Road Trip

I left work early Friday, 2:30 to be exact, to try and miss the rush hour traffic. My car was packed and I was ready to hit the road. I was sailing, free and clear of any traffic on the Southern State and even the Cross Island. I was psyched to be getting over the Throgs neck bridge at only 3:15, completely psyched, until...bam! As soon as I crossed the bridge I came to a dead stop. I haven't even made it to the Cross Bronx yet. Now if you're unfamiliar, there's only about a half mile between the Throgs Neck and the Cross Bronx. Dead stopped. I thought, alright, maybe we're merging into one lane, you know, road work or something. Boy was I wrong. I came to find out, through trusty 1010 wins, that there had been a huge accident involving a tractor trailer on the upper level of the George Washington Bridge, exactly where I was headed. All lanes were shut down. Seeing as I had no alternate route, my only option at the point was to wait it out. To my surprise, my wait turned into a 2 hour ordeal. I wish I were exaggerating at this point, but seriously, 2 hours might be cutting it shy of how long I waited. Stopped. In 90+ heat, surrounded by heat emitting 18 wheelers, for more than 2 hours. After a half hour or so I decided to give the a/c a rest and open up the windows. Gross. It was horribly hot, sticky, and uncomfy. I alternated a/c and windows down for the rest of the time. Rolling up the windows to chat to friends on my cell, and rolling down the windows to assure myself that I would not overheat and be stuck in the Bronx for what seemed like it could be forever. My moral was kept high by the 10 mixed cd's I had burned for the trip. Good tunes for wiggling my shoulders to. Even though my car was in drive the entire time (I was really planning on moving), I decided that I would start knitting. Of course, I was half way through a row when, alas, we did start moving. I hate stopping mid-row. If you knit, you know why. If not, lets just say it's a recipe for disaster. A few things that kept me smiling through the whole 2 hour ordeal was:

~phone calls from happy people that weren't sharing in my traffic woes.
~watching stupid men in oversized white tee shirts sell bottles of Poland spring water to potential heat stroke suffering commuters for 5 bucks a bottle.
~music including The Weakerthans (my favorite), Pibald, and Badly Drawn Boy
~Crasins trail mix (crasins, peanuts, chocolate chips, and other yummy, not very healthy things)

Onward.

Seeing as it was 5:30 by the time I started moving, I hit some other spots of stop and go traffic between the George Washington Bridge and Pennsylvania, but after that it was pretty much smooth sailing. I-80 is very very long. Let me emphasize this. I-80 is 310 miles long. It starts at exit 310 I had to go to exit 4. Overall, the ride down 80 was ok. I stopped at exit 185 Logonton (where I stopped the last time I drove out in February), got a coffee drink, some chex mix and gas, and used the ladies room. It started getting dark, and for the rest of the way I was very cautious of deer while maintaining a speed of around 80 mph (had to make up for lost time). I was finally off 80 and on 60 south when I witnessed something extraordinary. The moon was rising behind me, and it was gigantic. I've never seen a moon so full and so huge in my life. It was incredible, and it made me smile for the rest of my half hour drive.

I arrived in Beaver Falls (my destination) at 11:30 pm. 9 hours after I had set off on my journey (last time it took me 6.5)!!! Needless to say I was exhausted. But not too exhausted to go out. I cleaned up real quick and we were off to a bar called the Pittsburgh Pint and Platter. I had barely eaten anything all day, so one Heiniken and I was pretty much set. I had another, then a pint of Guinness, and I was super set. I played darts with my bro like I was a pro. Won every game. I'm so good at darts when I'm drunk. I have pics of the score board (I'm player 2).

The bars close at 2am, so that's when we left. I was begging my brother to play Sunday Morning by Maroon Five, like the last time I came to visit, but he said since he got XM radio, he doesn't have cd's in his car anymore. What's up with that. I was very disappointed. Then, something magic happened. We accompanied a bunch of people to this place called Eatin Park. It's essentially a diner, but more corporate and pretty. We walked in, and guess what was playing? SUNDAY MORNING!! How weird. I was pumped! I had toast, dry, which I turned into a ketchup sandwich. Yum. We were home by 3:30 and I was tucked away on the leather couch, ready for slumber by 4.

