Brant's sister, Maren, was coming out to visit us. She was flying into JFK in NYC. We needed to get down there ASAP to greet her with TLC. Before the CIA or the FBI found out. (OK. Sorry about that. It's late.)
Before we left the Cape to head out to pick her up, though, we had to send off a package from FedEx. We tailed a FedEx truck on it's way back to the station, calling yellow lights green. We got to the station, and following directions given to us by the nicest FedEx delivery guy, took our package directly to the loading area in the back.
We were stopped by a FedEx Nazi.
Surely in her late 60s, the lady growled at us, told us we were too late, ripped the package out of my hands and disappeared into the warehouse. If we'd have thrown water on her she would have melted.
We needed someone to throw water on us badly. As in the hot kind that comes out of a showerhead. So we headed to a State Park campground in Sandwich, just off the Cape. The showers were wonderful. The campground was huge. The rain fell in the darkness, lulling all the campers to sleep. Until, around 1:00am, the alarm on our truck started going nuts.
We scrambled awake and I grabbed my keys and pushed the alarm off button. The electronic screaming stopped. And then started again immediately. This was a horrible tragedy...everyone in the entire campground must have been forming a lynching party to come and kill us. Brant grabbed his alarm clicker, where the little red light was brightly burning on, oblivous to his pressing the buttons. So I stood at the helm, pushing the off button, while the alarm kept coming back on. Brant fumbled with a screwdriver on the nearby Leatherman, but of course the head was too large. Finally he ripped the clicker off the key chain, threw open the camper door, and flung the little black devil as far into the forest as possible.
Thank goodness it was far enough. The beeping stopped. And we made sure to leave early in the morning before the rest of the campers came over to beat us senseless.
We drove that day into New York. The traffic was there to greet us. A guy in a red van pulled up next to us in Queens in the stop and go and asked us if we were Road Rules from MTV. He said he checked out our website on his laptop while he was driving. (Or crawling, as the case was.) We drove past the New York Times press and Shea Stadium. We made it through the maze of JFK to long term parking, which we had planned on as being home for the next few days.
Maren's flight was delayed, so we ended up spending some extra time in the airport. And it so happened that they close all of the terminals at night, so there is no where to sit, and you have to wait in the baggage claim area on the cold tile floor. We were equipped with backgammon for the wait and experimented with several contortionist moves to balance the board awkwardly between us before we found a patch of clean carpet behind a newly constructed service booth. We hopped the counter and settled in on the floor among the fresh sawdust and navy blue loop carpet.
Then there was a hi-jacking at the airport. That increased the delay a bit.
A backgammon junkie turned limo driver who was also waiting for an arrival spotted us behind the counter and claimed next game. He told us that he used to play for money all the time. He had once won a car over a backgammon game. While he taught Brant all sorts of variations, I rested my head in one of the cupboards in search of shelter from the harsh flourescent bulbs and napped. Then the flight arrived, at around 2:30am.
The doors to the baggage claim area flooded with weary travelers. Then the rotary gate was passed by flight attendants. But no Maren.
We checked our voicemail, and there was a message from her, calling from the terminal we were unable to get to, wondering where we were. We figured eventually she'd have to come down, as every airport official assured us that it was the only way out. And eventually she did.
Well, upon return to the camper, the fridge had stopped working. With food prepared to spoil and sleep at this point seeming foolish, we started to drive out towards the nearest Camping World to get the fridge fixed in the morning. The nearest Camping World was 150 miles away in New Jersey. The traffic was gone, which was great. The road we took, however, had increasingly lower underpasses, until finally one sign declared 10'10"...Maren spotted it and I stepped on the brakes a little more than gingerly. (Note: our rig has a clearance of 12'2" with the antennas.) We crossed into the empty fast lane at the apex of the bridge and squeezed under. Granted, we were going a bit slower than the minimum speed on the expressway. When we made it to the bridge we had to cross into New Jersey, the toll guy informed us that of course there was a height restrictions on the expressways! Silly us. But, keep in mind we are the same idiots that thought it was OK to drive a camper through a tunnel in Massachusetts, so our ignorance really isn't all that surprising.
The bridge toll cost $13. It dumped us out onto the New Jersey Turnpike. Which cost $3.00 every 10 miles or so. Not a very cheap way to travel. We hoped that New Jersians taxes were low, since the funds definitely weren't going towards the roads. We stopped to nap for a few hours at a turnpike rest stop, then got up to head on to Camping World. When we got there, the fridge was working again. Which was a mixed blessing, since we were glad we didn't have to pay to repair the fridge but bummed that we had just driven four hours for nothing.
From the unneeded Camping World stop, we drove another 30 miles or so to get to Atlantic City. Our visit there, in brief, consisted of a blade along the boardwalk, brief trips into the casinos (a shadow of Las Vegas), and a stop at a candy store that had been there since the first nails went into the planks. The most memorable thing was a nightclub duo of pianists, who could have been the twin brothers of Richard Simmons in his "Sweatin' to the Oldies" days. Their names were Tim and Lynn, or Mark and Clark, or Mike and Dyke, or something like that. We moved on from Atlantic City on a slow trek northward back up to New York.
