That You Can Do With Just One Overnight Stay
Blog Post Background
If you read the homepage landing site you may remember that I’ve started a blog to capture moments and experiences then share them with family and friends and to whoever may find my site. I’m still in the super early stages of learning how to blog (and finding out if it’s even for me), so the format below is still going to be rough compared to other sites that you may visit on a regular basis. I am trying though! For example just today I listened to a bunch of podcasts on blogging and took away ever so much more knowledge to update this post just a little. Always a self-critic I’m telling myself that tweaking this post is making it longer, which might just discourage anyone from staying on this page. (That is a fresh takeaway from a blogging podcast.)
Hopefully Something That You Can Use
If you continue reading this post you may be inspired to plan your own whirlwind car trip. Or, maybe you’ll learn how to improve your own blog by seeing clear examples of ‘how-not-to-do-it’ that I can’t even see yet. (If you do see something that you’d like to feed back to teach me how to make better posts please send me a comment and I’ll be grateful. I think I said in another post that there are waaaaaaay too many comments on the ‘net with bad vibes, so try to keep your vibe positive if you can.)
One Last Thing Before You Read Any Further
Car trips are not for everybody. If they aren’t, you already know why. A car trip with family members is pretty demanding – you all have to get up early, actually get out of the house, load up, share limited baggage space in the car, start moving, actually make some progress before somebody has to stop, get where you are going, find parking, pay for parking…and the list goes on. And that does not even mention checking the car over for the trip. If it’s an older car like ours, you travel with the cloud of doubt whether you’ll even make it and how much would it cost you if you break down. But that’s not why we make our car trips. It’s because they are so much fun!?
Finally, About This Weekend Trip
So, the weekend was another blur of trying to do what some might think is way too much in one weekend but it seems to be kind of normal for us. Maybe next weekend will be slower…nah, we already know that some of us have to be at an event at 6:15 on all of our day off.
No Sleep Until Philly?
We started by hitting the road at 5:15 AM to head to Philly. The first stop was the Reading Terminal Market. Describing the Terminal market could take a whole lot of pages on its own, but today’s entry is going to be short – because the weekend was kind of tiring, especially coming off of the busy Christmas holidays then the first couple of days back to work.
Back to the story…we each bought to our liking different types of food from the market based on our own tastes – a side of falafel for me, veggie gyro for one daughter, shrimp po-boy for the other, and a Philly cheese steak sandwich for the Mrs. (Although I can hardly see how she thought it was a real cheese steak by omitting the peppers, onions, and no mustard. To each their own, right?)
The Liberty Bell
Next it was off a few blocks to the Liberty Bell….errrnnnt, no such luck other than to look through the window because of the shutdown. You kind of realize right then and there that it’s a National Park even though it’s smack in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the country.
On to PHL for a dropoff and some teary goodbye-for-nows…getting there early to beat the lines, we had some time and all played a few rounds of cards for some last-minute QT.
Weehawken
Just a ‘short’ two-hour drive from the airport, we headed to a very nice restaurant that sits across the Hudson River from Manhattan. I’d been there twice before on business, each time thinking of how much I’d like to bring the family there to share in the experience. That happens a lot – I go to a nice or unique place when on a business trip and I think the whole time about how much I’d like to bring the family back there in the future. The menu was great and although significantly over our budget for dining out, the setting on the river with the nighttime sky illuminated beyond description made it worth every dollar to me. I’d need a good reason to make the long trip there again, but it’s not off of my bucket list to go back again and again when the opportunity arises.
Alexander Hamilton!
OK, now that dinner was over, we were close enough to the historical site where our founding father Alexander Hamilton met his fate. A year ago, I knew little about his history, but have been ‘schooled’ on the theatrical rendition from listening and being entertained over and over by my daughter who performs the songs on every long car trip just like this one. No need for a script to be an understudy – she has it memorized and can sing the songs word for word whether you are ready for it or not.
