October 9
We awoke in our van while it was still dark outside.
The pre-dawn air was pleasantly cool. We took care of preparations for
traveling (including one last visit to the Rabbi's house to use the bathroom)
then turned the key and drove off.
The GPS told us our destination in New Jersey was some
350 miles and at least 7:30 hours away. I expected it to take longer. We wanted
to reach my cousins' house in Matawan, NJ at a decent hour so we could spend
some quality time with them; and there were some sights along the way I thought
would be interesting to stop for, since we were in the area.
The van needed to be gassed up before we set out (fuel
prices were good in Hampton, VA). We also needed to replenish our cash supply; however,
the ATM at the gas station had a limit on how much cash it would dispense that was
lower than our intentions. A bank we came to next had a drive-through ATM, but
it was closed. These stops delayed us and we didn't quite reach the Chesapeake
Bay Bridge-Tunnel by sunrise, which occurred a few minutes after 7:00 AM. The toll
booth was no problem; the woman inside cheerfully took our fee. This is the third
bridge we've had to pay to cross (the other two were the Mackinac Bridge in
Michigan and the Governor Nice Bridge in Maryland). Otherwise, we've avoided
and hope to continue to avoid paying tolls.
We had the bridge-tunnel almost completely to
ourselves. The sun was up less than half an hour when we stopped at a rest
plaza to take pictures of it, glinting on the open water. Seagulls posed among the
salt-sprayed rocks and we found bait-sized squid dumped in the parking lot
beside our parking spot. It seemed odd that those seagulls hadn't bothered to
pounce on them. The entire bridge was lined with light posts at regular
intervals; each light fixture had its attendant gull perched upon it and as we
drove this gauntlet of gulls, Hitchcock's movie the "Birds" came to
our minds.
We drove north through the Delmarva Peninsula, still
in Virginia, and I watched my GPS counting down the miles to Maryland. We
finally entered Maryland once again and drove past a lot of green landscape but
saw no banks from the highway in any of the towns along the way.
We then entered Delaware, our 33rd state. Oddly, as
we drove within this state, we saw almost no license plates from this state.
These had eluded us throughout our trip and they continued to be elusive even
now that we were in Delaware, proper.
We pulled into Greenwood, DE for fuel and cash. I
saw a drive-in ATM at the bank across the highway so, while Razelle was busy in
the convenience store attached to the gas station; I walked across the highway
and patiently stood in line behind a car with an elderly couple in it taking
care of their ATM transaction. When they pulled away they looked at me
suspiciously. The cash withdrawal limit here was $250, same as everywhere else.
I resigned myself to that and followed through with my transaction.
At the food court where Razelle was waiting for me I
studied the giant map of Delaware on the wall. I saw that ahead of us lay two
choices, a toll road (Delaware 1) or a free road (US 13 – the DuPont Highway). We
haven't taken a toll road yet and I planned to keep that record intact today. Avoiding
these meant that getting through Dover took us a while, so we stopped at a Walmart
in Dover to use the bathrooms (we certainly know our way around a Walmart store
by now). There were a lot of Delaware license plates parked here, but not an
overwhelming majority.
Half way to Wilmington, DE we finally entered expressway
traffic and drove along with a vast number of other Sunday-slash-Columbus-Day-weekend
drivers. We entered Pennsylvania, our 34th state and within the first mile came
to a visitors' information center and pulled in. I had it in mind to drive
within Pennsylvania up to where George Washington crossed the Delaware River
(Washington Crossing, PA), so I asked for tourist pamphlets for that section of
Pennsylvania. When I got back to the van, Razelle was on the phone with someone
we were scheduled to see in the coming days – so much tight planning, so little
time left to do it all. I explained to Razelle that Washington Crossing was my
next destination, but she wasn't interested in seeing it. OK, so I altered the
route in my GPS and pointed us toward the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia instead.
I didn't want to just drive past this whole swath of geography without stopping
for something of tourist value.
