It didn’t let us go as easily as it let us in. When we looked at our bus tickets late Sunday night we realized they read “departing 4:45 a.m.”. Not p.m.

Too smitten with New York to be alarmed, we just called and made sure we could change them in the morning, and we could, so we spent the morning wandering shops and having a nice brunch at the Longwood Gourmet across from our hotel (thanks Priceline, for the $90 a night reservations). Then, starving-transient-student style, we clipped on our huge packs and gear and walked from Lexington and 48th to Port Authority at 8th and 42nd where we caught the 2 o’clock out to New England.

But we didn’t get very far. The bus stalled in the middle of the road not far from the station, and after about half and hour of communications between the driver and dispatch, he got the bus running enough to get us safely back to the station, and then we waited. And waited. An hour later, we were boarding again and headed out.

The rest of the day didn’t go much smoother. When we finally got in to pick up the kids, we couldn’t fit all their new Christmas stuff in the car, so we stopped to find a roof rack bag, found one, then remembered.. oh yeah, we have no roof rack. So the next hour was spent in the parking lot, rigging this ridiculous thing onto the roof with a set of straps and clamps and now we look like the Griswold’s Christmas Vacation touring through the countryside.

After we were confident that bag wasn’t going anywhere, we went and fixed the hey, why is the car pulling to the left? problem and put air in the floppy front left tire. Then we were on the road again.

About twenty or thirty miles later Shane had the laptop out while I drove, looking for hotels with laundry rooms so we could have clean clothes in the morning. He found one, and when he went to make the reservation, we realized my camera bag - which included my driver’s license, debit cards, various other valuables and my camera was still sitting on the bench back at the restaurant where we grabbed some dinner. This sparked a full-scale, 4-person panic attack as we spun around and screamed/hyperventilated in chorus all the way back to Warwick, calling the restaurant on the way to find they were closed.

Finally, I got security to go look and they found it, met us outside with it, everything was there, nothing missing. We all sat and breathed a huge sigh of relief, then got back on the road again. Shane went to make the reservations again online, but now it was past the time they take online reservations - so we had to call and make them, which nixed us out of the $6 online discount but we didn’t care at that point. We got in the room in Niantic at close to 1am, where Shane spent another hour trying to fix Mac OS X on his computer so he could catch up on work, and then we all slept like babies.

Now it’s morning and we woke up with just enough time to do two loads of laundry before checkout at 11am. So Shane got ready and he and Sarah took the car and went to find breakfast while I started laundry.

Only the laundry soap is with him in the car.

Update: Shane’s back with the soap, but it’s frozen. I just spent ten minutes in the laundry room digging it out of the bottle and plopping it into the washers. It won’t be done drying by the time we need to check out, so we’ll all be sitting in our rigged up, fogged up car in the cold parking lot, waiting for our clothes.

Posted by tee in favorites, wandering
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I think our feet are gone. We just spent the last six hours walking around the city, smuggling ourselves through crowds and lights and cab drivers. We grabbed a bite to eat at a cafe, then walked and walked and walked some more. Had a couple drinks later in the evening. Bought a nice scarf from a sidewalk vendor, like any self-respecting tourist on 5th Avenue. And then just before midnight we ducked into the Loews Theater on 42nd Street for a movie, then walked back to our hotel, the streets nearly bare now in comparison.

Don’t they say you ought to replace the tread on the soles of your feet every thirty thousand miles?

Posted by tee in photos, wandering
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“I don’t say we ought to misbehave,
but we should look as though we could.”

- Oscar Wilde

Posted by tee in quotes
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The bags under my eyes have grown into a full luggage set, but I did get 18 of the 22 things on my list done today. Sadly, though, I have saved the four biggest and hardest and most critical for last, and it’s now almost 8 o’clock.

On the upside, the busy schedule now means I’ll have made just about a full month’s salary in the first two weeks of December, so I may actually be able to take the last two weeks off and not have to sit in the car with a laptop on my lap, mile after mile, day in and day out.

Posted by tee in de la vida
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