Famous Site Where Alexander Hamilton was Fatally Wounded in a Duel
Times Square New York City!!
It was now around 8:30 PM. Sometimes I say things I’d like to do tongue in cheek knowing full well I’m going to do it. So, my wife only asked once if I was really up to driving us through the Lincoln Tunnels over to Manhattan for a lap through Times Square at night. See, on the other business trips my colleague who used to live there offered me the same chance to see Times Square at night. If you asked me two years ago about whether I would like to go to NYC…at night or other time…I’d have said I had no interest. But no more – the visual from all the lights in Time Square is more than I can describe in this sitting, but I can surely say in a sentence that it’s worth seeing. The family thought so, too. Back to the experience of driving in NYC, this night it really was not as busy as we had expected. It seemed to help to ‘drive like you live there’, meaning that you just got your edge on and went with the flow.
Asbury Park
Having done all what we had set out to do for the day, it was time to head toward the coast to our hotel about an hour and a half away in Asbury Park, New Jersey. A little bit of tea, being shamed into a short sesh on the treadmill, then off to sleep.
The next morning we drove to a nearby beach with the intention of me getting in the Atlantic for a brief sesh. One thing you may not realize is that you just don’t name the spot no matter what. I.e. the spot goes un-named to protect the locals. (I wonder if anybody will get that reference. It’s not exactly that phrase.)
The waves were just right for this old geezer who in his own mind is just an older grommet who’s going to break through the wall any time now. The sets were at a decent period (can’t remember exactly what they were, maybe 9 to 10 seconds, shoulder to head high and offshore winds. I said the WAVES were good for me at my level. Sooo, the water TEMPERATURE was around 45 DEGF. Being a grom on a budget, I only own one wetsuit so far….a 4/3. My gloves and booties are 5mm, not sure about the lid. I assumed that the other half dozen guys in the water were all in 5-6mm suits and were as warm as if they were sitting in front of a fireplace. I knew that I was set up for water in the high 50’s, but made the call that I would go in for just the limited amount of time that I could stand it, then dash back to the car where my wife and daughter had so thoughtfully managed to keep the heater warm. (Meaning, they stayed in the warm car while I played.) For me, that time ended somewhere around 45 minutes. As with skateboarding, my expectation is not to leave the current sesh incredibly skilled, but to leave better than when I started. And that was the case today, it was a super fun session. I have so far to get from where I am that I have so much room to improve that just about any session feels rewarding, not even mentioning that feeling of just having gone out in the water. It’s living that feeling that “a bad day at the beach beats a good day…(almost anywhere)”
I had a few good rides, for me anyway, a couple of scoops of the ice-cream headache from the cold water under the squid lid, and some little reminders that leg cramps can sneak up at you almost anytime, but other than that not too much negative feedback. Then within a minute my body switched into the next gear of the cold water response and I knew it was time to go in. The last 20 yards to the shore were a little intimidating because I knew that I was slowing down and the brain was getting a little less heat to make good computations. At some point, the leg of my wetsuit pulled up and my boot was getting regular refills of that cold Atlantic salt water. I only mention this to say that it was time to go and much time longer was not the right answer. (As I’ve said before, I’m not an expert or anything close. This is not instruction or advice, use your own judgement on the right gear for the conditions and situation.)
Back to the car, I changed back into dry clothes under the cloak of my very functional terry-cloth changing towel hoodie (that my ever-loving wife says makes me look like I’m a toddler in a beach hoodie.) I’m open to reviewing surf changing hoodies, wetsuits, gloves, or any other gear to share my user experience. If you’re a vendor or manufacturer, reach out to me. Maybe we can work something out.
Dried off and in dry clothing, I rousted the family out of the warm car for a short walk on the boardwalk before heading home. I’ll end this post before it gets even longer, saying that the weekend was great – a mixture of family QT, goodbyes, sightseeing, surfing, and cruising.
AND PEGGY.
I Wake Up Stoked 