Anyone who knows my daughter, and probably a lot of people who don't, knows that we took a road trip to New Jersey last year. To Seaside Heights, NJ to be exact. I have to admit, we had a lot of fun. Surf, sand, sun, and not having to make beds or cook dinner? What's not to love?
When she asked if we could go again this year, I thought about it. I asked my husband if he would come this time, and he said he would, and my daughter planned to bring a friend as well. We had originally planned to go in July, but for various reasons the plans fell through.
Then, at the beginning of June, my daughter came to me and said that if we could go in the third week of June, her friend would be able to come. It was the only week she could go. It was a lot earlier than we'd originally planned, I wasn't sure the weather would be warm enough to swim, and it wasn't the best time for me to be away from work. On the other hand, I hadn't taken any time off since we'd gone the previous summer, not even over Christmas, and I really, really needed a break. Okay, we'd go. Because we were going mid week, we were able to get a reservation despite the short notice, and because my husband decided he didn't want to go after all, we only needed one room...the girls could share a bed! The two weeks leading up to our trip were a little chaotic for me at work, and rescheduling a test for a course I was taking, but somehow it all worked out. I left the office on Friday, officially on vacation.
No one was home and Rascal wanted to go outside, so I decided to join him for awhile. I pulled out a lawn chair and plonked it down in the backyard, and Rascal plonked down right beside me. Hmmm...my brain didn't want to stop working. I kept thinking about the office and wondering if I'd forgotten to do anything...forgotten to tell anyone anything...forgotten to....oh, this was not good. I went into the house and found a book that I was planning to bring with me to read on the beach. I tried to concentrate on it, but it wasn't working. I went back into the house and poured myself a glass of chilled Chardonnay and took that outside. I mean, I was on vacation after all! It was better, but my brain still refused to shut down. I went into the house again and this time brought out a beach towel and spread it out on the grass. Before I could stretch out on it though, Rascal snuck up from behind me and in the blink of an eye, was lying full out on it, head on his paws, looking at me. "I don't think so buddy" I said as I gave him a poke. He reluctantly got up, and I laid down on my stomach. I figured if nothing else, I could try and get a little colour on my oh so very pale Canadian arms and legs! A few minutes later, I heard the patio door opening and my daughter stuck her head out. Apparently her mother lying on a beach towel in the backyard was not what she expected to find when she got home from work. "What are you doing?" she asked suspiciously.
"I'm channeling my inner beach bunny" I answered. "What does it look like?"
She went back into the house mumbling.
The plan was to leave at 6 in the morning. That's what we did the previous year and we'd arrived in Seaside Heights around 3pm. As I was setting my alarm that night for 5 am, I suddenly thought, what am I? Nuts? I'm on vacation. I changed it to 6am. So we'd leave at 7 instead. Big deal. At 5:05 the next morning, I awoke to my daughter standing beside my bed poking me. "Get up. You over slept!". Sigh.
Alright. By 5:30 we had everything in the car and we were ready to go pick up her friend, but not until I hit Starbucks for some coffee. I mean, I have my priorities. My daughter turned on the GPS to plug in the address of our hotel in Seaside. The power came on, but the screen was frozen and we couldn't do anything with it. Great! No worries I said, I had printed out directions online the night before, just as back up. We would use those. I remembered from the previous year that the GPS had taken us a much different route than the printed directions I'd had, but I figured we'd get there either way, so it was fine. Fine! I'd just keep telling myself that.
Caffeinated and finally awake, we had crossed the border and were driving through upstate New York. My daughter was navigating in the passenger seat and her girlfriend was in the back seat, reading over her shoulder, and occasionally taking a turn reading one of the directions out. We were doing fine until we hit a detour. A really long detour. When we finally got off of it, nothing seemed familiar compared to our directions. We drove awhile longer and I started to fear that we had missed our turnoff while we were on the detour. The last thing I wanted to do was keep driving if were going the wrong way. We were still heading south, but at some point we needed to go west, and that was the part I was afraid we'd missed! Eventually, we came to a small town and we stopped in a general store to ask for directions. The girl behind the counter had no idea and they didn't sell maps. Up the street was a Police station, so we pulled in there. It was a really old building, and at first it seemed to be deserted, but as we continued down one hallway and then another we eventually found an officer and explained the reason for our stop. He said that we were actually fine on the road we were on, but that there was a quicker way and he offered to print me out a new set of directions starting from our present location.
