NOTE: This chapter has an accompanying photo posted on Tumblr, under the user name kindly-whisper-tolkien and the tag fleetwood.
June 24
We are back on the road, heading south! Of course, I'm still not happy about the twisty roads we have up here; but I've been speaking a lot with the boys, and that has distracted me enough, I think, that I haven't had a single really panicked moment since we left Petersham. Though it does turn out that a couple others in our little group have their own troubles with traveling!
For one (and I didn't know this until we started out this morning), Fíli is prone to a bit of motion sickness. And it could be the Dramamine making him drowsy, I suppose, or it could be that he's just trying not to open his mouth for too long; but he's been quiet for a little while now, and he's spent a lot of time with his eyes closed. And though Kíli is often ribbing at his brother for one thing or another, I notice that he hasn't bothered Fíli at all about his stomach troubles. I can only guess why that would be, but it is perhaps because he knows better than to... rile his brother up when he is feeling out of sorts!
The other one with traveling troubles, it turns out, is the cat. Apparently, he's claustrophobic. We put him in a pet carrier (well, the boys did - I would not get so near him, myself!) and set it in the back of the car - but he would not stop meowing and jumping and hissing as we were going along, and he even spilled his water and food and kicked it out of the carrier's door! So we tried instead to give him (and us) a break by letting him out of the carrier for a while, but he ran all over the car, accidentally scratched Frodo's neck, jumped on Thorin's shoulder, then he tried to attach himself to the back of my head with his claws - and that was much too distracting for Thorin to drive with!
So, in the end, we decided it might be best to shut him in the back room of the trailer. Everything is well-stowed so that it won't fall over back there, and his kitty litter is in that room, anyway! And we set up his food and water nice and snugly so that it won't move around, and there are a couple battery-operated fans going to keep him cool, and the windows are cracked open enough to give him some air, but not enough for him to get out. We've been stopping to check on him fairly often, and he seems okay now (he was curled up on Kíli's bed last time we looked).
At any rate (and trying to leave the subject of Rolly!), before we left this morning, Fíli and Kíli discovered that there is an old cassette tape player built into the trailer! And much to their surprise, it has an AM/FM radio tuner on it, too - the old (or, as Kíli put it, "antique") knob-type. Of course, they wanted to try it out! And, well, apparently they turned up the volume knob up all the way before turning on the radio! Oh, it was loud! I think I jumped ten feet!
But besides their clothes and toothbrushes and the stuff they'll need for the cat, the boys haven't brought much with them. They did bring the small TV from their bedroom (they were kind of shocked when we said we didn't have one in the trailer), and they also brought their old PS3 (Dís wouldn't let them bring the new game player!), and some DVDs and game discs. But that was all they brought along for entertainment, as far as I'm aware - unless they have something else hidden in their luggage!
They did, however, bring along a lot of snacks! And I suppose that is a very good thing, considering how much those boys eat! Oh, and if Gimli has as big an appetite as Gloin claims, then I can see us making frequent trips to the grocery store!