Day One of the Family Reunion

It started off as any normal work day. My alarm went off at 6am, I turned it off on my phone, and went back to sleep.
0650 rocked up and the alarm went off again, a method i'm using to get me off to the station on time! It doesn't work very well, but it's the effort that counts.

Anyway, I turned that off, sat up in bed... And remembered that I have the day off. Today is the day I head to Coffs Harbour with the sister, mother and father.

The next couple of hours were hazy. I continued t drift in and out of sleep, messaging Jenny as i go, before my sister messaged me to pick me up. Fair enough, she's the one giving me a ride. I'll put my washing in, since i forgot to do it last night, and she will come round with her new Mac computer and I'll see if i can fix her Internet problem. No Dice, so she'll have to figure out what to do at the shop or at Optus.

So we wait around for about two hours before i get my clothes in my bag and we head to mums. Dad hadn't been there for very long, but he'd gotten himself into the salami and cheese sandwiches and called up the doctors to organise a cardiology report with our regular GP. Apparently his work asked dad about his medical history and dad mentioned the heart surgery from the mid 1990s (i think it was 96).
"SIX?"
"That's right, six bypasses," dad replied solemnly.
"And you're still smoking?"
"Yep."
"Well i'm fuckin' well standing you down until you get a report saying you're fit to drive!"
Dad is getting on in years, hitting the big 60 in November, and boy did he show it on the way down. It's bad enough he sounds like he's always talking through a sock, but that's mostly because he only has one actual tooth left in his head. On the way down though, we were driving through Brisbane, Mum with Dad in his Fairlane, and me with Taleah in her "Fuck off Yellow" car that i've forgotten the model of. Seriously, it's like having a Hazard warning on her car, but it's on the wrong car!
Taleah and I were commentating his driving skills and how he's swerving all across the road and having a hard time picking a friggin lane! And when he did have the lane, he kept braking when the next car was a good 150 metres away! Talk about driving like an old man!
So Taleah set him straight at the first rest stop, where we had a feed.
One thing you can always say about Dad was that he has a good sense of humour. Taleah told him how it is and he laughed at her. Doesn't help is that she can't be taken very seriously half the time, but hey.

I'm so glad that I was driving with Taleah though. I was worried about mum and dad tearing each others heads off. But after the stopoff, a few klicks down the road Taleah says "Did you see what mum just did?"
"No, What did she-" I look at the car ahead and there's mum leaning back up in her seat from what looked like Dads lap.
"HOLY SHIT! Mum shouldn't be doing that! He shouldn't be able to get the ol' fella up!"
Laughter ensued through the better part of the trip. Every time there was a town name came up we'd look at each other in surprise and say "OOO BANGALOW!"
Some of them are real corkers and, being such children as we are, there were plenty of sex jokes going around.
At one stage, there was a fairly solid block of traffic. Taleah turned to me and said "Matt, why is there so much traffic on the road? Why does this have to be so gay?"
"Well Taleah, there were two cars up the front. They were about to miss their turnoff so they slowed down, hence slowing down the rest of the cars along the highway. At first glance the cars look like they're in a massive orgy, people just keep coming and going and getting 'Bumper to bumper', wink wink, and hence why the highway is one big euphemism for butt fucking."
Finest call I made for the day.

At one stage, around Ballina, we performed what seemed like an elaborate U-turn around town, and Taleah and I were wondering if dad had gotten a little senile!
"Does he know where he's going? We're going towards Grafton! Isn't that friggin inland? coffs Harbour is on the coast! At least I'd assume so because it's called a Harbour!"
"I'd laugh if dad started driving back up to Brisbane," Taleah joked.
"Nah, we're not. We're headed west."
"... How do you KNOW that!?" in genuine surprise.
"Well... The sun rises in the east and sets in the west..."
"Oh... Well i didn't think to use the sun, did i!"

The night ran on and we finally arrived at the Emerald Beach Caravan Park, where we're staying. It was like 7 or 8 o'clock, Nsw time, and we were pretty knackered, but we spent out time seeing all the cousins and uncles and aunties (why doesn't my phone know the word Aunties?) and the boys and girls were segregated. The boys had planned to go fishing and see what they catch wherever they wandered off to. I didn't go, i hung around to listen to Dad, Uncle Colin and Cousin Craig just talk about trucks and this one stupid bastard servo halfway between Mt Isa and darwin who charges a shit tonne of money for fuel and is friggin rude to his customers when they don't suit him. Dad stopped off there once to top off his truck, the bloke was charging $2.10 a litre and dad went go to pay with his Company card, but he said "Oh i don't use that fuckin thing, all a bunch of bullshit!"
"Well that's the only way i'm paying, i'm not using my money to pay for company fuel."
"You can't fuckin walk off!"
"Well you accept my company card then"
"Ah the piece of shit, won't accept it!"
Eventually dad talked him into using it by having him call the Mob that the card is through and having them tell him to use it!
"Fuckin all right, but don't you fuckin dare come here again."
"Don't have to worry about that."
It's probably one of Dad's tall stories but it got some shock and awe.
Eventually taleah came round and saved me from the pair of them and took me back to the cabin. We sat outside and talked about the books we're reading before giving up on waiting for Dad to come back.
Conveniently, after i got out of the shower, there was dad passed out on the double. After squeaking onto the bunk bed, i slowly drifted into lala land feeling bad that it was too late to call Jenny.