Spring Break in New Jersey #2: Staying with Family, We Avoid Problems. Outstanding!

Thanks to Rachel Baron and Alison Bond, we’re able to take a complete pass on certain kinds of vacation challenges.

I’m talking about the challenges of having to stay in a bad motel. How do I know? I have researched the “10 Warning Signs of Motel Misery.” Let me list ‘em for you:

1. The free mint on the pillow starts moving when you come close to it.
2. The “complimentary” morning paper tells you that President Kennedy has died.
3. The bed’s Magic Fingers® vibration is supplied by a foot-powered bicycle pump.
4. You have to wait ‘til the guy next door is done with the towel so you can use it.
5. There is still some yellow tape on the doorway – the kind they put around nuclear accidents.
6. The pictures are artfully placed to cover up recent earthquake damage.
7. There’s a chalk outline in the bed when you pull back the covers.
8. You have to move the body in order to plug in your phone charger.
9. The only TV station you can get is a current events talk channel hosted by Eleanor Roosevelt.
10. The wake-up call comes courtesy of a great big guy with a shaved head.

Seriously, we’re looking forward to the visit – going to enjoy ourselves big time. Thank you in advance to everyone in North Bergen…

Spring Break in New Jersey #1: Of Death and Crocuses and Custom Truck Bodies.

You do know we’re taking a Spring Break, away from Houston, right? Last year it was a 10-day cruise to the Panama Canal. Remember that? For 2011, it’s off to a destination that is just as foreign: New Jersey.

We’ll be visiting Rachel Baron and Alison Bond in North Bergen, NJ. I realized I hadn’t posted you about this specifically. So when Rachel called to let me know that “…the crocuses were all dead,” I thought I better catch you up.

Look for Barbara Nytes-Baron and me just across the river in North Bergen in a couple weeks. We have been…alerted about the oddball weather in that part of the world in this time period. Alison mentioned that it could get up into the 70s – that’s Fahrenheit. I told ‘em, I thought that was pretty impressive but that as far as we were concerned, the 70s is so last week.

That’s when Rachel mentioned the crocuses. Planted in various parts of the outdoor realm of their house, they have apparently fallen victim to this afternoon’s hailstorm. Dead, dead, dead. “Hail storm?”

“We hardly ever get hail storms in April. Really,” Rachel answered.

I’ve done some research on North Bergen, I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the culture. I pointed out one discovery to the girls – all the elected officials (the Mayor and four City Commissioners) all have Italian-American last names: Sacco, Cabrera, Ferraro, Gargiulo, Pascual. It’ll be such a change for us, even if I’m doing Commissioners Cabrera and Pascual an injustice. Those could be Latino and Portuguese respectively.

Rachel pointed out, “They keep the streets clean, we keep voting for them.” Fair enough.

We’re genuinely looking forward to this and I will make every attempt to avoid embarrassing [1] the people who are opening their arms to us in hospitality and [2] Barbara.

Meantime, you’re probably wondering about the sign in the photo, the one that says “Highway Body Works?” I put North Bergen, NJ, through a Google Images search and this photo came up in third place. I thought it was appropriate for some mental reason, so mille grazie to the photographer, Vincenzo Aiosa.

Vincenzo – I’ll buy you a beer, meet me at the Italian bar around the corner from Rachel and Alison’s, okay? April 2 – it’s a date!