Home Sweet Home

After spending a couple of days in the big city and surrounding environments, I'm glad to be home to simple, humble Syracuse. Notes from the road:

• The drive from Syracuse to beautiful Farmingdale (Long Island) was uneventful, which is just about the best thing that could happen on a 6 hour drive
• Plans for visiting Jones Beach were scrapped Thursday afternoon due to some nasty thunderstorms. The evening was spent inside at the Towneplace Suites (a nice place, btw). Good times!
• Friday saw piling into the family roadster for what was arguably the worst 3 hour drive ever, through Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the godawful state of New Jersey. Those people are fuckin' animals, down there. Animals!
• Once in Philly, things got much better. A couple of delicious meals from Illiano's (cheesesteak stromboli!), and T'dori, kids playing nicely, and of course, alcohol
• Saturday we visited Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster. A great amusement park geared for kids. Sadly, I was unable to partake in one of the best things in the world: Amish pretzels. Big, soft, and delicious (kind of like yours truly)
• Sunday, the Philadelphia Zoo. While the zoo was good and the kids had fun, Sunday was not a good day for me. Heat + crowds + traffic jams + kids = one big fucking meltdown. Well, not just one, but several that built on top of one another. Honestly, I think I was still worn down from the travel and the day before. All that, capped with a 4 hour drive home. What a day.

Other notes

• Discovered the awesomeness of touch screen ordering at Wawa. Extra meat, and the option to put bacon on everything makes life grand
• The EZ-Pass may just be the greatest invention ever, outside of toll free roads. Between the NYS Thurway, Penn Turnpike, and Jersey Turnpikes nickel diming me every 50 miles and the "are you kidding me?!??" tolls for the Tappan Zee, Throgs Neck, and Verrazano bridges I would have had to carry $50 bucks around for tolls.
• Pennsylvania is under permanent highway reconstruction. How can they continually work on I81 constantly? Oh wait

All in all, a fun, but tiring weekend. It's good to be home.