Baby, You Can Drive My Car
Hello World,
Good morning, campers and other fans of the great outdoors. Here I am, back safe and sound from some unusual adventures in vacation-land, and none the worse for wear, although that last point might be up for debate. I will say that for a detail-oriented person such as myself, who takes pride in the ability to organize a camping excursion within an inch of its life, and with copious lists and plans, this vacation was certainly one for the record-books, in terms of glitches, monkey wrenches and sheer unprecedented calamities. It entirely removed the "routine" aspect from what should have been a routine romp in the woods, as it usually is when I spend a week camping at Wildwood Park.
Our adventures, or rather misadventures, began the week before my vacation, and innocently enough, as these things so often do, when we brought the Tempo to the mechanic to have it checked over before packing it up for the trip. Mind you, they've been servicing the car for many, many years, and in fact, we got the car from them originally, so you'd think pretty much that the element of surprise would have long since worn off, if there ever was one. I expected they would check the fluids, belts and hoses and give it a clean bill of health as they usually do, and we'd be off and running. What actually happened reminded me of an old cartoon where Hagar the Horrible sends Lucky Eddie out to see what the cows are doing, because when the weather is going to be nice, the cows are all standing around in the grass, but when it's going to rain, you find them all hunkered down and clumped together for protection. When Lucky Eddie returns and Hagar asks him if the cows are all standing up and happy, or hunkered down for a storm, Lucky Eddie says, "You don't want to know," because the last panel shows the cows have all climbed up into the trees and are holding on to the trunks for dear life in fear and trembling, so you can imagine what that tells you about the upcoming weather conditions, at least as far as the bovine forecast. When Bill went to check in with our mechanic about the Tempo, he had that same sort of "cows up a tree" look, as if the car would not only be too dangerous to take on vacation, but might actually present a hazard to humanity just standing still. In fact, if he could have held the Tempo away from himself with a pair of tongs, he would have done that, besides just giving it an emphatic "thumbs down" for going on vacation. This was discouraging news, and an unexpected complication in our plans, which already included reservations for two campsites, plus a hotel room for the first night.
We considered renting a car for the week, although it was late in the game for that, but we found the options limited and the restrictions unworkable. Then we thought we might go there together in the Buick, and I could stay for a week without a car, since I really don't drive anywhere once I get out there, and just use the car as a "pantry" for snacks and peanuts that I bring with me, plus going out to get pizza or sandwiches for dinner. We figured that I could forage in the woods for roots and berries (only kidding) although a bigger problem would be trying to fit everything into one car that we usually pack in two separate cars. With time running out, and faced with a paucity of unappealing alternatives, we actually came up with an idea that seemed ridiculous on the face of it, but turned out to have a lot of advantages. We decided to make two separate trips in the Buick, which would stay at the park with me during the week, while Bill could use the Tempo around town until I came back. It sounded like a crazy idea, but it saved my vacation, and just in the nick of time, to boot.
Needless to say, now that the Buick was going on vacation instead of the Tempo, it also needed to go to the mechanic's, who decided this was the perfect time to replace the brakes, at a cost for which we could have paid for an entire fleet of rental cars for a week, no thank you very much. A bigger problem was that the new and improved brakes were so far down on the floor that it was universally agreed that I would never be able to reach them if I was driving the car instead of a much taller individual with longer legs, such as Sasquatch, for example. But we plunged ahead, determined to make the best of what was turning out to be a very inauspicious start to a rather unorthodox vacation all around. We started out by packing just the essentials into the Buick, such as the tent and poles, cot and basic necessities to get set up, and we drove out together on Saturday in beautiful weather and not bad traffic. In fact, this may have been the first time we've ever gotten all the way out there without construction delays, which have been a mainstay of my camping experiences for as long as I can remember. We set up both campsites and spent the rest of the day at the beach with sunny skies and crisp clear water that was welcome and refreshing. We stayed overnight in a different motel outside of Riverhead, to avoid a repeat of last year, when we found ourselves trapped by the annual blues festival and couldn't get in or out of town if our lives depended on it. On Sunday, we went back to the beach and had another lovely day of it, and don't think that I don't have the pictures to prove it.
