Trauma in Sedona Part III--Arrival into Womanhood

For a family outing, Sedona is just about the perfect distance from our house. It takes a little over an hour to get to the Oak Creek/Sedona area and another 20-30 minutes to get to our hiking spot. The drive is absolutely magnificent, but at the same time it can be quite treacherous as well. Lots of sharp turns, lots of beautiful scenery to look at and lots of tourists, lost and confused as they try to find the Pink Jeep Tours office. Leaving the North Phoenix area, you immediately begin your ascent into the mountains. Five minutes north of our house, you are at 2000 feet elevation and before you can think about your ears popping, you find yourself at 6000 feet. The grade is very steep and generally the car gets incredibly upset when you lock in the cruise control at 80mph and try to coerce the engine to do its job. When I had the Saturn, this was especially noticeable and there were two or three distinct climbs where I knew the car would recoil in horror and jump up to about 7000 rpms before forcing me to reassess my strategy and push that badboy to 50mph and pray. Nothing like starting a road trip (no matter how long or short) with the family stranded by the side of the road around a blind turn in the middle of nowhere. The Saturn never completely quit on us on one of these ascents, but it certainly provided me with enough fear of this drive that I let the vehicle dictate what it is able to handle.
The minivan seems to do much better on this trip, but when I see the rpms climbing beyond 4000, I let some of those bastards with Hemis pass me. I enjoy later in the trip when I am able to return the favor. There is nothing quite so insulting to one's manhood as being passed by a minivan. There is some sort of psychological fear of this eventuality and as you move steadily by them in the left hand lane, they inevitably bear down on the gas pedal with absolute disregard for their own safety or any recognition of posted speed limits. I am quite convinced that you could talk your way out of a ticket if you just utilized the truth in this situation. "Yeah, officer, I realize that I was driving 93 and I see that we were in a 65 zone here, but there was a minivan that was about to pass me on the left. I've got a girlfriend here--I mean what the hell was I supposed to do?" 9 out of 10 guys would cut you some slack. There's always that one who just won't stray outside the strict guidelines of "the law," but he's the same guy who is going to cite you for speeding on your way to the hospital after your wife's water breaks. He'll probably even keep you there for an extra 45 minutes or so, just so the lesson sticks, but 90%, most guys are willing to take that chance. I don't even know if people realize that they refuse to let a minivan pass them or not, but when I am driving the Opamobile, I have no challenges making a move to the outside. The sight of that silver Caravan slip-streaming past a guy's Camry and you would think he would contract the plague if he let me pass. We guys are pretty damn funny about such things.
The drive to Sedona is pretty much a straight shot. There are only about 8 exits between our departure point and our destination. Of these, maybe two or three actually have any kind of services and there are two rest areas--one about 15 minutes north of Anthem and one about one exit from Sedona. As I was flying past the first one with the blue "REST AREA" sign still just in front of me, Lauren pulls the old "I have to go potty." out of nowhere. When we left Shari's house just minutes earlier, she didn't need to go, and I was sure of this because even in my still clearing head, I could recall asking her at least three times if she needed to pee before we left. Kim looks back at her and asks her if she can hold it for a little while (knowing full well that this means at least another 30 minutes and probably 45). Lauren shook her head and Kim sprung into action.
"Lauren, you are going to have to pee in a cup."
"Okay."
"Honey, do you think that is a good idea?"
"Do you have a better one? She needs to learn sometime."
As I move further along in life, I am always amazed at how much I don't realize. Quite honestly, I didn't realize that there was some sort of necessity to a woman learning how to pee into a cup while traveling down the highway at high rates of speed. Certainly at the age of three, there would still be ample time to figure this out for oneself, but we didn't have much choice if we wanted to preserve the sanctity of Lauren's pants and carseat.
"Don't Crash."
"I'll do my best."
The next thing I know, Kim takes a last sip of coke out of her McDonalds cup and heads back in the van. I did my best to focus on the road, the turns, the traffic and the wind pushing the van all over the place, but Kim gets Lauren out of her carseat and brings her to the back of the van and begins to coerce her into relieving herself. Without hesitation, she unloads her bladder on the unsuspecting McDonalds cup and manages a bullseye. Kim is cheering her on like she just landed a triple lutz or sowcow or something for the first time. Life is just full of so many special moments and this one to Kim was one of her proudest. As we had no Kleenex in the car, I heard something about drip drying and before I knew what had happened, Lauren was strapped back in, Kim was back up front and a cup full of urine joined us for the duration of the trip. Somehow in the grand scheme of things, this was one of the rites of womanhood and Lauren had passed with flying colors.
Kim immediately felt the need to share with her sisterhood and placed a call to Shari, Joannie and Gramma G in the car behind us. Based on what I could get out of the conversation, Shari had never peed in a cup (either in a moving vehicle or elsewhere for that matter). I couldn't tell if they were impressed, horrified, jealous or challenged to do it themselves, but Kim was absolutely beaming. The rest of the drive was relatively mundane--lots more traffic than I had hoped, a sign of things to come to be sure. We exited the highway and made the drive through Oak Creek Village and into Sedona. The temperature was a perfect 70 degrees and the sun was beaming through the red rocks. The twisting two lane road always gives Kim a heart attack. With the amount of cars on the road today, it was even more daunting. Around every turn there was another car parked on the side of the road and a steady stream of cars coming at us from the opposite direction. As we moved out of town and into the back country, we could see hundreds of people walking along the creek. We finally arrived at our trailhead, only to find six cars in front of us trying to get into the parking lot. Abby was running around the back of the van uncontrollably. She could see that we were here and she could hear the gentle rumblings of the creek down below. Being trapped in the van was about the last thing she could handle at this point. It didn't help that Shari insisted on taking her rats for a walk at that moment so that Abby could see them enjoying the fresh air while she was still trapped with the pee cup in the back of the Caravan. As one car would pull out of the packed parking lot, the park ranger would let one car in. Realizing full well at this point that we were going to probably have to keep all three of the animals on a tight leash for the duration of the day.
Gramma G and Joannie appeared out of nowhere outside Kim's window and made her jump like she saw a severed head in the shower. Gramma G was concerned that we didn't stop to go to the bathroom before we got off the highway.
"Why didn't we stop back where there was a bathroom?"
"Um. We didn't know that you needed to go.
"Well, don't you think you should have considered that?"
"Why didn't you call us on the cellphone?"
"We didn't have a signal."
"Why didn't you pull up next to us and ask us to roll down the window and mention something that way?"
She changed the subject.
"We also need to get some lunch."
"Mom, we have the dogs here. We can't really stop for lunch and I don't think it's a great idea to try to eat while driving down these roads with this much traffic."
"Well, we should have thought of that before we left."
"Mom, there's a bathroom right up there on the other side of the parking lot. Why don't you and Joannie go walk over there."
"All right, but we need to figure out lunch--we'll be starving before too long."
As Gramma G and Joannie walked over to the "bathrooms" that were nothing more than glorified outhouses, I found myself at least amused for the moment. Of course we are going to need to eat--why didn't I think of that? Oh wait a second, I am almost completely certain that I mentioned that being a problem about a dozen times over the last 24 hours, but Shari's dogs would have so much fun, so we brought them. Being hungry and miserable is somewhat better when you get to be right and others are going to suffer because of their own stubbornness. As we watched the second car in line pull in, the true hell that this day would become for somebody in our party edged ever so much closer. The imminent nature of the doom that awaited her was palpable.