The Youngest Dunham: Road Trippin'

Hey there new-found friends and loyal followers, it is Azja again with another action-packed blogstravaganza! It has been a while, hasn't it? Many things have changed since our last palaver. For one, OSU is now #16, and OU is now back in the top 10. Oh well. The Cowboys won the last game against Rice, however, so the loss column is still only a "one". If this can be maintained we'll eventually see OSU back in the top 10. As I said in a previous entry, the season is still young.

So, what else has changed? Well, I've started smiling on purpose now! Dad is still working on getting a picture of what he says is the most beautiful smile in the world (I think he's a little biased). I'm not quite consistent with smiling, so it makes a captured photo a bit of a challenge. I know what I'm doing,

however, it's just that I can't always get it to work the way I want. Don't worry, soon I'll be smiling all the time, and you will see picture after picture of my smiling mug. You'll say, "Okay Erik, enough with the Azja smiling pics, we get it already!" He's a proud dad, what can I say? I've actually been working on targeting my smiles at him lately as a test to see how easily I can wrap him around my little fingers. Conclusion: he is gonna be a sucker! Mom is going to have to create a buffer so that Dad doesn't end up caving in all the time and spoiling me - not that I really have a problem with him spoiling me : ) Anyway, that is the latest development news from my end. Mom and Dad actually say I'm changing almost daily - getting a stronger neck, edging closer to some form of mobility, getting better at focusing on things and concentrating on them longer. I don't really notice these things as much as they do, but what do I know, I'm a baby.

Other than that, Dad has been practicing more and more for the Halloween party,

where he will debut his alter ego: DJ Hazbro. He has some slipmats now that he says will make the job much easier as well as give him a little more professional cred. He has a pretty fancy setup now, and I love listening to him practice his sets. There's this one mix he does with Lady Gaga and the Goblin "Tenebre" theme song that sends shivers down my spine and makes me want to dance all at the same time. He's starting to get pretty good. I have a feeling my birthday parties will be pretty sweet affairs! How many girls get to grow up with an in-house turntable DJ for celebrations? I can't wait for DJ Dadbro to spin me a sweet Portishead mix for my first birthday bash!

Mom has been busy preparing for the road trip. Oh, I didn't tell you about the road trip? Well, considering I am now writing this from Oklahoma, I guess I'd better divulge the deets. Mom's friend Shanna is getting married on Saturday the 26th. Mom is one of the bride's maids. So we set up a road trip that would get us to Oklahoma in time for the wedding and also allow for my baptism the following day. Remember how I was all excited about Okarche weddings and curious about baptisms when I experienced both from the womb? Well now I get to experience both first-hand in one weekend! Holy ticker-tape parade, Batman! But how to get to Oklahoma, this is the question. Mom and Dad's answer was to load the car up to maximum capacity, install a dog guard (or as the instruction manual mistakenly called it, a "god guard"), and drive the 1400 mile distance with me locked in a car-seat and Eddy the Dog locked in the back. Sounds like quite an adventure, huh? Well, the plan was to spread this out over 3 days. Wednesday Dad started his vacation. We would leave at around 7:30 Wednesday morning, rolling into Knoxvillle that evening and checking into a hotel for the first night. We would then spend the next day crawling across Tennessee until reaching Arkansas and spending the night in Little Rock. This would have left about 3 1/2 hours of travel time for Friday, bringing us into Okarche on Friday afternoon sometime. This was the plan. But things don't always go according to plan, do they?

What really happened is that on Tuesday, Mom started packing and thought she might have enough energy to drive through part of the night. Dad thought it would be nice to get an early start (as long as he got to sleep first - he had a long day at work).

So they got everything packed into the car (about twice as much as what Dad thought would actually fit) and hit the road at around 2:15 Wednesday morning. It seemed that things may work out well until they hit Chambersburg, PA 2 hours later and had a bit of an accident. A big truck must have lost its wheel because a truck in front of us ran over it, and Mom then had to navigate away from a steel truck wheel careening towards us at an incredible speed and throwing off sparks like a broken dynamo. She couldn't avoid it. It hit the front of the car, and we had to pull over to investigate. The truck in front of us also pulled over. They hadn't fared well - there was a softball-sized hole in one of their tires. We got lucky - we only busted the plastic cover over the bottom of the engine. We had to pull off into a shopping center where Dad completely ripped off the dangling cover. While there, they gave me my first bio break, which went well. Dad was also able to go shopping at the Giant for some things they had forgotten. So all worked out well anyway. And we were soon off again down interstate 81.

The rest of the day things went well. Eddy the Dog slept peacefully in the back of the car, and I slept peacefully in my car seat. I slept through Maryland and West Virginia. We had another bio break in Virginia, and by the afternoon we had hit Knoxville! It was there that Dad learned about Knoxville's significance as the great golden spike (punctuated by the golden sun-sphere, made famous in a Simpsons episode) uniting the beer distribution of two parts of the country. See, Yuengling is only sold on the East Coast. Fat Tire, a New Belgium beer from Colorado, is mostly distributed in the mid-west.

But here in a gas station in Knoxville (where there was also a Subway, allowing Mom and Dad to 'eat fresh' for lunch) Yuengling and Fat Tire sat on a cooler shelf side by side! There were even several varieties of Yuengling, including Black and Tan - one of Dad's favorites. But since Mom and Dad can always get Yuengling, the choice was easy. They would enjoy some Fat Tire with lunch to celebrate their accomplishment of reaching their first major checkpoint almost half a day earlier than anticipated. Feeling refreshed, we pressed on. We rolled through Nashville and had the energy to press on. Mom and Dad took turns sleeping while the other drove. We crossed the great bridge that separated Memphis from Arkansas sometime around 10 PM on Wednesday. We pressed on. We rolled through Little Rock but started to run out of steam around Fort Smith. Two-hour shifts became 45-minute shifts, and finally even Azja was ready to stop. So about an hour outside Oklahoma City, the Dunham Express took a break for some Denny's. It was just what the doctor ordered. We were all ready to roll again and pulled into Okarche at around 6:30 Thursday morning (7:30 Eastern time - making the entire trip about 29 hours, quite an adventure to have after a full day of working on Tuesday and very little sleep Monday night, my bad).

I'll be honest with you - I slept most of the way. But I'm proud of my parents, as they made the whole trip while never sleeping for more than 3 hours at a time. What gave them the motivation? Corndogs! The Oklahoma State fair ends this weekend, and their original trip schedule would not have given them time to visit it. But arriving a day and a half early will allow Mom and Dad the time they need to visit the fair for at least a couple hours. That means that for the first time since leaving Oklahoma, they will get one of the best corndogs on the face of the planet. Oh, also they were excited about seeing everyone. That was the true motivation. Also, they figured I would stay up all night in a hotel anyway so why not just keep rolling. Whatever the motivation, we all made it, and Eddy the Dog got to set his paws on Oklahoma's red soil for the first time in 5 years. And oh how many stars in the sky! I didn't know so many existed. This is going to be a fun trip.

Well, I guess that's it for now. That was actually quite a lot. I really just ramble on sometimes. Oh well, at least there were pictures to break up the monotony of such a story. And if those weren't enough, here are some we took before the road trip. Gotta go for now. In accordance with the wishes of Dad, we're going to Eischen's for lunch (chicken, okra, and chicken....and milk for me, thank you).