Along slept the driver...

What was left of Tulip Festival 2006 was the remains of the tulips. I was so disappointed to see them that way, drooping in the rain like somebody had mowed over the petals with a big fat lawn mower. My husband said I had that same look on my face in all the photographs that we took that day. We were one week too late in coming there and they would not wait for me. And the rains that day added insult to injury. Obviously, I had expected too much.

This was our second trip to Ottawa. The first one had been about one month before, made almost in the same manner - leave home on a Friday night, drive all night and all morning, roam around and leave after lunch to reach home for a peaceful night's sleep after a tiring journey. What about in between? Umpteen halts at Tim Horton's - not so much for the coffee or titbits but for answering Nature's calls.

Well, I for one, would recommend LOTS of coffee for the driver and the navigator. And for the back seat passengers as well if you have to travel all night. That first time our car almost crashed and we were saved from falling into a river by a hair's breath. My husband had driven the whole night. So his friend took over from him in the morning around 6 o'clock. (Please consider the two wives dozing off in the back non-existent for a while). Seeing the guy too sleepy,the driver told the navigator to sleep for sometime and that everything will be fine. Then in five minutes, Mr. Driver slept off with the rest of us!!!

And the rest is not history. We are still alive to tell the crappy story. Fortunately, the tires skidded over the highway ( whose sides had been made bumpy by some visionary of an engineer) and made such a loud noise that the four of us were jolted out of our respective beauty sleep.