Lord of the (Wedding) Rings

This weekend, my nephew got married. It was not your normal, “Hey! We’re All Going To Wedding!”. It was more of a “Hey! We live in South Jersey/Philadelphia and we have to figure out how to get to Washington DC on the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend” kinda thing.

The wedding was nice and the bride and groom looked Mahvelous! Just like marriage, this story is about the beginning of a journey.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Deathlok could not make the wedding. With my Mother-In-Law still not talking to us and my Brother-In-Law continuing to be useful as a third eyebrow, and adding that finding someone that will watch you diabetic dog on Labor Day Weekend. I was flying solo. . . . .kinda!

My Brother Mark and I worked a deal where we stayed at his In-Laws in Maryland and then just take the Metro in to the wedding. Piece of cake. . . . .Wedding. . . . .Cake. . . . .That’s a joke son. So, Friday night we headed to Maryland. Saturday we went fishing, which was awesome.. . . .Caught One! . . .That would have been great, if the 15 year old girl with us didn’t catch eight. . . . .That’s 8!

As Sunday approaches, we get up and get ready for the wedding. Introductions. . . .Sam. . . .Frodo. . .Frodo. . . . Sam! The journey begins.

We get in the car and drive to the Metro. For those of you that are not familiar with the DC Metro system, it is probably one of the easiest ways to get around in the world. Very similar to the Tube system in London, a blind gibbon with no thumbs could find its way through it. Hmmmmm.. . . . . We get to the Metro and the station is closed for repairs. GREAT! There are shuttle busses that will take us to the OPEN stations. That is four stops away. Of course, they have to stop at all the other closed stops and pick up all the other despondent people. Tick Tick Tick . . . . . We arrive at the ORANGE line and get on the Metro. The 3:30PM Wedding is now in 5 minutes. ORANGE line turns into YELLOW line turns into RED line . . .on a holiday schedule mind you. . .and now we are late for the Wedding (and I was going to count this going to Church too). Finally we arrive and I’m thinking that we are getting seriously late. To add one more cosmic kick in the groin, we go to exit the Metro system and the escalator is broken and it’s like 150 steps. We get our bearings and walk the 2 blocks to the church. Late but okay. . . . .for a Catholic Wedding. However, this was a Lutheran Wedding which is about 20 minutes long aaaaaand since we were about 20 minutes late we got there as everyone was exiting the Church. Swell.

When it came time to do the above dance in reverse at 11:30 at night, my brother and I decided to mooch a bed off of someone with a spare. My brother (the Father of the Groom brother) had his friend in from Switzerland who had a room with a double bed and was gracious enough to share his accommodations. Try getting that from an American.
This morning we got up at 7:00 and began the journey home. What could go wrong? After we sat through the Metro/Bus routine, we arrived at the parking garage. As we are leaving, my brother hits the curb and blows the tire (fix the damn tire and leave his personal life out of it). Despite having worked at my Father’s Tire Station for 20 years, my brother doesn’t have a spin wrench. Only a scissor jack and that little piece of crap angle wrench. Once we got the (half flat) doughnut on, we went back to Maryland. Got our stuff and headed North.

Having had enough adventure, my brother stops at Sam’s Club to buy a tire. . . .Wuss . . .
It took them over 2 ½ hours to mount one tire (mount it, I hardly even know it). They did get it finished just in time for us to hit holiday traffic though.

Oh Well, could be worse. . . .could be raining.