At this point, this is normally where Bill would drive home and go back to work during the week, while I would stay at the park by myself. But because we only had one car, and only half of my camping supplies, what we did on Sunday afternoon was drive back home together, have a nice dinner out, and relax among the comforts of home. Although this technically interrupted my vacation for a night, I still considered it an improvement over standing in line for a shower and sleeping on a cot, so I wasn't going to complain. In the morning, Bill took the Tempo to work, while I packed the rest of my gear in the Buick and drove back out to the park. I called Bill later to let him know that I had arrived safely, since everyone was concerned that I might have trouble driving an unfamiliar car. I was glad to assure him that the "new and improved" brakes turned out not to be an issue, since at the time I was on the highway, the traffic was moving at 25MPH over the Throgs Neck Bridge, it reached a high of 39MPH on the Clearview Expressway, and on the LIE through Queens, we were charging along at a whopping 6 miles per hour. I found at those speeds, not being able to reach the brakes was basically inconsequential. Bill said he hadn't heard about any traffic problems on the LIE, and I said I guess they figured that if you were going as fast as 6MPH on Monday morning in Queens, they didn't consider that a traffic problem worth mentioning, and you should be lucky you were moving at all. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and we even picked up some speed here and there along the way. Not a whole lot of speed, mind you, after all this is the Long Island Expressway we're talking about.
I tossed everything out of the car and hurried back to the beach, to resume my vacation after it was interrupted. This was another lovely day, and I had no complaints about dinner and a campfire, and even the cot was a welcome sight after a long and busy day. The park, which was surprisingly under-filled on Saturday and cleared out even further on Sunday, became positively deserted by Tuesday, when reports of severe weather ahead caused the faint-hearted to flee on all sides. I heard later that they had flooding, tornados and hail in Connecticut, but we didn't have anything like that, although there was a thunderstorm after midnight on Wednesday that made me glad to have a car to sleep in, instead of cowering in my tent with lightning crashing all around. After that, the weather settled down, and even the water stayed wonderfully clear and calm, in spite of the storm.
Late on Friday afternoon, I left the beach and re-packed half of my camping supplies in the car, and drove back home, finding remarkably little traffic all along the way. Bill, who had been working hard all week and holding down the fort at home, pitched in and helped me toss everything into the garage and then we went to Friendly's for dinner. Once again, this interruption in my vacation was offset by having a real shower and sleeping in a real bed, especially since by Friday night, the park usually gets pretty noisy and crowded anyway. Saturday morning, when Bill would normally be driving down early to help me pack up, we were able to go together, and we were more surprised than anybody to find the park filled to capacity and not a campsite to be had. That meant that all of those people had to arrive between late Friday afternoon when I left, and 8:30 Saturday morning when we got back, which made me even happier that I wasn't there on Friday night, when it must have been a madhouse. We packed up everything that was left, and headed back to the beach, for our last day of fun in the sun, and as luck would have it, it was another beautiful day. When the time came to bid our fond farewells to vacation-land and turn our faces toward home, our return trip was without incident or traffic. And considering that the Buick went back and forth four times in one week, rather than just twice as it normally would, we were delighted with its performance, and I didn't even need to bring Sasquatch along to work the brakes.
And so, even though I go to the same place on vacation every year, and in fact, stay at the same campsite each time, it's curious how unforeseen circumstances can crop up and change what should be a routine experience into something unexpected. I think we would all agree that this was not the most optimum arrangement for a quiet and relaxing week in the woods, especially having to pack and unpack the same car four different times, but it also wasn't the wholesale disaster we might have expected when we first got the bad news about the Tempo, and the whole vacation scenario was hanging in the balance. And as much as I wasn't all that impressed with the weather while I was out there, it certainly beat the pants off the weather in the week since I've been back, which if it had been a guest star on "The Sopranos," would not have made it past Monday or Tuesday before getting whacked, it was so disgusting and miserable. In fact, our mechanic threatened to send the Tempo after it, but the last time I looked, the Tempo had climbed up a tree and was holding on to the trunk for dear life.
