3500 Miles: Day One

I haven't had much time to write lately, but I thought it would have been cool to keep a journal of our cross-country adventure. Having not done that, I'm going to try to recap the days here and there. I'll have pictures starting around Utah, and then pictures a-plenty, but until Utah, you'll have to go with just words.

We started on Sunday, June 11th. In the morning we packed up the truck. That started well. Will was there to help, and the baby was in Arizona. We focused on boxes first, as most were very heavy with books and other things we probably should've gotten rid of. Things were going well; we stopped for brunch. We went for one last time to Westbury Farms, the local diner that was the first place we went when we moved to the area three years ago.

Then we started loading oddly shaped things, and by the time all was on the truck, it was maybe 3 or 4 in the afternoon. We stopped for a late lunch. We went to Bertucci's, also one last time.

Then Will headed back to NY, M-N and I climbed aboard the truck (with cat in box), and we headed out. I intended to just get through Rhode Island and part of Connecticut. Monday night, we were planning to stay with my parents in Columbus, Ohio, and if we could just get a few hours out of the way, that would be good. But when we got to Connecticut, I realized we didn't have a AAA book for CT or NY. The AAA guy had given me a phone number he said I could call from the road to find a hotel (a little more difficult than just spotting one from the highway due to the cat and parking needs of the truck trailing a car). But that number didn't work.

So we pressed on towards NJ. We crossed the Tappan Zee and found a large and sketchy hotel in Wayne, NJ. It was about 10 p.m., we were tired, the cat was upset, we were hungry, the hotel was, indeed, sketchy, and its parking lot was confusing. So I ended up trying to turn around in a part of the lot where I couldn't make it. The trailer, of course, jackknifed, and we were stuck.

So ended our first day on the road. The truck perilously trapped in a back parking lot of a seedy hotel while we ate pizza and tried not to think about day 2. Oh yeah, and our room had two twin beds in it, one with notable blood stains on the sheets. Awesome. But it did have HBO. That gave me the opportunity to reflect that Batman Begins wasn't that great of a movie. I'd liked it in the theater, but seeing it again, the movie really needed some humor. Christian Bale isn't exactly a fun guy.