Road Trip: Day One...

Day One:

We were up and out by 6am… Which translates to up at the dark of morning… And since the dark of morning started with a badly stubbed toe for the boyfriend, he did the morning drive… Now I try to navigate, and I can read a map well enough, but the roads in Boston were built long before there were cars or the need for a direct route to anywhere… It was a confusing start… Five or six turns to just get onto the highway, and that was after we had gone onto the toll road that was supposed to be the direct route… (I have learned that in Boston, nothing is a direct route, even when it seems to be so…)

Once we were on the highway, we made good time… We drove through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. I took the wheel for a short time in Connecticut and New York, but the moment we got to the Bronx, I was seriously overwhelmed… As in white knuckles on the steering wheel, hands clamped on in a death grip… (That led to a quick changing of drivers and an interesting conversation of how the term death grip came about… Oh the things that a person can learn when trapped in a vehicle surrounded by countless maniacs doing unspeakable things on the road…)

I was really starting to have what gave every indication of a solid (and possibly permanent) dislike for anything and everyone on the east coast, when (luckily) we stopped to fuel up in New Jersey. The attendants were delightful. Chatty and all smiles (the first I had seen in a week) and filled with good cheer at the early hour. There were the phrases, “Thank You” and “Have a Nice Day”, that I had forgotten how great it was to hear. It completely turned things around… It was as if the sun shone brighter and warmer and the sky was bluer than before… It was that sort of a relief… (And I am sure that there are plenty of wonderful people in New England and the East Coast, it just was not my experience to come across them in my outings and adventures…)

We stopped in Atlantic City, someplace that I have always wanted to see… It was not at all what I envisioned. It was a lot like the Vegas of old, all sorts of lights and neon, dirty and smelly in places and tons of people… We were there for about thirty minutes, which was long enough to satisfy my curiosity, and then we went on to Margate, to see Lucy the Wooden Elephant. (Now that was cool! If you have not seen her, you really ought to… Talk about a neat piece of the past… Built in 1881, and right on the beach… It was great.) From there we made another quick stop, this one in Ocean City, before we continued on into Delaware.

We took the ferry across… 90 minutes of total bliss… The sunshine was perfectly warm and the breeze was soft… It was so relaxing sitting on the top deck watching the water slip past, that the boyfriend fell asleep with his head in my lap… It was wonderful. So much so, that it will be hard to beat as the best part of the trip… There was a group of 37 motorcycles to entertain us too… All different colors and styles of paint, some single riders, some double, all energetic and having a blast revving their engines and racing back and forth before boarding the ferry and lining all up along the prow of the boat… It was a sight to see… Even more so, when they all hopped on, dressed in their coordinating leathers and helmets (one was even done up like the Predator) and Varoooooomed off the ferry and into the wild blue yonder…

We met up with a friend of the Boyfriend’s and had a delightful dinner before crashing out for the night… Which was long overdue as I was (hopefully valiantly) trying o appear to be awake… Which may not have really been the appearance after all the effort, as I forgot my purse hanging on the back my seat at the restaurant. The Boyfriend was my hero when he went back to rescue it for me. (Loosing it would have been beyond terrible… All my ID, cell phone and camera were inside… Yes, I was very lucky…) On the way towards the longed for bed and few hours of sleep, we stopped at the Rehoboth boardwalk… It was everything that I had imagined Atlantic City to be… We took in the locals, who were all beautiful and cool beyond words, as well as all the different food and fun things along the boardwalk… This certainly seemed to be the “IT” place to see or be seen… I picked up some saltwater taffy for my Step-Dad (He swears that it is the best out there due to the water…) and then we were off to bed for a small handful of hours of sleep before I had to shake the Boyfriend awake and drag myself into fresh clothes for the start of Day Two…