We finally left Stamford, after a day and a half at Kinko's, the non-delivery of an expected package, camping first in a suburban neighborhood and second in the Kinko's parking lot, and the general mourning of Jeff absence.
We left at 6:30am on Thursday to the music of a leaf blower and the complaints of the leaf blower operator cursing our presence in his parking lot. We quickly vacated to avoid prosecution and began the journey towards Billy's house...the white one.
Halfway there, as we crossed the border into Delaware, the first state, the phone beeped with a voicemail. We checked. It was Jeff. We cried.
The phone rang shortly thereafter. It was B's dad, with a tiny request. In the middle of a big contract job back home, they were having a slight problem with delivery of the frames—a rather integral part of any construction project. The frames manufacturer just happened to be in Farmingdale, New York. Which was 170 miles from our current destination of Newark, Delaware. Which was a heck of a lot closer than Fresno, California (location of said construction project). So we stayed our trip to D.C. with a stopover in Newark and a rental-car trip into Farmingdale later, the delivery of frames was secured and we were free to move on to the nation's capitol.
Loaded up to go to Kinko's
During the Newark pause, though, we discovered a few new uses for Kinko's. On the morning of the trip into Farmindale, B found the 24-hour bathroom a great substitute for a quickie shower (we were out of water in our rig). When he returned that evening, we were invited to fill up our water tank from the Kinko's backdoor faucet. Kinko's had, once again, proved itself even more useful than we had previously thought.
We headed into the college town on bikes before heading out of Newark. At a bagel stop, there was a next-door sidewalk sale of videos. Upon encouragement from the eager peddler, we searched the boxes for the Prince movies—Purple Rain, Graffiti Bridge, Under the Cherry Moon—but to no avail. Ah well. Win some, lose some.
We pulled out of the vacant Pizza Hut parking lot that had served as home-across-from-Kinko's on Saturday morning and made it into our capitol campground in Maryland late Sunday afternoon. (The day lost was due to the horrific traffic funneling like thick honey down the main vein highway to the beach for the weekend. Note to east coast travelers: Do not drive towards the beach on the weekend lest you be forced to travel in your vehicle at speeds that you could easily exceed with nothing more than a pair of comfy sneaks. We had time to go grocery shopping and get hair cuts in the span of one city block.)
The campground was more like a resort than anything else. Equipped with two pools, spa, sauna, laundry, game room, square dance lessons, miniature golf, underwater basket weaving and liquid soap carving classes...plus full hook-ups, what more could you ask for? (Of course, being full-blown vacation season, there were lots of people enjoying this resort, but we're not complaining.) Plus it was cheaper than the dump parking lot in Jersey City and the folks there actually knew what service was. We got the passes we needed to take the Metro into D.C. and prepared for a day at the Capitol.
