[Editor's/Anne's Note: Please enjoy another guest blog from my brother Marc...an amazing dad, outdoorsman, lawyer, etc.]
Disclaimer: Couple things off the bat. I don’t know how to write a “blogpost”. I’ve only read like half a blog ever (this one) so this will likely be “wrong”. Like in the “that’s incorrect” sense. Also I was told to be myself and whatnot which may come across as sarcastic bordering on mean-spirited, blunt, and full of foul language. So in that sense it will also be “wrong”. Like the “what is wrong with you?” sense. So if you are starting to read this and want the correct, clean version here it is: We went to West Virginia, it was a lot of fun, Anne is amazing, the end. If you want the real deal, you’ve been forewarned.
So I was asked (guilted? tasked?) to do a guest blog on here, and by here I mean this Word document I am writing this in because the only instructions I got was to do it. Like writing a guest blogpost is akin to grabbing some milk while you’re at the store (and even that would require a little more guidance, like if you want it from an udder or a nut, and what percent, and holy shit even buying milk is a chore now). So I am probably already screwing this up, but hey, you get what you pay for I guess. But from the limited guidance I was given, I’m pretty sure I am supposed to tell anyone who is interested about the trip Anne took with her favorite sister, her other sister, and her only brother, me.
The trip was sponsored by a company called KW something or other and they are really amazing, allowing people like Anne to do amazing things with their families. Not sure they totally understand how booking airfare works, but a small(ish) price to pay for the opportunity it afforded us siblings to hang out together for the first time in our lives without parents, spouses, kids, etc. So of course, we went where any group of siblings would go if they had a chance to take a trip together for the first time:
No seriously, that’s where we went. There’s a good reason for it and it was great, but do you know how many times when I was talking to people about not being at work for a few days and they would be like ”where you going” and I would say “West Virgina” and they would look confused and then say “sorry?”? All of them. 100% of the times. But whatever, fuck those people (for lots of reasons, but at present for shitting on our trip). The plan was to do some epic whitewater rafting on the New River, and spend the rest of the time hiking, or paddling, or hanging out, or doing whatever we felt like. Basically, we were all going to pretend to be Karyn for a few days, except Karyn who would just be herself but in 90% humidity. So we had the plans and as much as it probably annoyed the shit out Anne not to be able to, someone else made all the necessary arrangements for us to have our first ever Sibling Hang. First stop, Cincinnati, Kentucky!
Fun fact, did you know that the Cincinnati airport is in Kentucky? Me neither. Not even while I was in it, despite the plethora of random bourbon kiosks littering the airport which could have been a clue. ‘Nother fun fact, did you know that neither Cincinnati or Kentucky are in West Virginia? I did know this one (Kentucky is like a totally different state I’m pretty sure), but we were assured by our fearless leader Anne, that our destination, Fayetteville, WV was a relatively short drive from the Cincinnati airport, which, we all just learned, is in Kentucky. So once we all met up, we were on our way.
And we are just now getting out of the fucking parking garage. First we got knocked over by the actual air walking out of the airport. It’d been a while since any of the rest of us had dealt with humidity so it took a minute to pick ourselves up and get ready to go to the car. Then what Anne referred to many times on the trip as “Chemobrain”, kicked in full force and she couldn’t find her car. This would be the first of what would be very few times that any of us could actually contemplate that Anne had just recently had a chemo treatment. And by recently, I mean like 2 fucking hours before. Like she came from the treatment to pick us up at the airport (in Kentucky) so we could drive to West Virginia. She didn’t do what a normal person would do, go home and sleep for the rest of the week. She purposely drove to an airport so she could then go on a road trip with her obnoxious siblings. There are really few words to describe that, but the ones that come to my mind are, brave, awe-inspiring, and stupid. Once we finally did find the car, we ringed the sweat out of our clothes and hopped in the car to … drive around in endless circles. This fucking parking garage, man. We shoulda known. First off the entire airport is lost. It thinks it’s in Ohio but it’s actually in Kentucky, so I don’t know what anyone can really expect. But just like the secret u-turn you have to take walking throught the airport to get to the garage in the first place, there’s all these ill-placed signs and the thing was like 28 stories high. It was a 47 right-turns nightmare. And we ended up driving around for 45 minutes before actually leaving the airport. Only four more hours to go!
