I am such a dork. For the amount of time I lived in New York, I never really learned which states surrounded New York and how they were geographically to New York. For some stupido (that’s stupid in Spanish) reason, I always thought Jersey was NORTH of New York, not south. I suppose I felt like I was going north in the subway. No matter. Because if it’s one thing I learned from this road trip, I learned that New Jersey is NORTH of New York. Shit, I meant, south.
That was a sidenote. So we wake up in a city in Maryland. I forget what day it is… I think it is Tuesday.
There’s this restaurant called Cracker Barrel that we see EVERYWHERE and we’ve decided that we owe it to ourselves to splurge and go just this once. Wait a minute, did we go to Cracker Barrel on a different day? I believe it was this day because I remember it was one of the few days I showered.
I think the best thing on this road trip is learning the simplest things in life really make you happy.
Like showers. oh, man, since we only showered twice during the road trip, I could not WAIT to go home and bathe. bathe till the cows come home and my skin is so wrinkley that I could be singing in the claymation commercial about hearing it on the grapevine. Also, I’ve learned to love my car. It is a good car and it had not broken down on me YET> uh oh, now that I said that, it will.I revoke the aforementioned statement. Have it stricken from the record. (Did I mention that I work in a law firm now?)
Okay, back to the program. So I wake up in Days Inn and I check my ears to make sure that big ass gabillion legged bugger did not harvest his or her young in my brain. I am scared that I will step on it in my sandal. Yuck. There is this free “breakfast” for the hotel resident people (i forget what we are called) but Kay is too tired to get up so I go get it myself. I was imagining a little quaint restaurant with a couple of old people drinking orange juice.
It wasn’t like that at all. Just a table. With a powered donut. and some stale bagels. GEEZ. Of course I took the donut.
So we are off to New York. While we are driving for like an hour, we..SHIT…forgot our pillows at the hotel/motel. GODDAMNIT. This does not sound like a big deal to you guys but that means for the rest of the road trip going home, we have to sleep on our shoulders. (Or I sleep on my shoulder. I forget how kay sleeps like, I don’t pay attention).
So let me tell you, this day we were passing states like water (does that metaphor makes sense) The award for the shortest state we passed through goes to DELAWARE. Man, we were in there and out of there in half an hour. Wow. No, wait, it was connecticut. Sorry.
Anyway, after Maryland, thus begins the journey of TOLL BOOTHS> I did not expect this on this trip and from Maryland to our trip to Hmmm… what’s that state next to Kansas? Missouri, we were paying tolls. Man, it’s like income tax. What the fuck for? I mean, Why even show the gross pay. It’s like, taking you to a top of the mountain and showing you the ocean and then saying “Okay, that’s enough. You can’t have it” Okay, maybe not. But it’s PAIN either way. I pay taxes to California AND New York because my W2 covers both states. I’m paying 200 dollars for a 300 dollar paycheck. But I digress.
So let’s see..Maryland…eh. (expensive). Then Delaware (reminds me of what Allentown would look like in Billy Joel’s song. Yes, I know Allentown is in Pennsylvania but this is just me …nevermind. I have a headache trying to explain.) Then hmmm, it’s gets kind of blurry here. I remember Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and then New Jersey.
New Jersey. The part that I’ve been to, the side next to New York, is crappy. It’s like a hmmm….trash fest. The side next to delaware or connecticut, or pennsylvania (or whereever the fuck we were) is actually pretty nice. I wanted to have a bonnet and curly hair and work with a husband who only wore overalls as the beads of sweat start falling from his dark brown hair and over his rippling chest…but whew. I better stop, might have to bust out with the passion fruit lube (I have no shame, you know what I was referring to)
Anyway, so it’s pretty Oklahomaey on this side of Jersey. We wanted to drive up the coast to see the water and check out Atlantic city whilst driving to nyc but alas, we gotten lost and so deep in the woods, we got scared and took the New Jersey turnpike.
Quite a spiffy turnpike for a turnpike. What is really a turnpike? It looks like a highway to me. I saw neither pikes nor turns. Well, there was rarely any turns. Anyway, we are in turnpike city and it’s going pretty well, on our side of the road. Whereas, on the OTHER side, there is MAD traffic. Apparently a truck caught on fire and it was burning like a mofo. There were several fire trucks on the scene but there more coming..but they were stuck in traffic cause that other side of the turnpike was backed up for like 4 miles or so (maybe 3.5…but who’s counting?) People are on top of their cars looking to see what is going on…people are shooting people, riots are happening, people are starting to take off their clothes. Okay, I kid but it was mad crazy and I was so relieved (especially from the road rage of 3 hour traffic in Virginia) that I was on the cool side. Anyway, it was like a scene from REM’s everybody hurts. Literally… too bad we didn’t charge the damn videocamcorder thing (i can’t thing so objects have unproper names right now) cause I would’ve made my own REM video.
Anyway, we were on the turnpike for like an hour or two or whatever. I just remember eating Chad’s wheat thins and thanking the lord for the cheesee whiz he gave us (thanks chad!). And I do not know what came over us, but we were running out of cd..thus bringing us to Boyz (or Boys? I forget) II Men cd. Man, that were some SLOW JAMS. It made me sad. Then some red light special TLC stuff and then we were just busting out with all of the love jams…. at 11 in the afternoon. Hello. I guess loneliness (I knew Kay wanted some passion fruit lube to herself at that time) but oh well, it was nice to yearn.
Anyway, so we are turnpiking it, and lo and behold…the famous skyline looms in the distance. It’s New York City.
Minimal Effort 