Good morning, campers and other fans of the great outdoors. Here I am, back safe and sound from some unusual adventures in vacation-land, and none the worse for wear, although that last point might be up for debate. I will say that for a detail-oriented person such as myself, who takes pride in the ability to organize a camping excursion within an inch of its life, and with copious lists and plans, this vacation was certainly one for the record-books, in terms of glitches, monkey wrenches and sheer unprecedented calamities. It entirely removed the "routine" aspect from what should have been a routine romp in the woods, as it usually is when I spend a week camping at Wildwood Park.
Our adventures, or rather misadventures, began the week before my vacation, and innocently enough, as these things so often do, when we brought the Tempo to the mechanic to have it checked over before packing it up for the trip. Mind you, they've been servicing the car for many, many years, and in fact, we got the car from them originally, so you'd think pretty much that the element of surprise would have long since worn off, if there ever was one. I expected they would check the fluids, belts and hoses and give it a clean bill of health as they usually do, and we'd be off and running. What actually happened reminded me of an old cartoon where Hagar the Horrible sends Lucky Eddie out to see what the cows are doing, because when the weather is going to be nice, the cows are all standing around in the grass, but when it's going to rain, you find them all hunkered down and clumped together for protection. When Lucky Eddie returns and Hagar asks him if the cows are all standing up and happy, or hunkered down for a storm, Lucky Eddie says, "You don't want to know," because the last panel shows the cows have all climbed up into the trees and are holding on to the trunks for dear life in fear and trembling, so you can imagine what that tells you about the upcoming weather conditions, at least as far as the bovine forecast. When Bill went to check in with our mechanic about the Tempo, he had that same sort of "cows up a tree" look, as if the car would not only be too dangerous to take on vacation, but might actually present a hazard to humanity just standing still. In fact, if he could have held the Tempo away from himself with a pair of tongs, he would have done that, besides just giving it an emphatic "thumbs down" for going on vacation. This was discouraging news, and an unexpected complication in our plans, which already included reservations for two campsites, plus a hotel room for the first night.
We considered renting a car for the week, although it was late in the game for that, but we found the options limited and the restrictions unworkable. Then we thought we might go there together in the Buick, and I could stay for a week without a car, since I really don't drive anywhere once I get out there, and just use the car as a "pantry" for snacks and peanuts that I bring with me, plus going out to get pizza or sandwiches for dinner. We figured that I could forage in the woods for roots and berries (only kidding) although a bigger problem would be trying to fit everything into one car that we usually pack in two separate cars. With time running out, and faced with a paucity of unappealing alternatives, we actually came up with an idea that seemed ridiculous on the face of it, but turned out to have a lot of advantages. We decided to make two separate trips in the Buick, which would stay at the park with me during the week, while Bill could use the Tempo around town until I came back. It sounded like a crazy idea, but it saved my vacation, and just in the nick of time, to boot.
Needless to say, now that the Buick was going on vacation instead of the Tempo, it also needed to go to the mechanic's, who decided this was the perfect time to replace the brakes, at a cost for which we could have paid for an entire fleet of rental cars for a week, no thank you very much. A bigger problem was that the new and improved brakes were so far down on the floor that it was universally agreed that I would never be able to reach them if I was driving the car instead of a much taller individual with longer legs, such as Sasquatch, for example. But we plunged ahead, determined to make the best of what was turning out to be a very inauspicious start to a rather unorthodox vacation all around. We started out by packing just the essentials into the Buick, such as the tent and poles, cot and basic necessities to get set up, and we drove out together on Saturday in beautiful weather and not bad traffic. In fact, this may have been the first time we've ever gotten all the way out there without construction delays, which have been a mainstay of my camping experiences for as long as I can remember. We set up both campsites and spent the rest of the day at the beach with sunny skies and crisp clear water that was welcome and refreshing. We stayed overnight in a different motel outside of Riverhead, to avoid a repeat of last year, when we found ourselves trapped by the annual blues festival and couldn't get in or out of town if our lives depended on it. On Sunday, we went back to the beach and had another lovely day of it, and don't think that I don't have the pictures to prove it.