Still avoiding toll roads I steered us into
Philadelphia's highway system. Within Philadelphia we left the Delaware
Expressway and took the Vine Street Expressway, and ran right into the tightest
congestion of Sunday-slash-Columbus-Day-weekend drivers one could have only wished
to avoid. By now the Liberty Bell had also lost its appeal to Razelle. The Vine
Street Expressway dumped us in slow-motion onto the Schuylkill Expressway (I
can't pronounce it; it's lucky I got the spelling right), which afforded us a
glimpse of the back side of one of Philadelphia's most important museums ("Rocky"
ran up and down its front steps in the eponymous movie) across the water (when
retaining walls didn't block our view). Our speed picked up after that and forward
progress looked promising. We'd had our fill of Philadelphia by now and our thoughts
turned to New Jersey.
We exited onto Roosevelt Blvd (US 1) and continued
to move along well – until we came to our first traffic light. We were now in a
residential neighborhood of strong ethnic character (black). The boulevard
consisted of the express lanes we were in, separated by a divider from the local-traffic
lanes used by drivers getting on and off at side streets. Express or no, every
mile or so we came to another set of traffic lights – and they were always
against us. While we sat at red lights we heard car radios beside us blaring rap
music with the "N-word" in the lyrics; very puzzling to me how such a
word that is so offensive to them can be so casually incorporated in their
music (and played so loudly). Finally, with the residential traffic behind us,
we came to the Delaware River and crossed it without having to pay a toll, to
enter New Jersey our 35th state (thank you New Jersey for the free pass).
New Jersey – that magical word pair. For more than
12,000 miles our focus has been on getting our van back to New Jersey without
incident, through all kinds of terrain and climatic conditions, and we did it! Our
van bore New Jersey license plates and it was finally on home soil. We blended
right in with all the vehicles around us.
We thought traffic in Philadelphia was bad. New
Jersey wasn't an improvement. We only had 40 more miles to go to reach Matawan.
Most of this distance was between and not within cities on an arrow-straight
section of US 1. The maddening thing was that because this section is straight,
we could see all the cars in a line ahead of us, stopping more than going for
most of those miles. We called ahead to let Mark and Evelyn in Matawan know we
were about an hour away (when that seemed to be the case) but it took us much
longer than that to reach our turn-off from US 1 toward Old Bridge and Matawan.
By the time we reached North Brunswick, NJ we needed
to fuel up again. We were lucky to pull right up to a pump. A single harried
turban-wearing Sikh gentleman was responsible for pumping everyone's fuel. An
argument broke out with a customer who had pumped her own gas. In New Jersey,
as I understand it, self service is forbidden. Security cameras monitor such
things. The customer gave the Sikh gentleman her phone number so she could
explain to whoever might want to fire this attendant that she was to blame,
not he.
It was a relief to get off the road by the time we
pulled into Mark and Evelyn's driveway, some ten hours after we had set out
this morning before sunrise. We would have been here sooner and with less angst
if we had taken toll roads: the bane of the East Coast from my perspective, but
a fact of life from Razelle's perspective. From now on, I won't avoid them
anymore.
Mark and Evelyn came out to greet us when they heard
us pull into their driveway. Mark is my first cousin, and close enough to me in
temperament to be practically a sibling. My affinity for him and Evelyn is such
that in no time at all we found ourselves conversing on a wide range of
common-interest topics and enjoying ourselves immensely. Razelle has a great
deal in common with them too, with their background in cinema and literature.
We four never exhausted the topics that came up; each segued into another. Meal
time didn't interrupt our conversations and our fascination with them. We
gathered around the table as Evelyn, who had taken our dietary needs into
consideration – I with my ring and Razelle with her food allergies – brought
out a number of different dishes for us to choose from. We found plenty to eat.
The featured main dish was salmon. Once this trip is over we should
consider compiling a "Chinook Cookbook". Each of our hosts did something different
to personalize their presentation of this fish.
Mark is a movie critic and he sometimes has the
privilege of viewing films before the general public does. He was excited about
a documentary on "Shalom Aleichem" he had reviewed and thought we'd
appreciate viewing. It turns out, through research I had done on our family
tree, that the towns in the Ukraine our forbears (Mark and mine) may have come
from are quite likely the same towns in the Ukraine that claim Sholem
Rabinovich as their favorite son. Razelle and I watched this documentary with
great fascination.
I began to have trouble staying awake by the time
the film ended. Mark and I took apart the couch we were sitting on, tugged on
it this way and that, and – voila! – it was a bed! Razelle was very impressed
with this item of furniture – an authentic Castro Convertible. She has always
wanted to own one of these. It wasn't long before I was fast asleep on it.
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