If I would have lifted a finger before this trip and considered packing a few items at a time, I may not have had to get my ass in gear and spend my entire Friday evening searching for board games, DVDs, SNES games and console, cloths, hiking equipment, sleeping bag, pillows, food, beer, coolers, various electronics, bongos, guitars, music CDs, folding table, doing laundry, or going grocery shopping with out a list. But it happened, and being a man I was able to power through it. After i arranged these items on my living room coffee table I found my beer coolers were outside my house that spent the good part of the winter outside needing to be whipped out. I sprayed them down with unnecessary amounts of Clorox and called everyone up to see their status. They were all packing too, because that's what men do... Procrastinate.
I decided to make a video since i could not sleep that had the jaws theme song with pictures of moose in it. (Miece might be the plural of moosin but that's neither here nor there.) It was pretty awesome, not like sleep was awesome but when your gitty as a boy scout getting ready to go to church its hard to fall asleep. I ended up finding die hard on TV at 3 am and passed out on the couch.
Day 1
10 am rolled around and I was awakened by the odd couple calling aka Adam and Matt, they were going to be late as usual because they start actin like women all forgetting stuff. I took a shower because I though I would be forgoing that luxury for a couple of days only to realize that I forgot to get the gas turned over to my name. Needless to say icicles formed in places they shouldn't have and I set a US record for taking the quickest shower. I called the gas company and set up an appointment for next week, because that was the earliest available. Sorry roommate
The odd couple arrived an hour into diehard 2 because apparently the trilogy was on repeat the entire night, they were looking at my pile of shit in puzzlement. I stared straight back at my friend Matt and didn't know if i should take him seriously about his getup but he had a German Oktoberfest type outfit on ready to hit the road. Hopefully that's not his Halloween costume for church. But i soon saw what they were puzzled about, they apparently already took the vast majority of car space so we had to leave important things like RISK behind. I was ready for a good 6 hour game but we were forced to go down to the bare essentials (no RISK). So we packed as much shit we could into the car and started driving down the road.
Not even a minute down the road I realized we had a funky smell in the car. Apparently I should have left the cooler open the the gratuitous amount of Clorox. I started getting dizzy inhaling the fumes wafting right in front of my face. I opened the window and stuck my head out for escape, chasing the dragon down the PA turnpike while Matt played rockin beats and Adam told tales of adulthood.
About an hour later we arrived just outside of Lancaster, Matt being the responsible adult went inside to fill out paperwork for renting the RV. While Adam and i kicked a soccer ball, walked around the RV park trying to see what RV was going to be ours. After a lot of standing around and random trips to the bathroom the RV rental dude came out and asked who's driving, and told us to sign a piece of paper. I scribbled something down and so did Adam, but they never asked for our license or any proof of who we were.
He then took us over to the chateau or "the castle", asked if any of us used an RV before and we all smiled trying not to laugh. He flicked buttons talked a bunch, we nodded our heads saying we understood. I think i got about a third of what he said, which is good because there were 3 of us. Nate arrived shortly after and we proceeded packing the RV for our 7 day journey. Somewhere in-between Matt called Derick and he was a couple hours away, he had to make a couple last minute deals and was busy eating steaks down in d.c. So we had to wait.
Board we contemplated parking across the street and setting up shop waiting for a race car truck or firetrucks to drive by so we could yell freedom while drinking untold quantities of alcohol. But Matt being the responsible adult wanted to stick with the plan said we could drive down to the grocery store. With no experience I naturally volunteered to drive the RV first.
Adam decided to type in "smallest grocery store in the state of PA that was closed" into his iPhone that took us right past a perfectly good grocery store. But I thought Adam knew what he was doing and continued down the road to find the sketchiest corner store i ever saw (cross that off my bucket list). The cops thought the same thing with our mobile meth lab rolling through the neighborhood and pulled up behind us. Luckily, the cops were from England or something because when i turned left they turned right end of suspense.
We went back to the perfectly good grocery store, and proceeded to buy items for the trip. Lunch meat, chips, salami, red hot hard boiled eggs, you know food that would absolutely destroy our stomachs and later our noses. We were pretty well behaved, throwing whatever crossed our minds into the cart and putting it on the "company card".
