The long ride, part 4

OK, if there's only one thing you take away from this post it's this: Getting from Virginia to New York City on the back roads of America is hard, slow work. We were looking at a long drive to begin with, but our drive turned out to be 12 hours — double what it would've been if we had taken the interstate.

But don't read that as a bad thing. It was a gorgeous drive that took us through small towns and farmland in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And the only reason it took so long was because of the many different roads we had to navigate and the slow speed limit.

Yet as much as I enjoyed this long drive, I was ready for it to be over once we reached the 11th hour or so.

A chronological synopsis of the drive isn't very interesting, so I'll lay down a few choice memories:

VIRGINIA

• "Antiques made daily," read the signs. What? How is this possible? There were dozens of antiques shops (some of which presumably had access to a time machine) along the road outside of the national park.

• We stopped in Sperryville (it's on HIghway 211 for those of you who don't know it) for lunch, and I was a little saddened to see the darling little eatery we stopped in front of was closed on Wednesday — and only on Wednesday. Bizarre. But we were parked, and downtown Sperryville looked charming, so we walked down Main Street a little ways. We settled on a small restaurant that looked like a good place to eat from the outside, but I was a little disappointed afterward. No, it wasn't a bad meal; it just seemed almost chain-like (I even saw the Sysco truck outside, too) and the prices were a little high for a restaurant in this small town. Whatev. I just wish that other place had been open.



• The drive through Virginia was awesome. Curvy, invigorating and green — like She-Hulk.

MARYLAND

• According to my map, Maryland is only about as big as the first two joints of my index finger. With that in mind, you'd think that we'd drive through it so fast we wouldn't even realize it. That wasn't the case: Lots of small, winding roads and detours ensured we were in rural Maryland much longer than we should've been. I started losing steam during this part, until, finally, we entered …

PENNSYLVANIA

• Amish folks in carriages. Small, bricky downtowns. Rolling hills and farmland. This is how I'll fondly remember this portion of the drive. It was wonderful, until we got to the Philly suburbs, then it got boring again. But then a new obstacle appeared:

**NEWSFLASH: Explosion in Midtown Manhattan**

Jenn got a call from her friend in Manhattan who said her building was evacuated and there were cops and soldiers with assault rifles. She was a little curious about what was going on. We stopped at the information hub of the universe, McDonald's (hey, they have WiFi now), and checked the NYT and CNN. Nothing terrorism-related it seems; just a steam pipe. That's good. What's bad is that traffic is probably a nightmare, which could mean our arrival a few hours from then could be stretched into many hours. This isn't looking good.

• Back on the road, a few more small towns and then New Jersey, the nation's largest strip mall.

NEW JERSEY

• It's a long road that gets more congested as you get closer to NYC. To fill the time time, we started coming up with New Jersey state mottos: "New Jersey: … Eh." "New Jersey: You won't miss us." "New Jersey: Come visit fabulous New York City!"

• Traffic wasn't extraordinarily bad, but I was tired and a little punchy from having been on the road. Road behavior is a little different in NJ; for instance, you have to turn right in order to turn left (you exit the highway and come out at a stop light that allows you to turn right. It's probably good for traffic.)

• There's little room for error on the highway, and unfortunately we made one. It wasn't our fault, though — tree branches were covering the exit sign on the highway and I didn't notice until it was too late to merge over. So we went to Defcom 4: Jenn got out the maps and started navigating. We ended up in downtown Newark, where potholes threatened to eat my car, but we found our way on to the turnpike, which led us to the Holland Tunnel and, eventually, 42nd street.

NEW YORK

• Driving here might be a nightmare, but at least it's easy to navigate. Traffic moved pretty orderly, despite the explosion in Midtown, and within a few minutes we were on the Upper East Side. We ditched my car at a parking garage ($30 a day!) next to Jenn's cousin's wife's apartment. Tired and hungry, we stumbled out on to the street and called Chris (her cousin) to meet us.

He was at a restaurant in Midtown, but he said he'd pay his tab and grab a cab uptown. He told us to meet him at a bar at 78th and 1st. As we were waiting, and I was lost in thought about this incredible metropolis, how it's always fast, always open and always intriguing, I had a classic New York moment: A giant rat emerged from behind a building and scampered toward a trash can next to which I was standing. As soon as I noticed Jenn's terrified grimace, I felt something bump into and run across my foot. I could feel its little claws scratch across the top of my shoe. As I stood there stunned a man who was on his cellphone and who had witnessed the incident pulled the phone away from his mouth and started laughing. Then he started pointing and laughing. Nice.

Chris called to announce his tardiness, and we decided to go to the other side of the block and look for some real food. We settled on an Italian restaurant, which served me the best ravioli I've ever had — and at 11:30 p.m., too. Chris arrived and we toasted our first New York night.

Chris is a character. He looks like a slightly shorter Sting, and he reminds me a lot of his father (Jenn's uncle, whom I'd met twice before) and Jenn's father: Clever, funny, warm and playful. He had some great stories and he seemingly knew everyone in the city (he greeted the restaurant's owner with a hug). He was kind of not only to lend us his wife's apartment, but also pick up our dinner ticket. "Welcome to New York," he said.

Exhausted, we went back to the apartment and fell asleep as the huge city buzzed with activity outside our window, 18 floors down. We'd do our best to seize that activity the next day.

WHAT I LEARNED: Having a car in Manhattan is stupid.

FAVORITE PART: The change in scenery — we went from wilderness to Amish country to bright lights, big city in one day.

OTHER THOUGHTS: The few things I envy about New York (compared to Boston) are late nightlife and restaurants and 24-hour public transportation. (There will probably be a much longer entry about these things later.)