little better by the time we got there after about half a bottle of Advil and three venti frappuccinos with two extra shots.

We pull into Solvang and am greeted by every body. Oh yea, did I forget to tell you that before we left that morning, my sister called to tell me that the little children were all sick with the stomach flu but seemed to be over it and the two adults hadn’t gotten sick at all. We weighed the possible consequences of being exposed to the flu by little babies versus canceling a long planned mini-family reunion and obviously, we ended up going anyways. A choice that would sooner rather then later, bite us in the proverbial behind.

By that evening my niece, the mother of the three little angels that were carrying the bug was showing signs of not feeling so well herself. Uh oh.

We cut the night short and in the morning called over to their room to see about going to Santa Barbara for the day only to learn that my sister and niece had been struck down …. hard by the flu. Great.

Hoping that we hadn’t caught it, we said our quick goodbyes, packed up the Mini and headed back to L.A. Cutting our trip so short wasn’t the worst thing we told ourselves, we could still stop off in Santa Barbara for a nice leisurely lunch and some sight seeing.

We pulled into a lovely part of town (but really, there are only lovely parts of town around there) and got out to walk around. When I stood up, I didn’t feel so well. Not like I had the flu but just really tired and run down. More then I should have been. Remi felt it too so we decided to skip Santa Barbara and try to get back home as soon as possible.

Which turned out to be the only good decision we made the entire trip because we hadn’t been home more then a couple hours before we were both doubled over in bed, with fevers and the worst stomach flu I have ever encountered.
Two days passed and I couldn’t get rid of my fever or keep even water down. Remi wasn’t much better, in fact she was just as sick as I was and ended up spending six hours in the ER in the middle of the night at one point.

Yep. WORST VACATION EVER.

It is now six days since I got sick and I still feel like crap although I’ll take feeling like crap over feeling like I’m on death’s door any day and it was Remi’s first day back to work and I’m just hoping she’s OK.

On the one and only bright side of our little misadventure, my sister and Remi loved each other. Which was really important to me. So if I had to do it over again, would I have made that fateful decision to go up there after hearing the kids had the tummy flu? …. ummmm???? …….. yea I think I would. It was totally worth it to see my family even if we only really saw them for a little bit.

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