After weeks of planning, here we are on the morning of departure for our family trip to Maine. Mom and Dad are on their way to me as I type, with their cat in the backseat whom they insisted would benefit from spending the week while we're all away with my cat so they wouldn't get "lonely". Number 1 - their cat (Fred) hates my cat (Meatball). Number 2 - do cats get lonely? I mean I know Meatball will miss me but as long as his Aunt Stacie and Aunt Wendy come by to give him some food and a scratch he'll be fine. Meanwhile - the question of whether or not I'll have an apartment left after these two try to kill each other is another story.
Moving on, I'm nearly packed except for the 40 something pounds of technology I'll be carrying with me. Laptop, Charger, Ipad, Iphone, Charger, Nook (b/c I can't read on the Ipad in the sun) and charger, Digital Camera and charger.... So glad I'm heading up to Maine to 'reconnect' with nature. There's also a work folder I'm bringing up with a horrific looking macro that I need to finish updating at some point. Don't tell my mother this. She hates when I work when we're on vacation. What she doesn't realize is I do to - I just sort of would like to make sure I have a job to come back to! (Otherwise that will be another blog: How to survive moving back with your parents at 33.....)
So after they drop off the cat, and we attempt to have them make 'friends' we'll load up the car and begin the journey northward. My guess is that we'll stop somewhere in Riverdale for lunch (for those of you who don't know I live in Washington Heights). After that it's (hopefully) a straight shot onto Portsmouth, New Hampshire where we'll be camping (in a Marriott) for the night. This is where it gets fun. My parents have a Garmin that they have come to rely pretty heavily on for travel. But a friend of mine has made the trek from NY to Maine a few times lately and sent me what he promises are better directions. I have warned, and rewarned my parents that since I'm driving I get to pick the route. And to at least get out of Connecticut with minimal hassles we're following the directions that I have which say avoid 95 at all costs and take smaller less traveled roads for no traffic hassles. I'm opening the betting pool now that our first argument (possibly even before the lunch stop after 10 minutes of driving....) will be about how my directions are different from the Garmin....
The other fun part of this is going to be the radio. I meant to get a ipod car connector as I have a few playlists that even my parents would like, but of course, forgot. Now you have to understand that until I was about 14 I thought that cars only had AM radio and the only thing you could listen to on long family car trips was talk radio - generally Dr. Melzer (sp?) who gave what I think was the worst advice ever. Occasionally there would be Arthur Schwarz and Food Talk which I grew to not surprisingly love. There was also a woman Joan Somebody....can't remember who talked about travel and shopping etc... She grew on me as I got older and realized that anyone was better than Dr. Melzer! Now in the New York area I can probably get away with NPR for a while but when we leave the tri-state it should get more interesting. So the 2nd fight after the directions (and possibly a tiff over lunch) will most likely be the radio. Too bad driving with headphones is frowned upon....
Survival tactic? Taking a tip from Dory in Finding Nemo - just keep driving.
No comments:
Post a Comment