In Eli We Trust

“Caution: mountain weather changes rapidly.” If you spend enough time perusing any National Park Service webpage you’re bound to come across this warning. I know what it usually means – that storm you see way off in the distance will be on you much sooner than you think and it will be more severe than you expect, so be prepared. In general, I do come prepared for such eventualities, entering parks with a full tank of gas, an emergency blanket (Thanks, Zach’s Bar Mitzvah), something to start a fire, and enough food to last the rest of my trip. But there’s one thing that I have never brought and today it finally came back to bite me: A backup plan.

On the Road Again

I have bad news and good news. The bad news: I appear to have grabbed the wrong AC adapter for my computer and for the moment I have no way to charge it once I use up the remaining 72% of the battery. It looks like I took the adapter from my old computer (you remember the old computer – that’s the one that died in the middle of Utah last summer. It’s the gift that just keeps on giving). Fortunately there also appears to be good news about the bad news: There’s a Best Buy about 20 miles down the road from the middle of Shenandoah National Park and that store purports to carry all manner of AC-adaptive thingers. So my new plan for tomorrow includes getting up a little earlier, doing the first half of the park as scheduled, then taking a 20-mile detour to Harrisonburg, VA before getting back on Skyline Drive and finishing the park in time to get to Blackrock Mountain by sunset. The most disappointing thing about this mistake is that it will certainly introduce more stress into tomorrow morning, much like my quest last summer to “do” Crater Lake one morning and get to a camera store before it closed that evening.

The real good news is that I successfully spent the afternoon in Gettysburg and then made it to world-famous (or not) Front Royal, Virginia without getting a speeding ticket (more on why that’s significant another time).

For I Must Be Traveling On Now

In the immortal words of The Lion King’s Rafiki, “It is time.”

Six months to the day since crossing the Delaware Water Gap and retuning To New Jersey after my 11,000-mile journey west, I again stand upon the precipice of another grand Elantra adventure. Granted, this precipice is not quite as steep, nor is the adventure quite as grand, but it is perhaps more necessary.

For schools in New England, the week of President’s Day is known as February Vacation – a 10-day school recess coming after the post-New Year depression and before the furious 6 weeks of instruction leading to April Vacation and which includes the first rounds of MCAS testing. As Gandalf would say, it is the deep breath before the plunge. Knowing that this would be coming, and suffering from premature cabin fever after last summer’s travels, I began contemplating plans for February Vacation in October. It was never a question of if I would be going somewhere; it was a question of where I’d be going.

The Threads of An Old Life

What a long strange trip it’s been. Over the past 36 hours things have changed drastically as I’ve been plunged headfirst back into the real world. In some ways it feels like I’ve been on the road for years and today marks the beginning of a new life. In other ways it feels like I climbed through the wardrobe into Narnia and while I’ve lived a lifetime in another world, only minutes have passed back here in reality. But to top it off, today I experienced a new phenomenon that really signals the end of the summer – stress.

I’m Not Dead Yet

The reports of my and my blog’s death have been greatly exaggerated. I know I haven’t posted in a few days even after promising that I would, but the truth is that, even though I’ve been plenty busy gallivanting around central New Jersey over the past few days, there just isn’t as much notable stuff to write interestingly about now that my trip is pretty much over.

On Thursday, my sister and parents took me to Joe’s Crab Shack for my birthday dinner. I’d only been to one Joe’s Crab Shack before – an experience which I’ll never be able to completely replicate, since that restaurant now sits at the bottom of Galveston Bay thanks to a hurricane. This time, it involved a big pot of shellfish and a certain person being forced to do a hula dance against his will all because he was fortunate enough to survive 27 years without dying. There may be pictures of that, but they won’t be appearing here. Sorry. But not very sorry.

Coming Home To My People, To the Place Where I Began

Oh, the irony! Naming a post after a song about the struggle for freedom among Soviet Jews in the context of an 11,000-mile journey across the Land of Liberty? Well, I’m doing it anyway. Maybe the juxtaposition of those two images creates a deeper meaning or something. You decide. I drove all day, so I’m too tired.

When I reached the Delaware Water Gap and my trip odometer eclipsed 11,000 miles, I realized that this was the first stretch of road on this whole adventure that I recognized from having driven it once before. Up to this point, everything had been new, even on the return journey, since I took I-70 west and I-80 and 90 back east.

Some magical things tend to happen when you cross into the New York / New Jersey / Connecticut tri-state area. As if flicking a light switch, traffic often comes to an immediate standstill just over any of the borders, for no clear reason. Drivers abruptly change from benign Pennsylvania driving habits to a strong-willed confident New Jersey mindset (and you also tend to encounter more assholes – they’re almost always from New York). People from other parts of the country complain that New Jersey drivers are the nation’s worst, but those people couldn’t be more wrong. The problem is that we all know where we’re going and how to obey the unwritten rules of the road, and you out-of-state critics just can’t keep up with us. To be able to navigate the most complicated network of interstate highways in the country, New Jersey drivers are definitely some of the best of any state.

Long May You Run

Sitting east of Cleveland, a mere 450 miles from my parents’ house in New Jersey, I feel it’s time to pay homage to the true unsung hero of this trip. Over the last 37 days, she’s acted as my closet, my bedroom, my kitchen / dining room, my power supply, my home, and my transportation, She’s been my travel companion, there every step of the way, doing everything I’ve asked of her and not complaining or putting up any resistance whatsoever. She goes by many names. At times I’ve called her the Horse with No Name, the Hyundai, or just simply – the car.

Come On, Babe, We’re Gonna Paint the Town

The route I had planned out yesterday developed a hitch almost from the very beginning. The plan was for me to gradually make my way north towards Wrigley Field in the morning / early afternoon, and then slowly come back south in the evening. To that end, I was going to do a quick drive-by at the Adler Planetarium first, because it has great views of the city skyline (I do happen to like planetariums too, but I wasn’t in the mood for a museum).

This Is The Last Stop

This is it. Although I have one more major day of stuff to do tomorrow, it really feels like I’m on final approach. Back in Central Time, I’ve only been through blue states since lunchtime, and I crossed back over the Mississippi River this afternoon.

I’ve been trying to take pictures of all the welcome signs as I enter each state.

But after Minnesota and Wisconsin today, when I reached for my camera as I approached Illinois, I realized that I’ve already been here since I’ve been gone. In fact, all the rest of the states I’ll be going through (Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) I’ve already passed through once before. But fear not! There was no sense of an impending end to the trip today – I had too much to do.

The Still, Small Voice

I always look forward to staffing Hebrew School retreats. It’s partially because I have a great time taking off my teacher hat, putting on my counselor hat, and interacting with my kids on a more social level where my only objective is for them to have fun. But it’s also because in seeing my kids interact with each other as peers, rather than classmates, I find inspiration.