New directions in hand, we thanked him and were on our way. As we started off, my daughter noticed that the directions he had given us were in miles instead of kilometres and asked me if that was going to be a problem? I told her no, I could convert it in my head, so no worries. I took a quick look at the new directions and compared it to the old ones and noticed they were quite different, but hopefully they'd get us there sooner!
We were going along pretty good. Just as we crossed into Pennsylvania, first her friend fell asleep, and then my daughter. I was actually appreciating the quiet. They were both very excited about going to Seaside Heights because they had found out the week before that the MTV show "Jersey Shore" would still be filming while we were there. They were both avid fans of the show and each had their "crush" in the cast that they were hoping to catch a glimpse of! Since we'd hit the road at 5:30, that was all I'd heard about. The quiet was nice!
I knew that we should be coming up on Binghampton, PA before long. That was one part of the trip that was actually familiar to me and it would be a good place to stop for lunch. As I was driving along, I was thinking that I should have seen a sign for it already. I had the directions in my lap trying to glance at them and none of the signs or exits looked right and I was starting to think that maybe I'd missed the exit. Just as I was about to wake up my daughter to look at the directions for me, I saw the sign! Huge sigh of relief. I really missed Betty!
Betty is what I call the GPS. Occasionally I have referred to her as Bitching Betty, most recently when I was driving over water on a very long bridge and she kept insisting I turn right! It's really not her fault though. Betty is getting older and her maps don't always update the way they used to. I glanced at Betty, still plugged in, and still frozen. I silently promised her that if she came out of her coma, I would never call her names again!
We had lunch in Binghampton, filled up the gas tank and I got another coffee for the road. The drive through Pennsylvania was a pleasant one..."Rocks and trees and trees and rocks" as my daughter said. But I liked it. I remembered from the previous year that once we got into New Jersey and started to get closer to the ocean, the exits and turns came fast, so I warned my daughter to pay attention so we didn't miss anything. She would read one direction, then say "and you go for 9.2 miles" so I could keep track of when a turn or new exit would be coming up. Her friend was leaning over her seat, and they started taking turns reading the directions out to me. Somehow, nothing was making sense. One minute we were on a major highway, the next we'd be exiting on to some back road, only to end up on the same main highway again. It also seemed to me that it was taking a lot longer to get there than I remembered once we actually got into New Jersey. The only thing I could say for sure was that we were still basically heading south. Betty, where are you? We were on the Garden State Expressway...again, and all of a sudden we were on a bridge. I knew we had to cross a bridge into Seaside Heights, but this didn't look right. And then I knew why. The next sign we saw said "Welcome to Staten Island". What the?....how did we?...this was not good!
Once across the bridge I managed through a series of turns to get back on it going the opposite direction until we had backtracked enough that we are at least on familiar territory again. "Okay" I said to the girls, "let's start again." They were doing the same thing, taking turns reading the directions, and again it seemed like we were taking a bizarrely roundabout way. My daughter read the next one and followed it with "and drive 2.1 miles". A few seconds later her friend piped up and read the next step and followed it up with " and then drive 1.2 kilometres".
Kilometres?
It explained so very much when I realized they had been reading, and I had been following, two very different sets of directions! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. We were now on a long winding back road. The only comfort I had was that we were going in the direction that I believed the ocean to be in. There wasn't a house or business anywhere that we could stop and ask for help. In fact there was just....rocks and trees. It was going up for five o'clock and I just wanted to get there already.
Suddenly, there was a voice from above...well, actually it was kind of from below and to my right. "Route Recalculation. Route Recalculation." Oh my God. Betty was alive. But wait, was she okay? Was she going to be able to figure out where she was...where we were? The three of us waited with bated breath. I reached down and oh so gently picked her up.
There was a map! Right there on her face. And it showed the road we were driving down!
Oh happy day. There were hoots and high fives from the girls and I'm not ashamed to tell you that I actually kissed Betty!
It turned out that somehow, against all logic, we were going the right way, although in a roundabout one. Within minutes Betty directed us to turn right and we could see the bridge that would take us to Seaside. Another fifteen minutes after that and we were on the island and turning down the road to our hotel. We could see it now too...right there at the corner on the right. "Turn left in 100 metres. In 100 metres turn left". Oh Betty, you're such a kidder.