At this point, if you are still reading this you are probably like, whaaaaat the fuck dude, this is supposed to be about the trip you took, like the shit you did, not driving around a parking garage. But two things: one, when it’s your turn to write one of these, do it however the hell you want, and two, the car ride really set the tone for the rest of the trip. I will not now, then, or ever, say I am glad we planned a 5 hour road trip after 10+ hours of flying into our trip, but it did give us good idea of what we had gotten ourselves into. For one it was our first introduction to Anne’s cancer cough. It happened, we all stopped and were like “are you ok””do you need some water””can we do anything” and Anne told us she was fine don’t worry about it, it happens, ignore it. And then it happened again and we tried to ignore it. And then it happened again, and we felt like dicks for ignoring it. So we said “Yo I kinda feel like a dick just stopping mid-sentence when you start coughing, waiting for you to stop, and then picking up like nothing just happened” to which Anne replied (I’m sort of paraphrasing here) “Tough shit, it’s my cough, I’m fine, ignore it and move on”. So that set the tone for what I can only describe as one of the most awful sounding coughs ever and realization #2 that Anne was dealing with some capital s Shit and is incredibly adept at making the best of it. So for the next few hours we marveled at the trees and the gas prices and talked an laughed and jumped some lady’s battery at Bob Evans and ate and talked and laughed some more.
Then I yelled “fuck you” at a racoon that ran across the road, which I thought was reasonable but others thought was strange, we drove down a dark windy road into a West Virginian “holler” where it got so humid that the windshield fogged up (get new wipers Anne) and we were basically driving blind, we missed the road to the house because it looked like a fast food drive-thru lane, and then finally made it.
The house was cool. No one really took any pictures or anything because at this point it was dark, we’d all been traveling for like 20 hours, and had eaten a ton of chicken fried steak at Bob Evans and the worst hamburger ever at the airport, so we went to bed. But here’s the two pics of the place I found, one of the steps going up to it and another looking off the porch during a rain storm. There totally was an inside though, and it was nice. Just not photo-worthy I suppose. I mean who takes pictures of couches and shit?
The next morning we woke up, got some coffee, and Anne said the word “listicle” for the third time in less than 24 hours so we banned that word and were introduced to a new one, “oldmanjoe” which apparently is not a elderly guy named joseph, but the word for putting two words together like list and testicle to get listicle.
Anyway, oldmanjoe was definitely not banned for the rest of the trip and we headed over to the New River Gorge National Park for a short hike along a ridge that looked down to the New River where we would be rafting the next day. It was beautiful.
And fun
And we saw some cool stuff
If you had your sound on for that last video, that’s not what a centipede or whatever that is sounds like. That’s what the forest sounds like when Anne is hiking in it. Like for real, she wasn’t really all that close when I took that video. But she just kept hiking. And coughing. But hiking. Which makes sense because at this point it had now been like nearly 24 hours since her treatment. So no big deal. No wait, it is a big fucking deal, as Karyn, who had been through treatments for her cancer would attest to for like 100 times over the next 5 days. And I don’t say that as a knock on Karyn at all, but as a testament to how easy it was to forget what Anne was going through. Like it was necessary for someone to be like “Uh, you shouldn’t be able to be doing all this” all the time to put in perspective for dopes like me what we were all witnessing. It was truly amazing. Like the actively-receiving-chemo-patient was the third most exhausted person after the hike, which shouldn’t be the case. All centipede scaring aside, it was nothing short of incredible.
We ate really well the whole trip. Too well according to my pants when I got back. I don’t have a picture of everything and in what order we ate it, but you ain’t going hungry in Fayetteville WV. And while I will leave the carrot hotdogs in West Virginia, I am on a mission to get a Biscuit World to open up in Idaho. Look at this beautiful son of a bitch:
Cards and pizza that night and then waking up to head to the river to raft the next day. And it was awesome. Super cool place Anne had been to before and amazing whitewater. And not just the rapids, like the water itself was amazing. It was 75 degrees. The water. Not the air, the water. It was like rafting in a bathtub. Usually the most dangerous part of falling out a raft is the initial shock your body has when it hits the cold water, which causes you to not think straight and swim where you aren’t supposed to and get yourself into trouble. But not here. No one on our trip fell out, but one of us was pushed out, and you almost wanted to get back in the boat not because of the undercut rocks the guide warned you about, but because it was cooler in the boat than in the water. But don’t get me wrong, the rapids were amazing too:
It was a total blast. And Anne was amazing. She once again impressed, even if she did look like she was shitting her pants most of the time.
And props to Karyn as well. Even though she is still recovering from surgery, she was gritting her teeth and getting it done. Literally:
And to Sarah as well for having so much fun and being big enough to admit she pushed me into the water.