At this point, this is normally where Bill would drive home and go back to work during the week, while I would stay at the park by myself. But because we only had one car, and only half of my camping supplies, what we did on Sunday afternoon was drive back home together, have a nice dinner out, and relax among the comforts of home. Although this technically interrupted my vacation for a night, I still considered it an improvement over standing in line for a shower and sleeping on a cot, so I wasn't going to complain. In the morning, Bill took the Tempo to work, while I packed the rest of my gear in the Buick and drove back out to the park. I called Bill later to let him know that I had arrived safely, since everyone was concerned that I might have trouble driving an unfamiliar car. I was glad to assure him that the "new and improved" brakes turned out not to be an issue, since at the time I was on the highway, the traffic was moving at 25MPH over the Throgs Neck Bridge, it reached a high of 39MPH on the Clearview Expressway, and on the LIE through Queens, we were charging along at a whopping 6 miles per hour. I found at those speeds, not being able to reach the brakes was basically inconsequential. Bill said he hadn't heard about any traffic problems on the LIE, and I said I guess they figured that if you were going as fast as 6MPH on Monday morning in Queens, they didn't consider that a traffic problem worth mentioning, and you should be lucky you were moving at all. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and we even picked up some speed here and there along the way. Not a whole lot of speed, mind you, after all this is the Long Island Expressway we're talking about.
I tossed everything out of the car and hurried back to the beach, to resume my vacation after it was interrupted. This was another lovely day, and I had no complaints about dinner and a campfire, and even the cot was a welcome sight after a long and busy day. The park, which was surprisingly under-filled on Saturday and cleared out even further on Sunday, became positively deserted by Tuesday, when reports of severe weather ahead caused the faint-hearted to flee on all sides. I heard later that they had flooding, tornados and hail in Connecticut, but we didn't have anything like that, although there was a thunderstorm after midnight on Wednesday that made me glad to have a car to sleep in, instead of cowering in my tent with lightning crashing all around. After that, the weather settled down, and even the water stayed wonderfully clear and calm, in spite of the storm.
Late on Friday afternoon, I left the beach and re-packed half of my camping supplies in the car, and drove back home, finding remarkably little traffic all along the way. Bill, who had been working hard all week and holding down the fort at home, pitched in and helped me toss everything into the garage and then we went to Friendly's for dinner. Once again, this interruption in my vacation was offset by having a real shower and sleeping in a real bed, especially since by Friday night, the park usually gets pretty noisy and crowded anyway. Saturday morning, when Bill would normally be driving down early to help me pack up, we were able to go together, and we were more surprised than anybody to find the park filled to capacity and not a campsite to be had. That meant that all of those people had to arrive between late Friday afternoon when I left, and 8:30 Saturday morning when we got back, which made me even happier that I wasn't there on Friday night, when it must have been a madhouse. We packed up everything that was left, and headed back to the beach, for our last day of fun in the sun, and as luck would have it, it was another beautiful day. When the time came to bid our fond farewells to vacation-land and turn our faces toward home, our return trip was without incident or traffic. And considering that the Buick went back and forth four times in one week, rather than just twice as it normally would, we were delighted with its performance, and I didn't even need to bring Sasquatch along to work the brakes.
And so, even though I go to the same place on vacation every year, and in fact, stay at the same campsite each time, it's curious how unforeseen circumstances can crop up and change what should be a routine experience into something unexpected. I think we would all agree that this was not the most optimum arrangement for a quiet and relaxing week in the woods, especially having to pack and unpack the same car four different times, but it also wasn't the wholesale disaster we might have expected when we first got the bad news about the Tempo, and the whole vacation scenario was hanging in the balance. And as much as I wasn't all that impressed with the weather while I was out there, it certainly beat the pants off the weather in the week since I've been back, which if it had been a guest star on "The Sopranos," would not have made it past Monday or Tuesday before getting whacked, it was so disgusting and miserable. In fact, our mechanic threatened to send the Tempo after it, but the last time I looked, the Tempo had climbed up a tree and was holding on to the trunk for dear life.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 5:50 PM
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