To be continued....
When she asked if we could go again this year, I thought about it. I asked my husband if he would come this time, and he said he would, and my daughter planned to bring a friend as well. We had originally planned to go in July, but for various reasons the plans fell through.
Then, at the beginning of June, my daughter came to me and said that if we could go in the third week of June, her friend would be able to come. It was the only week she could go. It was a lot earlier than we'd originally planned, I wasn't sure the weather would be warm enough to swim, and it wasn't the best time for me to be away from work. On the other hand, I hadn't taken any time off since we'd gone the previous summer, not even over Christmas, and I really, really needed a break. Okay, we'd go. Because we were going mid week, we were able to get a reservation despite the short notice, and because my husband decided he didn't want to go after all, we only needed one room...the girls could share a bed! The two weeks leading up to our trip were a little chaotic for me at work, and rescheduling a test for a course I was taking, but somehow it all worked out. I left the office on Friday, officially on vacation.
No one was home and Rascal wanted to go outside, so I decided to join him for awhile. I pulled out a lawn chair and plonked it down in the backyard, and Rascal plonked down right beside me. Hmmm...my brain didn't want to stop working. I kept thinking about the office and wondering if I'd forgotten to do anything...forgotten to tell anyone anything...forgotten to....oh, this was not good. I went into the house and found a book that I was planning to bring with me to read on the beach. I tried to concentrate on it, but it wasn't working. I went back into the house and poured myself a glass of chilled Chardonnay and took that outside. I mean, I was on vacation after all! It was better, but my brain still refused to shut down. I went into the house again and this time brought out a beach towel and spread it out on the grass. Before I could stretch out on it though, Rascal snuck up from behind me and in the blink of an eye, was lying full out on it, head on his paws, looking at me. "I don't think so buddy" I said as I gave him a poke. He reluctantly got up, and I laid down on my stomach. I figured if nothing else, I could try and get a little colour on my oh so very pale Canadian arms and legs! A few minutes later, I heard the patio door opening and my daughter stuck her head out. Apparently her mother lying on a beach towel in the backyard was not what she expected to find when she got home from work. "What are you doing?" she asked suspiciously.
"I'm channeling my inner beach bunny" I answered. "What does it look like?"
She went back into the house mumbling.
The plan was to leave at 6 in the morning. That's what we did the previous year and we'd arrived in Seaside Heights around 3pm. As I was setting my alarm that night for 5 am, I suddenly thought, what am I? Nuts? I'm on vacation. I changed it to 6am. So we'd leave at 7 instead. Big deal. At 5:05 the next morning, I awoke to my daughter standing beside my bed poking me. "Get up. You over slept!". Sigh.
Alright. By 5:30 we had everything in the car and we were ready to go pick up her friend, but not until I hit Starbucks for some coffee. I mean, I have my priorities. My daughter turned on the GPS to plug in the address of our hotel in Seaside. The power came on, but the screen was frozen and we couldn't do anything with it. Great! No worries I said, I had printed out directions online the night before, just as back up. We would use those. I remembered from the previous year that the GPS had taken us a much different route than the printed directions I'd had, but I figured we'd get there either way, so it was fine. Fine! I'd just keep telling myself that.
Caffeinated and finally awake, we had crossed the border and were driving through upstate New York. My daughter was navigating in the passenger seat and her girlfriend was in the back seat, reading over her shoulder, and occasionally taking a turn reading one of the directions out. We were doing fine until we hit a detour. A really long detour. When we finally got off of it, nothing seemed familiar compared to our directions. We drove awhile longer and I started to fear that we had missed our turnoff while we were on the detour. The last thing I wanted to do was keep driving if were going the wrong way. We were still heading south, but at some point we needed to go west, and that was the part I was afraid we'd missed! Eventually, we came to a small town and we stopped in a general store to ask for directions. The girl behind the counter had no idea and they didn't sell maps. Up the street was a Police station, so we pulled in there. It was a really old building, and at first it seemed to be deserted, but as we continued down one hallway and then another we eventually found an officer and explained the reason for our stop. He said that we were actually fine on the road we were on, but that there was a quicker way and he offered to print me out a new set of directions starting from our present location.
