Monday night we arrived and set about a big wiener roast out by the uncle's place. There were hot dogs, bowls of homemade ice-cream, marshmallows, home made relish, beans, cole slaw, you name it. And my cousin put on a BIG fireworks show. Crazy big. That kid's got way more money then sense. And none of the rest of us are too bright either. We sat there with debris raining down on us for over a half hour, boxes of fireworks having ash fall on them and us saying, "huh, that's probably dangerous."

Finally, we headed back to the motel to get some sleep from the long drive and the big evening.

So, we took gramps and grandma out on Tuesday for a big drive around their old haunts and had a big old time. Wore them down to the nubs I'm sure, as it wore us out and we're about fifty years younger. But, hey, they had some serious fun.

First we headed over to the Keokuk locks, by the old Keokuk power plant to watch a barge and tug go through. If you've never seen it happen, it's pretty fascinating to watch. I've seen it happen thousands of times and it's still pretty entertaining.

We watched a hauler go through downstream. So, they push into the locks, the gates come up behind them and seal them in. Then they tie off the barges on the floating dock points right about here, release the main valves on the downstream side of the lock and a few minutes later the entire tug and barge setup is sitting about here. That little tiny spec of blue and white in the upper left corner of the lower picture is the same "50" sign from the higher picture. They go down a long ways in a big hurry.

They get all done lowering and the main gates on the other end of the lock swing inwards to open, the tug starts pushing, and back out into the open river they go, having navigated their way through a water level change.

The most interesting part of the entire thing to me is that there's something like ten inches on either side of the barges between the barge itself, and the lock wall. And most of the time the captain of the tugs manage to go in and back out without so much as a tiny little scrape. Long ago I remember hearing a big scrape, but it was only one time. This time, this guy pushed perfectly. Not one touch.

Then we headed down to Oakland Mills. The river had been up just a couple weeks back and deposited huge amounts of sand all around the area. A lot of it was still pretty desolate. But, we did manage to hit the local dive cafe, home of the world's best tenderloin. Good eats.

Then we drove them back to Mt. Pleasant to pick up their drug supply for the next couple weeks, then headed over to New London to pick up some of their favorite cheese. Then back through Lowell, round through the country some, and back to their place. We left their house at around 9:30 or so in the morning and got back around 3:30. A pretty big day for them, and a pretty big day for us considering it was our second day mostly locked in a car.

We drove grandpa's new car. It's a hell of a nice Mercury from just a couple years back. Leather seats. Electric everything. It's nice. But, as gramps said, he bought the best car he's ever owned so other people can drive him around in it.

But he enjoyed the hell out of himself. It's the first trip they've had away from their house for anything other than doctor's appointments in months. Nobody else that goes to visit them seems to think they can handle days out just for fun. So it's up to us to hit them as often as we can and run them around having some fun.

Mrs. NFB and I took them home then took our own car back to our hotel room and spent some QT in the pool. Man do we love swimming. Not sure why we don't do it more often. We headed back out later in evening to spend a little more time with the grandparents and enjoy some TV together.

We nabbed some breakfast with them Wednesday morning before heading back out on the road. Grandma would not have been happy with not cooking anything for us, so we keep it small scale and make it a breakfast. She's happy, we're full, and nobody over-exerted.

On the way home we stopped by my old hang-out in Fairmont, home of the world's best thin-crust pizza, and terrific atmosphere (That lower sign reads "Coffee, Chocolate, Men, the richer the better.")

The wait staff is just as surly as it ever was, the pizza just as greasy, and the service just as sub-par. Beautiful, it feels like home. There's a shitty old juke-box that at some point in the years between then and now has had its guts swapped out for a CD based system, but still has a good selection of Guns-n-Roses, Poison and Bon Jovi tracks on it. They no longer serve pitchures of soda pop, which was a disappointment. It was the only place I'd ever been where pitchers of pop were a normal occurrence. But they still have awesome food and entertainment, and that's all that matters.

They also still have the powdery parmesan in the crappy little shakers that you can use to soak up the grease of the pepperoni.

And the plain, unmarked, white box for the to-go pizzas. Like a plain, unmarked box containing the food version of porn. Patrons taking their packages with shame-filled faces, knowing they've condemned themselves to hell, yet being unable to resist the sweet temptations contained within.

Awesome trip.

Grandpa is looking pretty rough these days. I'm worried about him. Not sure he's got a lot of time left. I'm hoping I get a chance to get back there a couple more times before it's too late. He's even starting to talk like his mom did before she left us. Like, he's not looking forward to it, but he's ready. He's got a healthy attitude about it, but being over here and seeing it, it's tough to watch.

At least we had some fun with them again. Granny is still batshit nutso, but she's a lot less angry-batshit nutso. And that helps. Now it's more goofy.

My uncle is my uncle, and not much to be done there, but he has toned down his approach to everything with regards to his parents these days, and actually tried being decent with them from time to time. That also helps.

I feel pretty good about this trip. Got some quality time with grandpa, took him cruising his old hangouts, got him away from granny a little here and there, and just had some fun. Too bad we don't have time for more trips like that in a year.