Day 2, Bend Oregon

Today started out great, turned kind of ugly and ended reasonably well.

We all got up fairly early, including the girls, and had a wonderful complimentary breakfast in the motel's dining room. I mean this was fantastic, with a full-on buffet, including thick-cut bacon, eggs, all kinds of fruits, muffins and potatoes, waffles--you name it. And delicious coffee.

After that I walked along the river for a while, watched a couple guys that were fishing and just soaked up the sun. At around 11, we went shopping at the mall across the street. I got some shorts at Macy's and Tiana got a few things as well. We then went to an area south of downtown called Mill Town, where they had a great selection of interesting shops and restaurants, even a new REI store. That was fun.

Then we decided to go up to Mt Bachelor, but had a lot of trouble finding the way, for some reason. Tiana was driving and we explored some nice country roads (most of them loaded up with bicyclists), but ended up back in town when we kind of got lost. As usual, Tuuli was nagging Tiana the whole time and it just wasn't fun for any of us to be in the car. Sure enough, Tuuli asked Tiana to pull over so we could look at a map, and before you could blink we were over the curb, across a little grass mound, through a heavy chain, over a steel post, back over another curb and into the adjacent parking lot, amazingly missing a couple cars. Of course Tiana was devastated, Tuuli was screaming and the whole scene was very traumatizing. I felt so bad for Tiana--it was a bad mistake, of course and just shattered her confidence. When the two of us were alone at the last parent weekend she drove nearly the whole time, well over 200 miles without the slightest problem. Within 10 minutes yesterday, Tuuli had already critiqued and corrected her more than I did in three days.

It would have been rather hilarious if not for Tiana's hurt feelings. The car was hardly scratched, the chain wasn't broken and I set the post back up no problem. You could hardly even tell a car had been there. Even though it was in a busy area, nobody approached us and we just drove away.

We finally got home and I took a nice long walk, while Tiana stayed in the room. This is just the kind of thing the therapists warn us could trigger an event, so I hope she is able to get over it. But any more driving for the rest of this trip is out of the question for her. Not because she can't do it, but because it just makes for such an uncomfortable environment in the car. Tuuli just can't relax and can't shut up--she simply can't do it. And I had so looked forward to having Tiana drive. It's fun for me, and it's fun for her. Very disappointing.

After dinner, Savi and I went to a roller derby event in downtown Bend, while Tiana just chilled in the room. It was a very good time and just what I needed. Of course now Tuuli isn't talking to me, so some things never change. I guess I'm exploring that classic definition of insanity....