New directions in hand, we thanked him and were on our way. As we started off, my daughter noticed that the directions he had given us were in miles instead of kilometres and asked me if that was going to be a problem? I told her no, I could convert it in my head, so no worries. I took a quick look at the new directions and compared it to the old ones and noticed they were quite different, but hopefully they'd get us there sooner!
We were going along pretty good. Just as we crossed into Pennsylvania, first her friend fell asleep, and then my daughter. I was actually appreciating the quiet. They were both very excited about going to Seaside Heights because they had found out the week before that the MTV show "Jersey Shore" would still be filming while we were there. They were both avid fans of the show and each had their "crush" in the cast that they were hoping to catch a glimpse of! Since we'd hit the road at 5:30, that was all I'd heard about. The quiet was nice!
I knew that we should be coming up on Binghampton, PA before long. That was one part of the trip that was actually familiar to me and it would be a good place to stop for lunch. As I was driving along, I was thinking that I should have seen a sign for it already. I had the directions in my lap trying to glance at them and none of the signs or exits looked right and I was starting to think that maybe I'd missed the exit. Just as I was about to wake up my daughter to look at the directions for me, I saw the sign! Huge sigh of relief. I really missed Betty!
Betty is what I call the GPS. Occasionally I have referred to her as Bitching Betty, most recently when I was driving over water on a very long bridge and she kept insisting I turn right! It's really not her fault though. Betty is getting older and her maps don't always update the way they used to. I glanced at Betty, still plugged in, and still frozen. I silently promised her that if she came out of her coma, I would never call her names again!
We had lunch in Binghampton, filled up the gas tank and I got another coffee for the road. The drive through Pennsylvania was a pleasant one..."Rocks and trees and trees and rocks" as my daughter said. But I liked it. I remembered from the previous year that once we got into New Jersey and started to get closer to the ocean, the exits and turns came fast, so I warned my daughter to pay attention so we didn't miss anything. She would read one direction, then say "and you go for 9.2 miles" so I could keep track of when a turn or new exit would be coming up. Her friend was leaning over her seat, and they started taking turns reading the directions out to me. Somehow, nothing was making sense. One minute we were on a major highway, the next we'd be exiting on to some back road, only to end up on the same main highway again. It also seemed to me that it was taking a lot longer to get there than I remembered once we actually got into New Jersey. The only thing I could say for sure was that we were still basically heading south. Betty, where are you? We were on the Garden State Expressway...again, and all of a sudden we were on a bridge. I knew we had to cross a bridge into Seaside Heights, but this didn't look right. And then I knew why. The next sign we saw said "Welcome to Staten Island". What the?....how did we?...this was not good!
Once across the bridge I managed through a series of turns to get back on it going the opposite direction until we had backtracked enough that we are at least on familiar territory again. "Okay" I said to the girls, "let's start again." They were doing the same thing, taking turns reading the directions, and again it seemed like we were taking a bizarrely roundabout way. My daughter read the next one and followed it with "and drive 2.1 miles". A few seconds later her friend piped up and read the next step and followed it up with " and then drive 1.2 kilometres".
Kilometres?
It explained so very much when I realized they had been reading, and I had been following, two very different sets of directions! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. We were now on a long winding back road. The only comfort I had was that we were going in the direction that I believed the ocean to be in. There wasn't a house or business anywhere that we could stop and ask for help. In fact there was just....rocks and trees. It was going up for five o'clock and I just wanted to get there already.
Suddenly, there was a voice from above...well, actually it was kind of from below and to my right. "Route Recalculation. Route Recalculation." Oh my God. Betty was alive. But wait, was she okay? Was she going to be able to figure out where she was...where we were? The three of us waited with bated breath. I reached down and oh so gently picked her up.
There was a map! Right there on her face. And it showed the road we were driving down!
Oh happy day. There were hoots and high fives from the girls and I'm not ashamed to tell you that I actually kissed Betty!
It turned out that somehow, against all logic, we were going the right way, although in a roundabout one. Within minutes Betty directed us to turn right and we could see the bridge that would take us to Seaside. Another fifteen minutes after that and we were on the island and turning down the road to our hotel. We could see it now too...right there at the corner on the right. "Turn left in 100 metres. In 100 metres turn left". Oh Betty, you're such a kidder.
To be continued....
