Out-of-Staters

Taylor and Ahlina were supposed to drive down to visit us two weekends ago, but after they pulled the trigger on their car purchase and I found out how much they're on the hook for every month, I started having second thoughts about encouraging them to make such a long trip on chaotic and unfamiliar roads.

Plus Taylor has suffered from numerous dog bites on her hands over the past five weeks or so and even had to miss a week of work from the most recent bite because it was so bad.

(The groomer they work for sort of caters to people who own more aggressive breeds. So this kind of comes with the territory, and probably factors into why they earn so much in tips as well. But when you're already living paycheck to paycheck and the ink isn't even dry on the car loan you just took on, having to miss even a day of work SUCKS!)

So anyway, all that is to say that I convinced the girls earlier this month to hold off on coming down to PA, and I said Riley and I would make the trip up there over Labor Day weekend instead.

Sundays and Mondays are the girls' usual days off, so I knew this holiday weekend would let me make the six hour round trip yesterday and then have today to sleep in and recover from the drive :)

Enter the "Prize"

I knew I would want to rent a car for such a long trip. But of course Enterprise isn't open on Sundays, so I had to go get a car Saturday afternoon and pay for two days even though I only needed it for one.

They had told me I'd have my choice of a "Toyota Corolla or similar", and when I first showed up they wanted to put me in a Volkswagen Jetta.

No problem.

But the guy showing me the car was this little college-aged kid who clearly was already mostly mentally checked-out for the weekend and just counting the minutes until his shift was over. He lazily invited me to look the car over and document any dings and blemishes I found on the car so that I wouldn't be on the hook for them when I brought it back.

Fine.

But the longer I looked, the more I began to notice this car wasn't much of a prize. Some dings on the lower halves of the doors. Some grass clippings on the side skirts that made it look like the previous driver had gone off the road. Dents in the rims that made it look like they had curbed the car.

I asked the sales kid if this had all been documented, and he was quick to assure me that it had. So I took the keys and started up the car.

Buh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh! The entire thing started shaking immediately as soon as I turned the ignition!

NOPE!

Absolutely not! Give me something else!

So he offered me a white Nissan Altima instead, and that one had no apparent damage or issues.

We Ride at Dawn!

Riley and I got an early start yesterday morning and were on the road shortly after 8:00am.

Of course, the rental car greeted us with this lovely display:

So we realized we would NOT be connecting our phones and giving away our data just to listen to music.

But we made great time, especially for a holiday weekend. And I had found a route that was about $10 cheaper than going over the stupid George Washington bridge in New York while only adding a few minutes of travel time :)

And soon enough, we had arrived in Connecticut, and then at Taylor and Ahlina's apartment.

The Tour

They gave us a tour of the place, which didn't take very long since it's just a studio apartment that can probably fit in Kevin's and my living room.

It was certainly odd though, since it's the top floor of a two-story house that their slum-lord of a landlord turned into a three-story house so he could turn the downstairs into two apartments instead of just one.

The outside staircase up to their door is all sorts of janky with narrow mismatched steps. It looks like something out of a treehouse.

Then they have windows that go all the way to the floor (since the conversion from two stories to three means the floor is artificially higher than it would otherwise be.)

Their bathroom is the size of a phone booth, with the ceiling over the toilet following the angle of the roof so that you have to tilt your entire head and torso sideways while you're going to the bathroom.

And their bed is basically a full size futon mattress.

The Menagerie

And if you know the girls, you know they have a bunch of extra roommates.

They're down to only five, which is actually an incredible improvement for them!

There's Mochii:

And Ashfur:

And Gemma and Noodle:

(And Littlefoot the bearded dragon who was not feeling photogenic, so we didn't take her out of her tank).

Mallrats

After the tour, the girls wanted to take Riley to the mall. Specifically the arcade there.

Ahlina had a pretty brilliant strategy for using the crane machine's claw to knock prizes into an ideal position before going in for the kill. So she won Riley a giant Kirby:

And she won me a bee!

And also we saw a gigantic version of Hungry Hungry Hippos:

Then we had lunch at Shake Shack, where the burgers were lightyears beyond the thin frozen patties of McDonald's and Burger King:

Take a Leap!

Next we went to Lover's Leap State Park, which is located on a site where a Native American community lived for more than 8,000 years due to the location's strategic elevation and the abundance of fish and game in the fertile valley of the Housatonic River.

There's a legend about an Indian princess named Lillinonah who canoed to her death into the "Great Falls" when her white lover did not return after visiting his people. But then upon his return he saw her in the rapids and leaped in after her in hopes of rescuing her, but ultimately jumped to his death.

Hence the name Lover's Leap. (Although the informational signage around the park said that the "Great Falls" are now about 14 feet below the surface of the river due to the construction of a dam.)

We decided to just stay on the bridge and not leap to our deaths:

And then, into the woods we went!

There were spotted lantern flies everywhere:

And also quartz and granite laying all over the place:

In some places it looked like it had just snowed or hailed. But also, all the leaves on the ground were shiny like it had just rained.

We noticed that every now and then we would feel what seemed like a raindrop, even though it was blue skies overhead.

Finally we realized it was sap falling from the trees!

There were some kind of stone ruins deep in the woods, but not really any well to tell what they might have once been. Military? Agricultural?

Labor Day?

After our hike, Taylor and Ahlina took us to work with them. Their boss offered them some hours on their off day, so they took them!

Clearly these dogs are not the bitey kind :)

Although one thing that DID bite was when Ahlina stopped to put gas in the car and then I immediately smelled gasoline fumes as she started the car again and we got on our way.

Anyway, we all got a laugh out of this guy at the gas station:

He pulled up a quarter mile farther than he needed to, and then had to stretch the pump hose to reach his tank.

Another inch or two forward and he would have been in violation of the "Do not leave pump unattended" rule!

Also, we saw this little piece of a rainbow:

Before we knew it, the sun had gone down and it was time to think about heading home :(

Riley and I said our goodbyes and got on our way a few minutes after 8:00pm, and we made good time until I missed a poorly marked turn due to road construction in New York.

My GPS rerouted me and I ended up having to get on the stupid George Washington bridge on the way home, which is whatever. Not my first choice, but at least we got home safely.

Meanwhile...

On Kevin's side, he had reached out to Joe a few days prior to let him know that Riley and I would be away and Sunday would be a good day to hang out.

Initially Joe had responded that he was booked and would be in Jersey all day, first having lunch with some family friends and then going to a rehearsal for an upcoming gig.

But then Saturday evening Joe reached out and asked Kevin if he'd have any interest in tagging along: Kevin had met Joe's friends Bobby and Mary Ann once before. And the rehearsal was at the house of Joe's friend Duc who is apparently a renaissance man with backgrounds in architecture, music, writing, philosophy, mixed martial arts, painting, and I can't even imagine what else.

So of course Kevin was keen to meet a guy like that :)

Here are two pictures he sent me after lunch:

And he said the rest of the afternoon and evening was a blast as well. He got to meet Duc and the rest of the band and page through one of Duc's books, and then he and Paula spent several hours conversing with Duc's wife Lynn.

Fortunately he made it home around 9:30pm to feed our very hungry cats well before Riley and rolled in at quarter after 11:00.

And that's the story of how we all ended up spending the last day of August out of state :)