Weekend Warriors

Hello World,

Well, the Ides of August will be upon us before we know it, when the fabled Dog Days could really start barking in earnest. Although I don't know what they could do that would be much worse than the weather we already had in July, with day after day of triple digit temperatures, and humidity that was off the charts, so that even the most robust electricity providers were no match for it. The recent weather around here has been positively pleasant compared to that, but with enough freakish spontaneous storms to remind us that our old pal Comrade Mischka is never far away from the controls of the Kremlin's infernal weather machine, da?

In fact, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it was Comrade Mischka and some of his evil cohorts who managed to turn what should have been a pleasant weekend getaway into something that was not at all the way it was intended. We had plans to visit our friends around Albany, for a splash in their pool, and they were so eager to have us that they actually invited us to come, rather than us just forcing ourselves on them as usual. We had to work around their schedule of being away, and our other friends being on call, so we settled on last weekend when everyone was available, and we had high hopes for good weather. Although it started out with the forecast somewhat inauspicious for our purposes, and we thought we were prepared for a bit of a bumpy ride, it turned out that was not even the half of it.

We started out bright and early on Saturday morning, because we wanted to have plenty of time at the pool, and be ready to dive right in as soon as we got there around lunchtime. Not so fast! It turned out that our hostess had been felled with a severe stomach infection, and had been confined to her bed and no contact with the outside world. This was an unexpected blow, and punched more than a few holes in our plans for the rest of the day, although it must be said that our host did his best to entertain us on his own. We resolved to make the best of it, and waited for our other friends to arrive and join us at poolside for an afternoon of aquatic delights. Once again, not so fast! Our other friends had errands and obligations that took longer than they expected, so they didn't show up until almost 2:00 PM, and since no one had any lunch (here is one place that our hostess really would have come in handy) we headed off to the nearby Circle Diner for a quick bite. Alas, and even yet more once again, not so fast! Although we were seated promptly, they apparently couldn't find anyone willing to serve us, and we sat for 20 minutes as if invisible to the staff, until we finally prevailed upon one of the busboys to send a waitress our way - who they must have dragooned straight from the head of the class at the Surly Waitress School, whose icy manner put the building's air conditioning to shame. I was happy with my fried ravioli, but we found the portions skimpy and over-priced, although luckily served on good sturdy dishes, since our snarling waitress essentially threw them at us from across the table. We hoped that a nice swim might salvage the rest of the day, but by the time we left, it was already so gloomy and threatening that the thought of being in a pool seemed not only unappealing, but downright dangerous, and we reluctantly gave up on the idea.

So instead, we went to check in at La Quinta Hotel, where we had stayed before, and our other friends decided to join us overnight, rather than drive all the way back home on their own. We had some time to relax and get settled in, which was more complicated than it would have been, if they hadn't put us on the 3rd floor in order to get us two rooms together. It's simple enough to get from the parking lot to the 2nd floor by taking the handy stairs, but to get all the way up to the top floor, you're at the mercy of their painfully slow and wheezing elevator, which made the derelict elevators at the hospital where I work seem positively supersonic by comparison, and that's saying something, believe me. I figure that the inconvenience of being on the top floor was in exchange for not being able to assign us rooms next to the elevator, ice maker and vending machines as they usually do, so this was the best they could come up with.

Once all of that was out of the way, we all piled into the car and headed to the 76 Diner for dinner, and the only advantage to our hostess being sick was that we could fit 5 of us in one car, rather than splitting the 6 of us up between two cars. The threatening weather broke loose with a vengeance, and we splashed in and out of the diner in a pelting downpour that got worse as the night wore on. We found their service was much better (although in fairness, it could hardly have been worse) but I was disappointed in the baked ziti, especially since their fettuccine Alfredo is very good. After dinner, we hurried back to La Quinta and jumped in the hotel pool - even our host for the weekend, who already has his own pool at home - and settled in for a relaxing soak in the hot tub. I won't say that it exactly salvaged the day, which was well on its way to becoming a full-blown disaster, but it was a step in the right direction. Then we all turned in for a well-deserved good night's rest.

Did I hear someone say, "Not so fast!" Bill and I were fine, but our other friends had an over-enthusiastic air conditioner that turned their room into a deep freeze, and in the middle of the night, the man of the house was so achy and congested that he had to pack it in and head for home in order to get some sleep. So it was just the 3 of us to enjoy the hotel's buffet breakfast in the morning, and we didn't shy away from the muffins and bagels, mini Danish and donuts, fresh fruit and hard-boiled eggs - although we had to carry it back up to our room to eat it in peace, since the breakfast room was such a madhouse that Bill aptly described it as a "feeding frenzy." After we checked out, we headed over to our weekend hosts to bid them a fond farewell, and found our hostess still under the weather, but well enough to at least wave at us wanly from a distance. The outdoor conditions had dried up somewhat, but not enough to entice anyone into the pool, and we thought it best to leave quietly so our poor bedraggled hostess could continue her recuperation without a bunch of noisy hooligans underfoot, even if they did invite us in the first place.

Since we had to take our other friend home anyway, we were relieved to find her husband much improved after his ordeal, and well enough to join us for lunch at the Kinderhook Diner, where we found both the food and the service were hit-or-miss, especially considering that we ordered nothing out of the ordinary. From there, we spent the rest of the day wandering the capacious aisles at Ocean State Job Lot, which we don't have any of near us, and snapping up bargains on every side. We finally ran out of steam around 5:00 PM and had to call it a day, so we packed up our treasures for the long drive home. It soon became a nightmare of heavy traffic and torrential rain, and the only bright spot was stopping along the way at Denny's in Newburgh, where we were glad to find that the food and the service were both excellent, for the first time all weekend. We finally arrived home, late and tired, but at least the cats were happy to see us, and we were glad to get back in one piece. The way things had been going, that was not something we were going to take for granted, that's fur sure.

So in the end, we drove 300 miles and spent $125 to swim in a hotel pool, which was certainly not what we originally envisioned for the weekend, I can tell you that. But it was nice to see our friends, when they weren't sick, and we tried to make the best of a bad situation. I guess it was just a lucky thing that Comrade Mischka, who loused up the weather to spoil the whole pool party plan to begin with, didn't have any more nefarious cronies than the Germ Genies, the Hotel Hobgoblins, the Diner Despoilers and the Traffic Trolls, or things could have turned out even worse, although I shudder to think how that could be possible. I suppose he might have collaborated in league with the Petroleum Pirates, so that the price of gas would be over $4 a gallon for regular, or something equally outrageous, so nobody would be able to afford to travel in any case. Oh, wait a minute .....

Elle