Catching a snooze during the “good” times

We were going to leave Thursday night. We really were. We decided on Wednesday that we would probably be too tired (ie, too lazy to pack) and instead we would get up super early Friday and hit the road by 5am or so. That would do it……

We hit the road just after 7am for our approximately 400 mile trip from the beaches of Southern Rhode Island to the beaches of Bethany Beach in Delaware. Lesson number one, it takes a LOT longer to load the car and hit the road than it used to!

We took this trip to attend the wedding of our good friend Katie and her fiance Kevin. We take pride in our wedding attendance. We are blessed with a lot of lifelong friends, and we don’t miss weddings. At least one of us has made it to just about every one that we have been invited to. The birth of our son just 7 weeks ago and our move to Rhode Island wasn’t going to change that. We never even considered not going. But I’d be lying if I told you I still felt that way a couple of hours down I-95.

Our first stop was at a rest stop in Darien, Connecticut. It was probably two hours into our drive and it was time to feed and change Cam, walk Quinn and get some food for the adults. In our pre-baby life this stop would take ten minutes. 15 if we needed gas. On Friday morning, we spent almost 45 minutes trying to figure out how to make all of this happen. I made the mistake of mentioning to Sara that I felt like the stop wasn’t super efficient as we pulled out of the rest area. We started to fight about it until I realized I lacked the data about how long a stop like this SHOULD take. I try not to pick fights I can’t win, so I just turned up the radio as I realized I was probably just being a jerk.

New York City means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For the past year, all that New York City has been to me is a giant concrete obstacle that prevents me from getting to where I need to go in a reasonable amount of time. When we first moved to Rhode Island we even went so far as to literally go (way) out of our way to avoid going through New York City. Since then we’ve rolled the dice, and have rarely come out winners. Too lazy to fully investigate a better route, I just plow towards the George Washington Bridge and that is where the fun really begins.

It is important to note that the best passenger in our car is our dog Quinn. He’s a super chill dog who is just happy to be along for the ride. A stealth passenger. I’m OK, but can have some PTSD in heavy traffic. This is mostly due to the occasional flashback to the many wasted hours during my six year commute from Baltimore to Washington. I’m not above punching the steering wheel or randomly screaming for example. Sara is the optimist. Always. The sign that says it will take two hours to go the six miles over the bridge? That MUST be leftover from rush hour. The MapQuest app on her iPhone is her best friend. When she starts to lose it, we are doomed. More on that later. The wildcard is young Cameron. This trip was his first trip out of Rhode Island, and our first drive that would require feedings or changing along the way. What I learned from this trip is that Cam is a lot like the bus in the movie Speed, if you are going over 50 miles an hour he’s fine. Sound asleep. Once you drop below that, he explodes. So to speak.

Which brings us to our first “issue” of the trip. The slow grind of getting across the GW bridge is bad enough. People merging on top of you from every direction and a max speed around 15 mph for 90 minutes will wear down even the most seasoned traveler. Do all of that to the soundtrack of a screaming baby and you start looking for excuses to just turn around. Sara saved the day (as usual) and essentially jumped over the passenger seat to feed him in his seat long enough for us to slowly make our way across the bridge quietly. It was secret service level protection. Our reward for holding it all together? New Jersey. Terrific.

With apologies to my friends from the Garden State, as far as I am concerned New Jersey has only two things going for it. The first Roy Rogers rest stop on the Turnpike and the second Roy Rogers rest stop on the Turnpike. That’s it. No matter when you drive the New Jersey Turnpike there will be a backup from Exit 8A to Exit 7. That area on the turnpike just ruins whatever pace you thought you were still on after getting through NYC. What’s worse? That area is just five miles from that first Roy Rogers rest stop going south. Making my well-deserved reunion with a Double-R-Bar and a holster of fries elusive. Being late for a wedding weekend is one thing. Withholding Roy’s is just cruel.

Stop number two didn’t go any better than stop number one. As we started doing the math on how long it had been since Cam had pooped and if we should be concerned, it turns out he had pretty much pooped through his entire outfit. Making for a more complicated, and now indoor, change. I let Sara take the reigns (I mean he pooped THROUGH his clothes) and walked Quinn and waited. Cam was clean but now needed to eat. Another inefficient stop I thought to myself. And foolishly repeated it out loud when we were finally back on the road around 2:30pm. I had learned nothing in the last five hours. I still had no supporting data, but 45 minutes at each stop was just killing me! Amazingly, despite a 7am departure, our 6:30p rehearsal dinner plans were now in serious jeopardy.

Bethany Beach is about 100 miles from the Delaware Memorial Bridge at the end of NJ Turnpike. That is the good news. The end was within a manageable distance. The bad news is it is a slow 100 miles. Lots of lights, and the lower speeds were beginning to wake the Cam monster. The last two hours of our trip were by far the worst. We couldn’t go 10 minutes without Cam losing his marbles. Around 3:30pm, we pretty much had gone off the rails as a family. This required extra stops at various Royal Farms and Wawa’s for snacks, feedings, diaper changes and general marriage counseling (caffeine for her, Wawa soft pretzels for me). Sara was broken with about half an hour to go. She was starting to feel ill from riding backwards in the car half the time and was frustrated by the results. Morale in the car was at an all-time low. It seemed impossible that we had been on the road for 10 hours, but we had. We pulled into the driveway of my house at about 5:10pm, exhausted, and with about an hour to get ready and give my father-in-law (Cam’s weekend babysitter) instructions on how to survive for about 5 hours. We had made it, but it wasn’t pretty.

As we expected, the weekend was well worth the travel. We got to see so many great friends that we’ve missed so much this year. The wedding was beautiful and the weather was awesome all weekend. A reward for that terribly long winter. We had so much fun that our 10 hour drive was now a distant memory. Unfortunately we had to make the same drive back on Sunday. I won’t bore you with those details, but lets just say it went better. We even made some progress on the way back, as it only took us 9 hours and 15 minutes to get home!

Because we hate ourselves, we will barely unpack before we trade in our 19.5 hour car journey for a cross country flight to Vegas on Wednesday. Changing planes in Chicago, the whole nine yards. I’ve never been so afraid to go spend four days in Las Vegas!