Many Furlongs Away From Home - Part II

Day II dawned later rather than early. With no clock in the room, I slept on until nearly 9 before one of the group sounded an alarm that the breakfast may be running out.

Once breakfast was done, and B-C (who would put Rumpelstiltskin to shame) was roused and scrubbed behind the ears, we opted out of the trip to see a waterfall and settled down to a game of carrom.

When the group returned, full of tales of a terrific clamber and scramble over rocky terrain to get to a fabulous waterfall, I steeled my morose heart by telling myself that city slickers, who haven’t been born and raised in the boonies like I was, would find three stones and a pebble challenging.

I don’t care that the photographic evidence might have declared otherwise. I don’t trust technology anyway. (Hey, who threw this grape at me? It is sour!)

After lunch, which was the previous day’s re-hashed lunch plus re-hashed dinner, I waddled off for a siesta, accompanied by B-C and KO, while the rest worked themselves up over settling the bill and what time we ought to leave.

The ride back was relatively uneventful, save for the time Team Red decided to play dirty so as to gain the No. 1 spot in our little cavalcade. We resorted to the old stop-we-want-to-buy-tender-coconuts-hoo-hoo-hoo-sucker ploy- you know, the one where you flag your “rivals” down and tell them you’re stopping to buy tender coconuts because you’re dying of thirst and then step on the accelerator and zoom off into the horizon as the suckers eat dust.

Well, we didn’t so much zoom off into the horizon leaving a trail of dust - it was more a slow taxi and takeoff as the confused GC meandered about a bit in confusion as a bunch of hysterical women shouted in his ear to “Go! Go! Go!” just seconds after screaming for tender coconuts. I swear, if we’ve put him off women for the rest of his life, I can scarcely blame him. We did leave the other two cars behind, blinking in utter bewilderment, calling us up to tell us that it was okay to “have our coconuts.”

GC, I fathom, got his back on us for all the trouble our fickle-mindedness had caused him by hitting a speed breaker at high speed, causing some of us to bump our coconuts heads on the roof.

As I crawled back home well past midnight, it struck me that I’d actually had a really good time, with scarcely a moment to brood over other brow-furrowing events. There is something to be said about going on a holiday where one plays no part in the planning or execution, with your sole responsibility being to just show up at the appointed hour (or an hour later with a plausible excuse) and then just going along for the bumpy, muddy ride.

Besides, a tiny bump on the head is a small price to pay for a car-full of laughter and memories that provide plenty of fodder for private jokes between a bunch of people who will forever remain my closest friends.

[For the politically incorrect version of events, visit Kaotic's Workshop.]