Tag / Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash

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Travelling The 50 States – New Jersey

Over my 48 years, I’ve done my fair share of travelling across these United States.  I thought it would be an interesting experiment go look back at those trips to each of the 31 states I have visited (62% isn’t bad, is it?) and see if, and when, I may be returning.  Working in alphabetical order, we continue today with the 3rd state to be added to the Union: New Jersey

State: New Jersey
Joined the Union: 1787
Visits: 1

I made my first, and only, visit to the Garden State back in 2003, as the base of operations for my opening day trip to New York.

A long drive on a Saturday in late March of 2003 dropped us in Newark, at the Howard Johnson near the airport.  After getting settled, we opted for a brief nap and a few episodes of the Chappelle Show, before trying to head into Manhattan for the evening.  Despite an airport shuttle claiming to stop at the hotel every 15-20 minutes, we waited for over an hour before catching a ride to the Newark airport, where we were finally able to take the train into New York City!  After catching the last train back to New Jersey, we made it back to hotel for a good night’s sleep.

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.  We were a little early, so we went down the block to the Broadway Diner, where I enjoyed a pretty decent breakfast of strawberry and banana pancakes. Once the Stash opened, we looked around for a bit, made our purchases, and then headed out for another trip into Manhattan.

We checked out the next morning before heading to Queens for exciting Mets (and Cubs) baseball.

Will I return?  Maybe?  Nothing is currently drawing me there, but nothing is keeping me away either.

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30 For 30 – Take One Ultimate Road Trip

SheaBoardThe 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!

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