Yes, it's time for the Thanksgiving post, almost a month late. I have no excuses for the delay, or the relative dearth of imagery in this post, but I did feel it prudent to post about Thanksgiving before it was time to post about Christmas.
Before I show you the sketches (and this is another good/bad all in one image affair) I want to give you a little background. This is more for my recollection in future than for your entertainment, but feel free to read it or skip it as you please.
I live in Illinois, my wife's Family lives in Minnesota. When I first moved to the States I lived up there too, so I'm fairly familiar with the region. This year my Wife pointed out that through one thing and another I've not been back to Minnesota for three years. She has, numerous times, but I haven't, so it was time to go and show my face.
What with all the fuss over the amazingly ill conceived security practices at airports these days ("We'll beat up innocent women over contact lens solution but let the guys with guns and foot long razors waltz on through! You feeling safe yet mam? Why haven't you dropped your pants yet sir?"... Maybe I should keep my opinions on the TSA to myself, or at least save it for another post) we decided to drive. At least my wife did - and to be honest I'm glad she took it upon herself to do all the driving because as it turned out, had I been driving, we'd probably be dead (She's a better driver than I am).
On the way up from IL to MN we hit freezing rain - really bad freezing rain. On one of the first overpasses after it started we saw cars flying around in the opposing lane like children's toys on a freshly waxed floor. My wife decided to slow down on the ramp to the overpass as it was clearly a little bit on the slippery side. As we came up over the rise we could see that another vehicle had spun out in the lane next to us and was blocking that side. My wife checked the mirror and said "We're going to get hit". I was in the back seat with my son, so I grabbed his hands and put them and my hand firmly on his chest (He was in his car seat, but I'm sure wildly flailing limbs can do some damage).
As it happened we weren't hit - the guy in the gigantic truck who had thought it a fabulous idea to ignore the world around him and not slow down in the slightest finally realized we had slowed down and swerved to avoid us, crashing straight into the rear side of the other truck that had spun out. There was a big bang, a lot of flying shrapnel, and a rather large vehicle spinning around from the impact to it's rear side. I'm fairly sure I saw the wheel of the "attacking" truck fly off, I'm quite certain I saw the driver of the "defending" truck step gingerly out of the way of his rotating vehicle - He'd stepped out of it for some reason. I'm also pretty sure that if the attacker had rear-ended us then my hand on my son's chest would have been as useful as using a cocktail umbrella in a monsoon; we would both be very thin and gooey.
We couldn't stop as there was no traction with which to do so, so we slid quietly to the far side of the overpass and tried calling 911 - it was busy. You know it's bad when the emergency number asks you to try again shortly.
The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful, if somewhat terrifying. I don't think I've ever seen so many cars in the process of spinning out, crashing, or simply lying in ditches (upside-down in many cases). I say cars, but a reasonable percentage were trucks and SUV's (That's 4x4's UKers, but not always with 4 wheel drive).
Anyway, we got there. The next day was Thanksgiving, and we were staying with my Brother-in-law and Sister-in-Law. The rest of the loal clan would be coming for the meal the next day. The day came, and I more or less hid in a corner and frantically drew things. I proceeded to draw things over the next couple of days, and here, finally, is the best and worst of what I drew:
Click it to Embiggen.
So, there's some terrible stuff in there, but some of it's reasonable. Much of it (That which doesn't feature inanimate objects of sleeping animals) was cranked out in well under a minute, due to peoples propensity for moving around. I won't mention anyone by name because if you're not part of the family (or their friends) then they won't mean anything to you, but if you are then you can either tell by looking, or its bad enough that you'll be offended when you discover that the figure you can't identify is you. I was thankful that some of them were recognisable at all.
But mostly I was thankful I wasn't a corpse.
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