wheeeeeeeeeee
on the road to happiness
cold






OUR TRIP IN TEXT, SO FAR:

FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2006

Here we are at the KOA (#1 FOR GOOD CLEAN FUN) in Fredericksburg, VA, famous for its blood-soaked Civil War battlegrounds.

I am so freakin tired. The day before we left I either a) broke my foot or b) ruptured muscles therein. Back when I worked at the library I broke the same foot.



So I'm gimping around various "Service Areas" off the NJ Turnpike. Did I mention I was tired?



And what's with this weather? It snowed--SNOWED--in Raleigh NC, yesterday, which is where we hoped to be tonight. It's 26 degrees here in Virginia! HAH!

We barely made it out of our snow-filled icy driveway. We slid down Brook St., nearly crashing through the guard rail & into the brook--6 tons of trailer pushing us forward to certain disaster. We stopped, but the back wheels ended up in a snow bank. Eric got out & started shoveling, grimly determined that no punk Woostah snow was standing between him and his "sabbatical". I was sitting in the truck, trying to keep warm (I had been directed the whole moving the beast operation outside with a walkie-talkie), when a pickup with a snow plow on it came towards us. I leaped out of the truck, ready to throw myself into its path if necessary.

The two VERY NICE young men, refusing money (I had a $50 bill clutched in my frozen palm), cleared off the rest of McCarthy Ave. & sprinkled it with sand. (Meanwhile, we're blocking traffic from *both* directions.) GAH!

Yesterday, after our late start we ended up at this RV park in the middle of a field in the aptly named burg of Pilesgrove, New Jersey. "Our large rally area will accomodate 100 units in lovely grassy surroundings." Mind you, it was dark. We drove down a potholed dirt road to a UFO landing spot in the middle of the "grassy surroundings". It was cold, but the stars and the crescent moon were beautiful. (No UFOs spotted, dammit.)

Did I mention that a little old lady in a car drove towards us as Eric was peeling a piece of paper with our site number & directions off the office window? She pulled alongside us; Eric rolled down the window; she rolled down her window. She said something like "...getting here this late!" (It was 8:15 p.m.) We thought she was another camper, so Eric waved our map and said, "I have this paper, here." She gaily waved one back at us and said, "I have one, too!"

Now, wouldn't you assume from that, that she was another camper...turned out (to make an already long story shorter) she was one of the managers & her idea of showing us our spot was for Eric to get in the car with her while she drove there. The red tail lights winked away into the darkness as I sat in the dark truck with Mei-Li. You could have heard the crickets screeching like pterodactyls except that it was too freakin cold for them.

OK, enough of Pilesgrove. We shall bid it farewell. In the morning, as we drove away, we saw the empty acres of farmland that we had felt our way through the night before. This must be the "garden" part of the "Garden State", no?

Back to Route 95 South. Dreading the 100+ mile-long parking lot that is the commute from Baltimore-DC-Richmond...sure enough, we sat in it for HOURS. Two traffic accidents within a few miles of each other didn't helped. (No fatalities that we know of...) Driving, driving, getting dark. We're not going to make our original (well, our second "original" destination by now) destination of Petersburg, Virginia (the REAL original destination was near Raleigh, North Carolina. HAH!), I suggested we choose an RV park near Fredericksburg instead (before Richmond, rather than after).

Eric wasn't too keen on this idea, but he acquiesced after more sitting in traffic in the dark, with no end of tail lights in sight...Yay! I had been growing a big case of the irrits by this point!

grrrrrrrrrr

bumping along, the dog in my lap or trying to climb there from the back, teeth rattling in our skulls, the RPMs climbing as the road inclined. at one point, a bucket left in the bed of the truck by *someone* (not me!) was being tossed around like a balloon and was last seen heading north through the air over route 95...

Service Area Food, Part One:
yuck
puke



ick



barf

AVOID ROY ROGERS! biscuits like hockey pucks, fried "chicken" that is mostly hard greasy batter, "salad" of browning iceberg lettuce and anemic "tomatoes". baked beans with unidentifiable food (i'm assuming) chunks mixed in with the innocent beans...

...our only salvation was the little purple "TV B-Gone" device I ordered from the Internet... heeeeeeee



I never thought I'd look upon Burger King as Haute Cuisine, but the freshly grilled Veggie Burger, hot crispy fries and cold orange juice were positively divine after the swill of yesterday. Eric dined on a Personal Pan Pizza from Pizza Hut, which was keeping itself warm under the lights--just for him.

...bought a cheezy Maryland refrigerator magnet to go with my other cheezy magnets...

Must Find Wal-Mart or Other Low-Priced Everything-Store Run by Corporate Pimps.

LIST:
deodorant
white briefs
canned dog food
9-volt battery
retractable clothesline
alcoholic beverages
cookies
clothes hangers that won't fall out of the slots everytime the trailer hits a bump
a large supply of vicodin or other narcotic substance
Pop Tarts

i have gas. it's the crap we ate. the bedsheets are freezing. i left my electric blanket at home. the satellite TV reception is poor because of the trees surrounding (how dare they!) this park (Nope, No Roughing It For These Adventurers). i'm cold. my foot looks deformed. i want some chocolate. I want to be warm. gimme some some good prescription drugs. something.

I miss Whisky, our cat. Poor thing is traumatized by being dumped off at a stranger's house (my cousin) house which is already home to 3 cats, a hyperactive dog, 5 love birds and 2 lorries, one of whom (Gracie) is an attack bird and likes to hide in the bathroom, ready to eat the feet of unwary toilet-sitters. The dog (a neutered male) humps the 2 (also neutered) male cats. The female cat never left the basement until Whisky joined the menagerie. Now she's glued to my cousin's side. I called my cousin yesterday and she took the phone down to the basement (where he's been hiding) so I could hear the way he yowls when she comes near. omigod.

Tonight, when the anxious mommy called, my cousin had progressed enough to pat him on the head once or twice. By the time we get the poor thing back, he'll need weeks of therapy and prozac to return to the affectionate, calm cat we knew...

crapola

So, how many more miles till we're in Florida? Eric??

---------------------------------------END OF DAY 1 & 2------------------------------------

i hope you're all doing well!!