{"id":3590,"date":"2013-04-07T05:23:02","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T11:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/?p=3590"},"modified":"2013-04-06T20:01:29","modified_gmt":"2013-04-07T02:01:29","slug":"30-for-30-take-one-ultimate-road-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/30-for-30-take-one-ultimate-road-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"30 For 30 – Take One Ultimate Road Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SheaBoard\"<\/a>The fine folks at away.com have come up with a list of 30 Things Every Traveler Must Do Before They\u2019re 30<\/a>.\u00a0 Of those 30, I\u2019ve managed to accomplish 12 of them, or roughly 40% of them, some of which was even before I turned 30.\u00a0 Today we look at\u00a0#12 on their list, take one Ultimate Road Trip. \u00a0In the year 2003, the Chicago Cubs were scheduled to open their season on Monday, March 31 in Queens against the New York Mets. \u00a0What better way to celebrate than with a road trip to New York to take in the festivities?<\/p>\n

The trip sort of started out Friday afternoon with a quick jaunt out to the Budget rental facility near O’Hare airport. \u00a0They were the one rental agency that didn’t seem to mind that we were taking the car out of state. \u00a0It for real started the next morning at 2 AM as we headed out on I-80 heading east. \u00a0Very little of interest happened throughout Indiana and Ohio. \u00a0Eventually, we stopped for lunch at an Arbys in Pennsylvania. \u00a0This particular Arbys happened to have a breakfast buffet, which was weird. \u00a0The customers of this Arbys seemed to be more at home in the hills of Appalachia then in Pennsylvania. \u00a0One 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. \u00a0Once it was, this hill person got up, emptied the whole tray onto his plate, and returned to his seat to chow down.<\/p>\n

After finishing our processed meat sandwiches, we continued on to our final destination: a Howard Johnson hotel in Newark, New Jersey. \u00a0From my recollection, the whole trip lasted a little more than 12 hours. \u00a0After 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. \u00a0There was a train at the airport and an airport shuttle should have come to the hotel every 15-20 minutes. \u00a0After 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!<\/p>\n

Once there, we did not have a lot of time before the last train back to Newark was due at Penn Station. \u00a0We 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. \u00a0During the meal, plans were made to meet up again the following day for a tour of the city. \u00a0Eventually, 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\u00a0acquaintance of an uninterested lady just trying to get home.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0 A pretty decent breakfast of strawberry and banana pancakes was had at the Broadway Diner while waiting for the shop to open. \u00a0After 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. \u00a0Our first stop was Ground Zero, where we saw what remained of the World Trade Center a year and a half after 9\/11. \u00a0From 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. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0Eventually, we found the car and headed back to New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Monday morning was the big day and meant traveling from\u00a0New\u00a0Jersey across Manhattan, and then onto Long Island and\u00a0into Queens to get to Shea Stadium.\u00a0\u00a0We listened to Howard Stern<\/a> 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.\u00a0 Eventually, we worked our way through the traffic and arrived at Shea Stadium.\u00a0 Newly acquired Tom Glavine was on the mound for the Mets, and he made it through 2 pitches before the crowd turned on him.\u00a0 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<\/a>, behind 2 home runs from Corey Patterson.<\/p>\n

Following the game, it was time to head home.\u00a0 Unfortunately, we were stuck in Queens and had to work our way west again with the afternoon’s traffic at its peak.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Eventually, we made it out of New York and were on our way back to Illinois.\u00a0 The trip back took much longer, thanks in part snow storms as we passed through the mountains in Pennsylvania.\u00a0 We rolled into town around 6 in the morning on Tuesday, April 1st.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fine folks at away.com have come up with a list of 30 Things Every Traveler Must Do Before They\u2019re 30.\u00a0 Of those 30, I\u2019ve managed to accomplish 12 of them, or roughly 40% of them, some of which was even before I turned 30.\u00a0 Today we look at\u00a0#12 on their list, take one Ultimate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3268],"tags":[2375,3342,3269,3349,3341,3344,903,120,3351,3350,3343,849,3348,3347,261,3345,612,3352,2845,3346,2934,3355,3353,51,3354],"class_list":["post-3590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-2375","tag-arbys","tag-away-com","tag-broadway-diner","tag-budget","tag-chappelle-show","tag-corey-patterson","tag-cubs","tag-ebay","tag-ground-zero","tag-howard-johnson","tag-howard-stern","tag-jay-silent-bobs-secret-stash","tag-madison-square-garden","tag-mets","tag-penn-station","tag-shea-stadium","tag-st-marks-comics","tag-starbucks","tag-tick-tock-diner","tag-tom-glavine","tag-wfan","tag-yankee-stadium","tag-yankees","tag-yes-network"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3590"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3711,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590\/revisions\/3711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}