The fine folks at away.com have come up with a list of 30 Things Every Traveler Must Do Before They’re 30.  Of those 30, I’ve managed to accomplish 12 of them, or roughly 40% of them, some of which was even before I turned 30.  Today we look at #12 on their list, take one Ultimate Road Trip.  In the year 2003, the Chicago Cubs were scheduled to open their season on Monday, March 31 in Queens against the New York Mets.  What better way to celebrate than with a road trip to New York to take in the festivities?

The trip sort of started out Friday afternoon with a quick jaunt out to the Budget rental facility near O’Hare airport.  They were the one rental agency that didn’t seem to mind that we were taking the car out of state.  It for real started the next morning at 2 AM as we headed out on I-80 heading east.  Very little of interest happened throughout Indiana and Ohio.  Eventually, we stopped for lunch at an Arbys in Pennsylvania.  This particular Arbys happened to have a breakfast buffet, which was weird.  The customers of this Arbys seemed to be more at home in the hills of Appalachia then in Pennsylvania.  One in particular was wearing overalls with no shirt underneath (at least that’s how I remember it) and was waiting patiently for a new batch of bacon to be brought out to the buffet.  Once it was, this hill person got up, emptied the whole tray onto his plate, and returned to his seat to chow down.

After finishing our processed meat sandwiches, we continued on to our final destination: a Howard Johnson hotel in Newark, New Jersey.  From my recollection, the whole trip lasted a little more than 12 hours.  After a brief nap and a few episodes of the Chappelle Show, our plans for the evening required a train ride to Manhattan, which should have been a piece of cake.  There was a train at the airport and an airport shuttle should have come to the hotel every 15-20 minutes.  After waiting for an hour, the shuttle finally showed up, taking us to the Newark airport where we were finally able to take the train into New York City!

Once there, we did not have a lot of time before the last train back to Newark was due at Penn Station.  We met up with a friend of my traveling companion and decided to grab a late dinner at the Tick Tock Diner across the street from Madison Square Garden.  During the meal, plans were made to meet up again the following day for a tour of the city.  Eventually, we headed back to the train station and caught the last train back to Newark, where an enterprising young gentleman, having consumed more than his fair share of alcohol for the evening, decided to try and make the acquaintance of an uninterested lady just trying to get home.

Sunday morning started with a trip out to Red Bank, New Jersey for a trip to Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, the comic book store owned by Kevin Smith.   A pretty decent breakfast of strawberry and banana pancakes was had at the Broadway Diner while waiting for the shop to open.  After a quick purchase, it was on to Manhattan, where we ditched the rental car at a church and headed out on foot for a tour of the city.  Our first stop was Ground Zero, where we saw what remained of the World Trade Center a year and a half after 9/11.  From there, we headed to Chinatown, where we hooked up with our friend from the night before, who happened to come across box seats for Monday’s opening day tilt from the nuns that lived in her building, much better than the pair of upper level tix we had scored on eBay prior to leaving home.  The rest of the day was spent walking around and seeing the sites, including a trip to St. Mark’s Comics, which did not end with a purchase.  Eventually, we found the car and headed back to New Jersey.

Monday morning was the big day and meant traveling from New Jersey across Manhattan, and then onto Long Island and into Queens to get to Shea Stadium.  We listened to Howard Stern on his flagship station, where a Japanese model was in studio and was being harassed by Wood Yi, who was making obscene comments about making love to the woman and related to her ancestry.  Eventually, we worked our way through the traffic and arrived at Shea Stadium.  Newly acquired Tom Glavine was on the mound for the Mets, and he made it through 2 pitches before the crowd turned on him.  Things quickly turned south for the Mets as the Cubs scored 4 runs in the top of the first on their way to a 15-2 victory, behind 2 home runs from Corey Patterson.

Following the game, it was time to head home.  Unfortunately, we were stuck in Queens and had to work our way west again with the afternoon’s traffic at its peak.  We passed through the Bronx and Yankee Stadium as the hosts on sports radio WFAN were discussing the new YES network and the attempts to get picked up by cable networks in New York before the Yankees opened their season the next day.  Eventually, we made it out of New York and were on our way back to Illinois.  The trip back took much longer, thanks in part snow storms as we passed through the mountains in Pennsylvania.  We rolled into town around 6 in the morning on Tuesday, April 1st.  I quickly showered and then headed off to work, with only whatever sleep I managed to get in the car and 2 Starbuck’s Frappacinos.  I might have taken the day off if we didn’t have to return the rental car, which we did at lunch and the road trip to New York was officially over.