Then to now…

We had a nice trip upstate over the weekend.

Our journey with little Joe in tow began at 4am Thursday morning. We had everything packed the night before and thankfully we didn’t have to use the roof pack which I was dreading in light of Wednesday evenings travails to arrange it on Nina’s Toyota Matrix.

Joe managed to stay wide awake for an hour and a half as we jettisoned down the lonely concrete spine which is the long island expressway. Not even the likes of nyc commuter vehicles were on the road, except for a few strays of course.

We made good time, namely for our experience and lessons learned.

Leave after 6am and be stuck in commuter traffic through NYC, leave in the evening and face equally ridiculous traffic.

We stopped midway through at the Great Bend and had breakfast at McDonalds as it proved to be the only palatable roadfare possible since most roadstops were mom & pop oriented and had coffee that tasted like hell and stale breakfast pastries.

Did I mention I like breakfast pastries? 

Hostess Fruit Pies people. At 4am what else but sugar and carbs can keep you going?

Oh yeah, coffee. Mmmmmm.

Fast forward to our stop at a small park which Nina found by means of Google, they had a playground with a jungle gym, a river nearby with ducks and even the local fire department was there practicing drills.

What does my son want to play with? The mulch on the playground floor.

Priceless.

My leg of the trip was painfully dull, it is up route 17 and is relatively straight but the landscape is beautiful, I wish I had more time to stop but an 7-8 hour trip is quite taxing.

We arrived at 12:45pm, only 9 hours but if you deduct the 2 hours of stop time (breakfast & joe’s playtime) we did a fine trip.

 
Brian & Rychelle’s son Ryan greated us at the driveway and landed a solid hug on me before I lifted him off the ground. He had gotten so tall. When he and I first met he was only a year old and sleeping at his Oma’s house while everyone was at his uncle Kevin’s wedding to Chrissie. I met his brother Michael (deceased) who in the dimly lit kitchen appeared like a monolith of shadow. I just put my hand out and said hello.

As is ritual for Brian and I we sat out Friday evening and drank beer and smoked cigars with his friends and played Beer Pong. Now you see, Brian is no amature. He made his own federation size tables, stained & polyurethaned them and was resourceful enough to acquire stickers from different premium beer companies.

We got Hi-Ho soft serve and with one taste I was in heaven again. Buttermilk goodness come hither!

Saturday afternoon we hit up the pools with the boys and enjoyed the local Milfery which abounded in what appeared to us as "most inappropriate swimsuit day" Some of these ladies were amazing, some were just well, frightening.

Beyond this we barbequed that evening and were joined by friends and it was a deluge of good food, beer and company.

The drive back proved a little taxing towards the end, our son was uncomfortable and we (I) tried our best with the last leg of the road to keep him calm and basically amuse him.

Once we were home I was beat and even a cold shower and a 2 hour nap didn’t do it. That night? I slept like a dead whale.