RAH RAH RAH !

It's been like riding a bucking Bronco the last couple of weeks. A trip to Hershey Park and Dorney Park, the complete and unforeseen failure of what used to be my dependable commuter car's transmission, the purchase of a survival knife, some clothes and a Cuisinart, undergoing a full physical with blood work, and embarking Wifey and the two savages off and onto a plane out to Arizona.

It started early in the morning of Sunday July 23rd and it came to a rest the moment I walked through the doors at work last Tuesday morning August 1st. I've felt like Chevy Chase playing the role of Clark Griswold these past days. In a way, I need a vacation from my vacation last week and in the next two weeks I may be getting that.

After showering and throwing a scant few items into my overnight bag that Sunday morning, it was off to Hershey Park in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Heading there required filling the Suburban's gas tank with what has become a modern day commodity: gasoline. What seemed to be 15 minutes filling and what seemed to be a slot machine adding to the total, was enough to make me cringe. Three figures???

It's not the first time we've headed out to Hershey. The Hershey trip has become a summer standard birthday celebration for my 7 year old. We ride the same rides, we eat the same foods, we make the same stops, we stay at the same hotel, and we stay the same amount of time. AND, we have a lot of fun getting wet and dizzy. While the yung'ins are a little to young to ride everything, pretty soon they'll both be old enough to ride the "Shit Your Pants Ride", "The Crazy Gonads Ride", and the "I'm Fuckin' Stupid and Insane For Doing This Ride". Today they say "Noooo Wayyy", but I can tell that tomorrow's someday will utter a different refrain.

It may sound effeminate when I say this, but one of the things that I enjoy when I head out to central PA is taking the wife shopping. On the way over, we stop at the massive Vanity Fair Factory Outlet Center in Redding, PA. One of the reasons that I enjoy this is because Wifey ends up modeling scores of intimate items in the dressing room in front of me. And, there is a football field of show room space just for intimates to try on. Some things don't work, but some things do. I get to be there with the thumbs up or down in the dressing room with her. If you're a guy, this is the kind of clothes shopping that any warm and red blooded guy with a heartbeat really would enjoy doing. Wifey spending about an hour trying countless intimate items of clothing in front of me is sublime. If the kids were not with us, we'd probably get arrested in one of those dressing rooms. By the way (clear throat here), I also end up getting a few shirts for myself.

The other store that we check out is "Cabela's: The World's Foremost Outfitter" in Hamburg, PA. It's an outdoorsman's paradise. Not only does this store sell anything you would ever want for any outdoor need, but the store has a cafeteria, an aquarium and a taxidermed zoo. Bears, elephants and all sorts of big game. This year, I purchased a survival knife that replaces the machete that I bought last year, that I quickly turned around and gifted to my visiting cousin Roge, who thought the world of it. Other years I've purchased marinating syringes, daypacks and winter shoes.

This year I was surprised to see that a "Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World" had gone up in the middle of Harrisburg. A store with a parkway exit all to itself. While we did drop some coin in this place also, and while both these places seem to have a similar timbre, Cabela's is more outdoorsy and Bass has more clothes and sells pleasure crafts out of their showroom.

I know that spending vacation time in Central Pennsylvania may seem like anathema to some, but it's not a bad destination. The Hershey and Harrisburg area are clean, un-blighted and welcoming. Dining is pleasurable and priced right. Hoteliers are not amateurish and the few hours that we spend at any of the Marriotts are always comfortable. This year, gasoline was even selling 10 cents under the average in New Jersey, so that was a welcome surprise.

Sunday, Monday and part of Tuesday we got wet, dizzy and sun-beaten and then it was back to lovely Chatham to regroup and to prep to head to Dorney Park the next day being Wednesday. This is where the vacation week took a big hit.

I unloaded everything off the truck and tidied it up in preparation for the next day's trip to the other amusement park. At about 6 p.m. on Tuesday 7/25th, I got into my commuter car, my 1999 Hyundai Elantra that I purchased brand new. I went out to get some picnic fixings for the Dorney trip the next morning and to put gas in that car. After the gas fill and after purchasing the picnic goods, I put the car in reverse from my parking spot at the ShopRite grocery store and guess what? There was no reverse gear! WHAT!?!?!?!? Arrrrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!! 120K is all I'm gonna get from this Korean piece of shit? 20 thousand miles over what Hyundai guarantees the tranny at? Seven years of sixty easy highway miles daily that add to and from work and on this day it's all gone to FUCK!

I pushed the car out of its parking slot and engaged drive and drove it directly to my local mechanic. On the way over, the auto-shifting was struggling and the grim reality that the car had had a major organ failure was setting in. I began to process the expense of a new transmission over the expense of starting to use our third car more often.

Last summer, when gas prices began to spiral up and with no sense of it subsiding appeared anywhere on the horizon, I noticed this Nissan Pathfinder with a "For Sale" sign up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A 1990 four wheel drive three door with only 90K's on it. It was in very good shape. This fifteen year old car was close to pristine condition. I had been a Nissan pick-up truck owner years ago and was very pleased with the way the car endured.

I called the owner and he said that the car had been garage kept in the city for 13 years after he bought it from his brother in-law out in the Hamptons. I asked him why he was selling it since it appears that it is in such good shape. He said that his wife was pregnant and did not care to drive a stick any longer. After he showed me all the service records that he could find, I made him an offer and drove the car home a couple of days later and surprised Wifey. I got the car to offset the rising cost of filling the gas tank on the Suburban, and for the past year that strategy was serving us well. If Wifey would need to cart more than our kids around, the big truck would be the vehicle. All other times, she would use the Pathfinder and that arrangement was working out very well. So, we've been an almost unheard of two adult/three car household in New Jersey for the past year.

