The naivety of youth

On Friday we drove to Flagstaff.

A week ago my wife announced she'd be spending the night there; Shelby lives in Flagstaff and with her wedding a scant five weeks away there were a thousand details to be looked into and after.

I won't deny that the thought of spending a night in the same house as Morgan without my wife present filled me with horror but the idea that it'd be nice to get away from Phoenix with my wife was also quite attractive! The icing on the cake was the idea of taking a day away from the office without having to climb into a plane!

So we took my car. Heaven forbid that Morgan should find herself without transport and, given that I have steadfastly refused to let her drive mine, it happened that we took mine so that the little princess should have Mum's available.

My car is great for city driving but it wasn't designed for high speed interstate highways. We were doing 75 MPH up I17 and bowling along like there was no tomorrow, until we hit the uphill haul around Black Canyon City. A mile or so into that upward slope and we were down to 50 and slowing! A roadside sign warns the unwary driver to turn his air conditioning off for the next 5 miles to avoid overheating. If it's felt necessary to put such a sign up in Arizona you know we're talking serious uphill!

On the other hand, filling the tank costs about 22 bucks!

But we got there pretty much on time nonetheless. It probably helped that my wife knows a lot better than I do when she can afford to speed and when she can't. She claims not to have ever attracted a speeding ticket whilst showing a respect for the speed limit that borders on the negligent!

So we arrived in Flagstaff to spend a congenial weekend eating, drinking and preparing for the forthcoming wedding. As the lowly step-father I have no especial role save that of being the cheerful bastard with a funny accent and long hair who will smile and enjoy the evening I've helped pay for.

Matt, poor bastard, showed all the symptoms of a man drowning under a mountain of unexpected detail. Matt, is of course, the bridegroom and a helluva nice guy. 24ish and imagining that having proposed and been accepted it's a done deal. It is of course but he, having no siblings whatever to have preceded him through the process, had no idea what lay in store for him!

Hence the sight of a man chafing at the discussion of whether there should be 4 dozen roses or 6 dozen! By the time they'd spent three hours discussing the weighty question of whether the centrepiece on each table should sit on a mirror or not I reckon he was about fit to chew his own arm off! Perhaps I exaggerate the lapse of time but I don't exaggerate the reaction!

Then came the discussion of the timing immediately following the ceremony itself. Matt flatly refused to believe that the wedding photos could take as much as an hour to snap.

I've been there, done that and he knows it. Nonetheless, he still doesn't believe that he'll be posed and that infinite pains will be taken over getting just the right composition.

Not being the groom and having some little experience of this I took the precaution of taking along my reading glasses and a book. I got through 300 pages of 'The Pickwick Papers'!