And last but not least our guide (Scott maybe(?), I know his nickname was an oldmanjoe but I can’t remember it) for waiting until hour 3 of being with people he just met to drop the phrase “big ‘ol fucking titties” while telling a story about a bong he made. Your restraint, and knowledge of the river, was greatly appreciated, even if your bird jokes weren’t.
Afterwards it was showers in water colder than the river and shopping for souvenirs of which I bought way too many before heading up to a bar where you get to toss back drinks and watch a video on the tv’s of the trip you just took.
Then downstairs for dinner and pepperoni rolls and then back to the house where shit got real. Not the capital s Shit that Anne is dealing with, just the shit that comes out when you have a chance to talk with your siblings with no other distractions going on. I’d like to think that a day spent on the river, had something to do with it, the words and emotions flowing like so much water released from the dams of our everyday lives, but more likely it was the dark and stormy’s at the bar. And all we really ended up talking about was that Anne is a total Badass and that Sherri’s Berries are fucking disgusting.
The next day was paddling around some lake in the morning, which was nice and relaxing.
Until we got caught out in a storm. Then after breaking Anne’s sideview mirror off her car, and grabbing West Virginia bratwursts with some goats…
…Anne finally took a nap. Literally the first time she let herself rest since her treatment. The rest of us bought more souvenirs and pounded some loaded deviled eggs because when you walk past a food truck selling loaded deviled eggs and its 95 degrees out what else are you gonna do.
Then a dinner odyssey that started with a closed taco truck, then turned into an absolute deluge of rain that produced a double rainbow,
and ended with pepperoni rolls from a gas station (just for me), before more cards and talk and laughter back at the house. Oh and lightning bugs!
The next morning it was time to pack up and head to breakfast in an old converted church, where we bought more souvenirs, and then headed to a pretty cool waterfall.
After that it was off to the Cincinnati, Kentucky to catch our flig…well shit, they just got delayed, and wait that gets to Chicago after our next flights take off and what the hell, fuck it, lets get to the airport and figure it out. This ride was much less eventful than the one heading out due to Anne sleep mumbling through most of it after finally giving herself a chance to rest, and the fact that we had all just spent like 4 days talking with each other and had run out of shit to say.
Anne left us at the airport and drove home so she could take a nice long, well-earned rest until…*checks notes*…the next morning when she was heading out of town to a conference. The rest of us rebooked our flights, got a room at a hotel that only an airport shuttle could get to and from so we had to shuttle back to the airport to get an Uber to Raising Cane’s (yeah we took an Uber to a fast food place) and then jaywalked across a state highway to watch a movie before ubering back to the airport with a guy who was about 2 more rides away from taking his passengers into the middle of the woods and murdering them, so we could take a shuttle back to the hotel to sleep for a couple hours and then shuttle back to the airport to fly home. But Anne was coughing on her cat while all that was going on, so a story for a different blog.
And mostly what we did after she dropped us off was talk about how amazing Anne is. She always has been so it’s not really new, but just amplified with the Shit she is dealing with. And we siblings should take some credit for her being so. Not necessarily for anything we did or said (honestly probably in spite of most things we did and said) but just because we existed, were the older sibs who Anne always thought she had to be as good as, even after she surpassed all of us a while ago(some of us when she was like 6 and presenting book reports on dogs to the rest of us during dinner in the middle of summer for fun). Watching her deal with treatments and chemobrain and that cancer cough and just the generally shitty hand that life dealt her with her diagnosis with such an amazing attitude and such courage is inspiring. Like actually inspires you to do the hard things you don’t think you can do. I mean I didn’t think I could eat this entire bag of Dot’s chicharrones while I was writing this, but I did. So thanks Anne. But seriously, you are inspiring and amazing and you need to remind yourself of that more often. Or, use the tools in your brown paper bag. Winkeyface emoji.
So I think that’s it. It really was an amazing opportunity and a great time and I am thankful we were able to do it. I think we each got to learn a little something about our siblings on the trip which was cool too. For me, it was that all my sisters, no matter their challenges, or apparent lack thereof, are all strong, smart, fun women, who just also happen to be incredibly terrible tippers.
[Editor's Note: Thanks Bro. Portmanteau is an awesome word. You're just a really generous tipper. And it's the Karen Wellington Foundation that helped make this happen, nominations by Alexis and Amy, generosity from Mom/Babs, and families letting ya'll take a few days...thanks all!]
