We rose early and got rolling for the final stretch, which was mostly traffic-nice, all to the tale of Terry Pratchett's Maskerade. I had intended to cue-up Making Money, which starred the same cast from Going Postal, but couldn't find it owning to the daft filing system in the iPad having stashed it in the wrong place under the wrong author, but I only figured that out days later.
Mrs Stevie arranged for us to meet the Stevieling and her beau at their place before we got to our timeshare1, which might have worked out better if I hadn't been fried from driving, the rain hadn't been pouring torrentially for the last hour or so and we had been able to get to a restaurant for dinner as planned. As it was we visited for a bit until I started to fall asleep and then I pointed out that I didn't want to be unpacking the bus in the dark and the rain, making me the villain of the piece, and we drove on for an hour or so to the timeshare, with Mrs Stevie at the wheel this time to, as she put it, avoid a repetition of the missed turn fiasco of last January.
I elected not to join her at the timeshare check-in, and so was not present for the customary duel in which a young sales rep tries to get the checking-in guest to commit to touring the timeshare with a salesperson eager to get the younger guests to buy in or, if they are like us and already bought-in, buy up. This never goes well for me as I have no patience for it after hours of driving, but Mrs Stevie sometimes wants to see what's what.
This time she apparently did not want to see what's what, but had been directed to a more-than-usually keen salesdrone who refused to admit defeat. I imagine carnage was the result to judge by the crumpled state of the car parking pass. The salesdrones actually dispense these only when they are convinced you are either sold or irrevocably unsold, and it seemed this time the young man had no "unsold" filter, fueling a rage reaction usually not experienced without the application of about a pint of Mocha Face-Punch Clawhammer Blend Espresso to judge by the footprints Mrs Stevie stamped into the asphalt on her return to the bus. All in all, I'm glad I missed it.
The villa was a welcome sight, and in no time at all we had unpacked, had a quick argument and dashed out to attempt to get dinner. I say "attempted" because the first place we went to, the local Cracker Barrel2 had us seated for three quarters of an hour, with the waiter occasionally returning to our table to inform us that another part of our order had somehow fallen off the menu and ask us to make another choice. We eventually walked out of that place and drove to the not nearby Cracker Barrel3 where the wait was estimated at four days.
We then moved on to a nearby Texas Roadhouse4, where the wait was declared as 20 minutes. I asked about take-out, and was told the wait for that was also 20 minutes. I am still trying to work out how the wait for a table was the same length as the wait for a take-out order. For this to be true the kitchen would have to be cooking at capacity even for diners already seated and eating. Oh well.
We finally ended up in a Perkins, a breakfast all day type restaurant and had a very nice meal, after which we went back to the villa for some too-long delayed sleep.
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