After dropping the "ninja" off at the mechanic, I walked home and began to process this loss in the family. I did not let it affect me much since we were supposed to keep the family party going the very next morning. And we did. The next day we left our home at 8 a.m. and were parked at the park in Allentown, PA less than 90 minutes later. We had a great time at this other amusement park and got way more sun-drenched, wet and dizzy. We did not get home until 1 a.m. Thursday morning.

Thursday August 3rd was a day to re-coup and to not answer the phone. No one wanted to go anywhere on that day. We cranked the central air and lowered the blinds around the house. The savages huddled with DirecTV, the computer and their toys downstairs in the family room. Wifey and I locked our bathroom and bedroom doors, slept all day and showered twice before 5:30 p.m. Italian delivery was dinner on this day.

Friday morning I called my mechanic. He's really a good guy and I have established a customer relationship with him for years. I asked him what the damage was. I heard the drum roll and over the phone he uttered the figure: $2250! Two-Thousand two-hundred and fifty dollars, if I chose to spend on this car, would mark the most I've ever invested into a motor vehicle at one time just to keep it running. I had thought about this news and was prepared to answer no thanks as I did. I went down to see Marvin and he greeted me by asking me how I was doing. I answered that I was wasn't doing too badly until I talked to you. I picked up the car and motorhead did not charge me a cent.

The car now sits at the end of our driveway looking great from the outside. Since we don't have a dog, should I just keep it there for a while as a decoy to project the sense that someone is home at all times? Could doing so categorize and devolve me as a "redneck" even though the car is not on the front yard and up on bricks? Should I just get rid of it as soon as possible?

One thing I did do was call my insurer ASAP and told him to knock that thing off the insurance. When I did that, State Farm lady out in Illinois said the same thing happened to her with her Hyundai only hers was the 1998 model year. Before 1999, Hyundai did not guarantee their power trains up to 100K. The very polite lady over the phone did say that she cursed like she never had before when it failed at 66K. Bastards!

Enough car talk. It's now Friday August 4th and on that evening I got drunk and sleepy watching baseball and crashed before 11:15pm. After all, I am off of work.

Saturday and Sunday were spent battening things down for Wifey and kids to leave Tuesday morning. Little things like returning library books, laundry, swimming, bar-b-queing and going out to lunch. One place that has become a favorite is this Japanese restaurant on Route-10 named "Minado". It is a sushi buffet. For seventeen dollars at lunchtime, I can eat what would amount to over a hundred dollars of sushi at a regular restaurant. This place is cavernous big, clean, friendly and it has become a favorite of others who we have mentioned it to. My seven year old says he wants fish eggs for lunch and he doesn't have to say that twice. Dinner is about twice as expensive per person, but the restaurant provides every man with a Geisha under the table during dinner. Anywhere else, a Geisha under the table is a quite a few hundred dollars. Women get the shiatsu during their entire dining experience. I haven't been there for dinner yet.

On Monday, it was time to pay the piper who happens to be my primary care physician. Monday was yearly physical day...rubber glove and all. My weight is my doctor's undersong throughout my one hour exam and interview. I'm proud to indicate that I have not gained any weight since the last time I saw her or in the last two years.

I've gone to my doctor for twelve years now and enjoy the relationship that we have. I'm candid and she is too. I know doctors and she's no idiot. Her husband happens to be a doctor also. My brother is an anesthesiologist at Baylor University Hospital in Dallas, and he's an idiot. Strangely, all my brother's doctor friends, the one's he socializes with, are all idiots. The OB-GYN down the street I live on, who lived with his parents even after being married for two years, is an idiot. His wife is an idiot also. The doctors that my family and I use are not idiots. Just ask Wifey's aunt who came here to see an allergist all the way from Buffalo only to find relief she had been seeking for years.

I'm not saying that all these docs are professionally incompetent, but I can assure you that doctoring requires other personal skills that are not learned in the lab and classroom. Some doctors are clock watchers and do their job by rote. I find it contemptible that just because one dedicates themselves to medicine, one is deemed intelligent. No way. Some of these physicians can compartmentalize one discipline and do that for a living. But take some of them out to a party, a poker game or just out to dinner (and don't tell anyone that they are a doctor), they'll come across as social retards, guaranteed.

Anyway, the physical went well barring the results of blood work on that Monday the 7th. Wifey greeted me after that with a kiss and a promise she fulfilled later.

Tuesday morning the 8th? I guess that Tuesday morning is when my vacation sort of started. I woke up to the sound of Wifey showering at 5 a.m. She and the kids were flying out of NWK at 7:05 and I was driving them there. They'll be gone at least two weeks. We have to redeem some flying vouchers before November and she is urging me to take another week off and meet them there in 10 days.

I know that the average person would jump to get on a plane and head out to Arizona anytime. Me? I was born and raised around the Tucson area in the border town of Nogales, Arizona. I have many friends who are colleagues. I have friends from college and from childhood that I could very well knock on their doors and get a big hug. It would all be good, happy, great, revelrous and merry.

But, when the drink expends and the music silences for the night, I can no longer go to my home and lay my head down. I have no family that ties me to my roots in Arizona except my in-laws today. As greatly accommodating as they all can be, it is when it comes time to retire for the night that I get the sense that I am a hobo.

Twenty years ago I could not have imagined that if you were to dial 602-287-3447 that you were not going to be able to somehow get in touch with me, wherever It was that I could be living. The 602-287-3447 anchor has been gone for quite a while and that saddens me.

For a vacation, what I need is to be alone on a chaise lounge, with a great introspective book on a sandy beach, with the sound of the surf and the soft sound of a tinny radio playing 70's and 80's FM album rock, with a cooler of stout beer and a couple of big fat joints. I would sit there for hours......many hours and think about how I got there.


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posted by JerryNJ @ 10:02 PM