I woke up at 9. I couldn't sleep. It was a combination of the leather and dehydration that got me up so early. My bro had to go work in the tower (he's going to school to be an air traffic controller) from 10 to 12, so I was alone in his apartment until then. I put on the movie Rounders tried to knit a little, then decided that his apartment was a little too dusty for my taste, so I did what any nice sister would do and cleaned. He came home and I decided I should take a shower and get the day going. That's when I noticed I had forgot to pack conditioner for my hair. Let's just say that long hair needs to be conditioned, so I think I lost about half of my hair just trying to get a brush through it. I did learn something though. Apparently, when I don't condition, my hair gets curly. It was new and exciting, but I figured one more day without conditioner I might go bald, so we headed to good ol' Walmart to buy some. I made the greatest discovery at Walmart. Energizer E2 Lithium batteries. AA. My (my mom's) digital camera eats batteries. I can maybe shoot 25 pics on 2 regular AA batteries. It sucks. These Energizer batteries rule. I've shot over 300 photos and they are still fully charged. It's incredible. I bought 8 and I'm still on the first 2. Yay! I win. Then the fun started.

My bro took me on a drive through this park that's ginormous. So much nature I didn't know what to do with myself. So beautiful. Granted, we stayed in the car the entire time (my brother isn't much of the nature enthusiast), but it was still sooo wonderful. We even passed by a farm


or two. Good fun. I would have more pics, but my bro insists upon driving 50 in a 35 around winding, one lane roads, so I spent most of my time hanging on for dear life.

Finally at around 4, we decided to take a trip down to Pittsburgh and to a place called the Waterfront. It's basically like an outside shopping mall. We browsed through a few stores, I bought some jeans and a shirt, then we decided to eat. We went to a place called Mitchell's Fish Market.

It was delicious! I had Talapia (my favorite fish) and, of course, a Guinness. Soooo yum. It was beginning to get dark by the time we were finished eating and we were both way too stuffed to be motivated to do anything else, so we journeyed home. I fell asleep in the car, and when we finally got back to Beaver Falls it was 9:30. I requested that I take an hour nap and then we'd get up and go out, but you know that that never happened. I slept all through the night until 10 am Sunday morning. I'm a loser, what can I say.

Sunday we sat around all morning/afternoon until around 2 when we decided to go down to some other town to watch a movie. We got there way to early because the movie didn't start til 4:30. It was Corporate hell. Walmart, Best Buy, Lowes, Staples, Circuit City, Toy's R Us, McDonalds, to name a few, all within a 1 mile radius. Madness. We stopped in Toy's R Us, and I bought myself a backgammon board.

Not quite the one I wanted, but it will suffice. While on line to make my purchase my brother noticed a sign that said "if we don't ask you if you need batteries, a free pepsi on us" (something along those lines at least). So I bought my backgammon board, and the check out girl asked me if I would be needing batteries. I thought that was pretty funny. Then, I decided something would be funnier. I begged my bro to go back inside and buy batteries, just batteries, and see if the girl asked him if he needed batteries. He didn't do it because he didn't need any batteries, and seeing as I had bought 8 of those super duper lithium batteries, I had no need for them either. So the inside joke between us since that moment is "will you be needing any batteries with those batteries". What can I say, that's why it's an inside joke, we have dozens of them.

We decided to see Wedding Crashers, and it was not a bad decision. Very funny. The best part was when the credits rolled and the music was The Weakerthans "Aside". That song is well over 5 years old, and nobody knows about the Weakerthans!!! Damn, I love them. I was pumped to hear them in the theatre. Good stuff.

We headed back towards Beaver Falls, but decided to take a detour to go to a tourist spot on the River for some dinner (what river? I don't know. My brother didn't know, I didn't ask). I had a Cod Sandwich. It was gross. It was a nice ambiance though. We sat out on the deck over the river and the view was pretty. There were gigantic fish swimming below us, I guess maybe that's why I didn't like the cod.

After eating we went back to his apartment and watched Anchor Man. It's pretty funny, I don't see why nobody really likes it, I think it was alright. At around 10:30 we decide to go have a beer and shoot some darts at "The Platter" again. This time I was sober, and lost. Very badly. I don't have pics of that, obviously. We were home by midnight seeing as I had a very long drive ahead of me. I was asleep by 1am.

I woke up at 9am Monday morning, showered, and was ready to leave by 11. I tried getting my brother out of bed quite a few times, but I could only get him up for the 3 minutes it took him to help me carry a few things down to my car. I was on the road by 11:15. Took tons of pics on my way home. It was a pretty good drive...but the best part was to come...

I'll leave the rest to your imagination. I'm tired. Goodnight.