Monday, August 7th, 2011: “Day 1: New York”
After months of anticipation and planning, the day had arrived! It was August 7th, 2011 and the plan was to leave at 6AM Sunday morning to avoid any type of traffic and get to Cleveland, Ohio by 2PM (see my previous post for our ideal itinerary). Only one problem: we were having car trouble with the “Beast,” otherwise known as my 2006 Volkswagen Jetta, the four door sedan that we would be lugging 3,000+ miles across the country with 25 years of my life packed in the trunk.
It wasn’t the engine. It wasn’t the transmission. Of all things, the windshield wipers weren’t working! After a week of frustration, the dealership in Lynbrook had promised that the car would be ready to go by the previous Friday morning. Lo and behold, Friday rolls around and I get a call informing me that the car wouldn’t be ready until Monday morning, which basically threw everything off schedule. Months of planning and Brian Apurado’s infamous Excel spreadsheet would have to be altered in order to deal with what we thought was a “minor problem.”
At 8AM sharp on Monday, I give the dealership a call and I am now told that the car won’t be ready until late afternoon. UGH! Anxious and not willing to lose a minute of our cross country adventure, I scoop up my two travel buddies - Brian and Clinton Panday - from their respective houses in Jamaica Estates and Elmhurst, Queens, and hit up Auto Zone to pick up all of the essentials: a liter of oil, a protective sun screen for my windshield and most importantly, a Tinkerbell decal (a strategic decision that would ward off any potential thefts - who would want to steal from a little girl? Plus, it added a lot of character!). The plan was to be ready to hit the road shortly after picking up the Jetta.
We finish some last minute shopping at the nearest Duane Reade and eagerly await the call. At about 4:58 PM, we are greeted with more frustration! It turned out that they were “working on the car all day,” but only finally found out how to fix the problem two minutes before the shop closed. How strangely convenient for them.
At this point, we were considering taking the car across the country without working windshield wipers since we were so annoyed that this Jetta drama had prolonged for days and days. When we were on the way to pick it up, we get a call from the store manager, who said that the car was “in pieces” and we wouldn’t be able to drive it at all. After a series of expletives and kicked holes in the wall, we decide to make the most of the night, so Day 1 of our road trip is spent in… New York!
We decided that the best way to spend our “final, final” night was in a massage chair in Flushing, Queens. One hour for $25 (sans the happy ending)… we’ll take it! 60 awesome minutes later, we headed down the street to Joe Shanghai’s, home of some of the best soup dumplings on this side of the coast (see image above).
After we demolished about seven orders of dumplings split amongst five people, we loaded up on booze and head back to Franklin Square, LI for an exciting game of Quelf - quite possibly the weirdest yet most entertaining game in the world. Thank you, Justin Wong, for stealing all of our dignity. A few ridiculous pictures and several drinks later, we pass out in the living room “high school summer style” while watching the cult classic “Blank Man.”
Whether or not we would kick off our road trip the next day was still a lingering question mark. A week later, we found out that there was good reason for us not leaving that Monday. “Day 1” in the books.
Pictures from Day 1 of our cross country road trip can be found here:
August 2011: Road Trip - Day 1 & 2 - NY, NJ, Pennsylvania, Ohio