We left the grocery store in a flash of confusion, i made a right turn when we were suppose to go left and did the first three point turn of the trip (now its a party). We made our way back to the rv rental shop, and picked up derrick, and loaded his stuff on the road. Matt decided he was going to drive first and we were off to Maine.
I spent the first hour or hour and a half catching up with Nate and derrick. Derrick was all about makin deals in d.c. and was on steak overflow, he was thinking about giving it up but he didn't want to be a queer and eat salad. Nate talked about his kids and the work he did at Troges, he stopped there on the way and picked up some scratch beer on the way. After talking to them for a while I decided to Crack open my second beer as we entered new jersey . I was going to be driving tonight and had to take it easy so I began to read the game of thrones book one only to learn winter is coming.
20 minutes later
The backup of the century occurred and we were stuck in traffic trying to get across the G.W. bridge for the next hour. Delirium kicked in as i heard a bunch of Spanish people singing. I got strangely patriotic and started waving the American flag singing whatever song popped into my head while sticking my head out the window. I saw cranberry bogs and thought of swimming, but Adam pointed out that they're definitely not cranberry bogs more like rice field, or a swamp. I didn't believe him, but either way there's probably bodies there.
Three quarters through the traffic jam Adam was getting all antsy in the pantsy in the co pilots chair, I decided to swap him out as the sun was setting behind us. Nate and Adam started to drink, as I reached for the radio and found the NBA basketball game between the Celtics and heat (game 7 eastern conference finals) on AM. Noticing a free lane to the left for easy pass and having a 32 foot RV is an asstastic situation when trying to switch lanes but after 15 minutes of trying we were finally in the easy pass lane bypassing miles of traffic.
With the open road in front of us....
Me and Matt talked basketball for the next little while, the 76er series over the Celtics and Derick called us old geezers listening to AM. It cut out when we went under bridges so i found the game FM (cuz now were hip) and it was smooth sailing all the way to Hartford Connecticut. Upon arrival we were in search for a place to eat, drunky mc drunkerton Adam decided to sit in-between the driver and co-pilot seat and lobby for McDonald's or Wendy's. Both of which were closed inside and our RV was by no means going to make it through the drive through. We found a sonic next and then a buffalo wild wings which I never went to so naturally we chose the wild wings.
Apparently Hartford fans are big Celtics fans, because they came rolling out of buffalo wild wings like it needed a DUI check point. Too fast too furious, they left after seeing the heat beat them, it was nice though because when we went inside the bar cleared out and the service was quick. Our waitress was kinda cute and persuaded everyone into a local brew called the naughty nurse that reminded me of a "eh" Killian ripoff. Derrick made the waitress uncomfortable by giving her the slow look over while she was staring right at him. But he was debating on closing the deal. She'll get over it.
I checked out the b-rooms at this point surprised to find had TVs in the urinals, which is quite possibly the coolest thing i ever saw (cross off bucket list). And proceeded back to the dinner table for conversation. Adam was too drunk to drink his beer and was pouring it into Nate's glass when he was not looking. Which Nate only caught on when Adam was almost done with his beer. Anyway it was a great little pit stop.
With brews in their bellies (I only had water) I took over driving down the road w derrick as my copilot. We bantered back in forth talking about our time in Harrisburg and things we did there to pass the time. Matt joined in the captains chair as we entered a construction zone. Apparently there are no speed limit signs in Massachusetts and construction workers actually do work unlike PennDot in Pennsylvania. But there's no excuse for the poorly painted roads so i just drove down the middle of the highway.
We exited near Worcester MA and drove past a Walmart. I did my second three point turn of the day in the middle of an intersection and made our way to the Walmart parking lot. I had to poop something fierce and left to go to Walmart and check out their bathrooms. But lord and behold they were not open, this was the first Walmart, I have ever been to that was not open 24-7 (cross off bucket list).
Oh well, I made it back to the RV and apparently the generator went out. Derrick gave up and was in bed, Adam was passed out drunk, Nate and Matt were turning the RV on and off trying to figure out if the extension would retract back in. they tried it a number of times before giving up blaming it on low gas or a weird parking angle.
I laid down in the breakfast nook bed for the night and closed my eyes, with my last conscious thought "this is going to be a long trip to Walmart if the generator does not work".
To Part 1 or To Part 3
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