May 1, 2015

If this is Friday, it must be Newark

Here we are on the first day of our Journey To Siena for Dana and Daniel's wedding. So far it's gone better than expected, but that's because I carefully set my expectations quite low. So I easily vastly exceeded them. Pessimism can be an effective strategy, I learned from Dan O'Dowd. When you're a pessimist, either things go badly, and you feel good for being right for your low expectations, or they go well, and you're happy about a good outcome. So I set out fully expecting to have something major go wrong. I was disappointed, happily.

On the positive side: the car was ready on time. I got into no accidents--well, no major ones; more on that later. I didn't get a speeding ticket. The hotel was where it was supposed to be, our rooms were clean; the beds comfortable; dinner was good. Nothing happened that made me stressed. No one got sick and nobody died. Some of these things were expected, but not all. For example, I expected stress; I did not expect death.

On the bad side: I didn't adjust my mirror and some guy had to honk at me when I started to change lanes without seeing him. Check: adjust mirrors. I carefully backed out of parking space, very carefully watching a car that was parked behind me and just to the left of my car (yes!) and missed seeing the car that was parked behind me and just to the right. The driver of that care might have been blowing her horn, but the windows were down and I was too busy (carefully) watching the car to the left to hear the horn it it had been a horn. Bump! I stopped the car, and the driver of the other car came up. "What were you thinking?" she asked angrily. Or something. "Apparently I'm an idiot," I explained. We went back to assess the damage. There might have been a scratch on her bumper due to my car, but there were already several scratches and it was hard to tell which one, if any, might have been mine. Her male companion, much more relaxed than she was said: "It's all good. No problem." I said thanks and we were on our way.

I had been using Waze to navigate, but during the stop and bump episode my phone ran out. So while I recharged it, Peggy her iPhone app to guide us. And guide us it did, right into 4 mile-per-hour traffic jam. By that time my phone had acquired enough charge to reboot, and Waze guided us around the jam, and pretty soon we were flying again. With my phone plugged in to charge as we went.

Then we hit the tangle that is New York and collided with physics. Waze apparently consumed electrons faster than my charging cord supplied them, and after a while my phone crashed again. Peg to the rescue, again! We navigated our way through the New York side tangle of roads, got across the GW bridge to hit the Jersey tangle. And that's where the next bad thing happened. I made a wrong turn. We recovered, and found ourselves facing a toll plaza, with the map app telling us to keep left. Which would have been the right thing to do if I'd had my EZ-pass. But I didn't. And I found myself in a high-speed EZ-pass lanes with no way to get to a take-a-ticket cash lane. So I went through without getting a ticket. Which meant that when we got to the toll plaza at our exit, I had to pay the maximum toll: north of $10.00. In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing.

A few more twists and turns and we found our way to our hotel where, as I said, everything was great. Except, fortunately, for a very annoying noise coming from the fan in our room. Fortunately? Yes.

I went to the desk and the person there, Musa, said they'd sent maintenance to fix it. Right. Eventually, I thought. But maintenance showed up faster than expected, and the guy, a very nice fellow from Ghana, took care of it right away. I went back to the front desk to thank Musa for excellent support, and to ask if breakfast was covered in our reservation; he said it was not, but comped us (and Peg) breakfast for our inconvenience. So, yay! And that's why the annoying fan noise was fortunate.

We had dinner in the hotel, and then took a drive through the tangle of New Jersey roads to the Cape Liberty Cruise port, making sure I got tickets before getting on the short tollway segments to the port and returning. Yay for learning from experience.

The Quantum of the Seas was not yet in port, and that was expected because I'd done my research before we headed over there. It was returning from a weekish-long cruise to the Caribbean, and I had found it would get in at 7:00 AM. Which makes sense. It makes no money sitting at dock, so it was in at 7:00 AM and out at 5:00 with 3500 passengers off, with all their waste and garbage; and another 3500 on, with all that would be needed to sustain them for ten days.

We got back to the hotel and now it was time to drop off the car, which was uneventful except for two things. One: Google maps had the wrong location for the drop off. Two: I had forgotten to fill the car with gas. So I searched for a nearby gas station and ended up getting routed around and around through a tangle of roads, finally seeing a toll both ahead, (What!!!) and a sign that said: last exit before toll. Which you better believe I took, only to find myself going along a winding road that led...back to the hotel. Turns out there is a gas station at the airport. I'd driven right past it the first time around and found it the second.

Round two was success. I had my gas pumped by another guy from Ghana. And found the drop-off. I took the shuttle back to the hotel, and after evening ablutions, the day was gone. No serious accidents. No upset (even when wandering all over the Newark area at night).

But tomorrow is another day. I hope things go well, but I'm not counting on it.

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