The Daily Tannenbaum

In a word, my vacation was Fantastic. I did so much, saw a lot of the country, and really packed the miles on my car. (If you want to see where we went, check the map from three posts ago.) It makes for one really long blog post. So in no particular order, on my summer vacation I…

Experienced Zen:
Being from Jersey, the most likely place for me to experience nirvana is the mall. On our first afternoon in Minneapolis, Penelope and I hightailed it to the Mall of America and despite the many wonderful shops and amusement park rides, we spent more than half of our time there at the sushi restaurant on the second floor. We split a caterpillar roll (shaped like an actual caterpillar with avocado on the outside and antennae made of wheatgrass) and the restaurant’s specialty “Zen 10″ roll which was replete with 10 kinds of sushi goodness. A few days later, we rented bikes on Mackinac Island in Michigan and rode the 8-mile state highway that circles the island. (It’s the only state highway in America that has never had a single motor vehicle accident, because cars are banned from the island.) During that bike ride, and without meaning to do it, I never thought about the past or the future. For the whole hour, my mind was concentrated completely on the azure water, bright blue sky, puffy clouds, and scraggly pine trees. No yoga class could ever do that.

Got Our Fill of the Lake Shore:
Before leaving Chicago on Saturday morning, Penelope and I took advantage of the proximity of Juvenis’s home to Lake Shore Drive and ran (okay, she ran, I jogged) the most scenic part of town. It was so much better than our original plan of seeing if my guest pass was good for the Illinois Planet Fitness. Ironically, the road around Mackinac Island where we later biked was called Lake Shore Road.

Some Bad Things Happened Too:
Penelope and I got on great considering we spent about 42 hours in the car together. However, by the time we got to Pennsylvania on the way home we had listened to the end of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and I think it made us both a little more emotional than we expected. We had a heated debate about the best way to judge the distance between the car and the car in front. She goes for the “judge car lengths” method and I go for the “count seconds” method, which I claim is more scientific. She balked at this notion, and I have to say I thought it was going to end our friendship for just a minute. However, we agreed to disagree, and I think working through that speed bump has strengthened the friendship. The other bad thing was on Mackinac Island. We hit up most of the 2,000 fudge shops on the island to get the free samples. Eventually I wanted something salty so I bought a box of popcorn. It was way too salty and I think, less tasty than the box it came in. That was probably the worst thing that happened on the trip.

Made Friends with Strangers:
I’m so glad -R- and Stefanie were up for meeting in Minneapolis. (Click on the links for their wrap-ups.) Even though we met at an establishment called Psycho Suzi’s, the atmosphere was more “Tiki” than “Murdered By A Serial Killer.” They’re both the kind of chicks I’d be friends with in real life, so it was totally cool to meet them in real life. Also, they know about all the finer points of golden fried foods. Days later, at Niagara Falls, it seemed that Penelope and I were the least threatening looking people in the area, because not one, not two, but three different people asked us to take photographs of them. As we were taking the third shot, the first couple we met passed by us, and were asked by another couple for a picture. Note to self: get a camera, head north, and start charging.

Learned A Lot About A Friend, and I Think She Learned A Little About Me:
After wondering why Penelope wouldn’t touch my grape tomato, olive & string cheese skewers that Rachel Ray suggested would make a good travel snack; I learned that she hates raw cheese. I lived with the girl for a year, and never knew this; I was usually too busy eating the cheese all by myself. On the other hand, she learned that for the past year, I’ve preferred my water to be room temperature, but she kept offering to chill my water bottle anyway.

Encountered Some Truly Inedible Food:
On the way to Minneapolis from Chicago, we stopped by to visit Penelope’s brother, who is studying biochem at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Before showing us the town, we stopped by his lab so he could check on his Petri dish of E. Coli. As he delightedly discovered his bacteria had colonized, I noticed that there was an open container of cookies on the lab table next to the centrifuge. You know, the one where they make colonies of E. Freaking Coli. Evidentially, geniuses aren’t always known for being geniuses. Later, the next day in fact, we went out for a meal in downtown Minneapolis at a restaurant with amazing Happy Hour deals. The table next to us had ordered the tater tots, and the waitress came up to them apologetically and said that she “couldn’t in good conscience” bring out the tater tots because there was something “terribly wrong” with them. “They forgot to add something. Like the potato.” For once, I was glad I ordered the salad.

Experienced the Flora and Fauna of our Great Land:
Most of it on my windshield. The bugs of Michigan are some of the juiciest in our country. The bugs of the Pocono region are the hardest to scrape off with the wipers.

Had Some Cute Overload:
On one of the hottest days of the year (it must have broken records in historically cold Minneapolis) we decided a trip to the zoo would be a great idea. I was awed by the mothers pushing their children around in strollers, because I could barely drag my own swollen, cranky feet around the park. However, just as I was ready to call Birmingham to tell him to hide the items in my nightstand before my parents receive my heatstroked corpse, I got to the prairie dog exhibit. Damn if those aren’t the cutest bastards this side of Iowa, and they know it. Enthralled by the adorable way their little hands chewed little seeds, I forgot my own pain, at least until we got to the disappointingly un-air-conditioned “working farm” exhibit, when I almost lost it. As I reach back into memory, however, the dogs were not able to out-cute the kitten Juvenis and his wife had in Chicago. I’m kind of glad my camera was busted, so I can forgo the moral debate about posting pictures of that tiny orange tabby poking out of my drawers.

Reached Milestones:
At exit 86 on Provincial Highway 402 in Ontario, Harry kissed Ginny. The intake of breath between Penelope and me was so sharp almost no oxygen was left in the car. At exit 15 of I-81 in New York, You-Know-Who Died. And I don’t mean “You-Know-Who” meaning Lord Voldemort, I mean __________, whose name I won’t reveal here in the chance that you haven’t listened to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince yet. If ever on a 42 hour car trip, I highly recommend it, except for the part where it’s hard to see the road through your own tears.

Listened to Ironic Music:
We were blissfully ignorant of most major traffic jams, except for a few delays for the miles and miles of Pennsylvania construction. However, crossing into New York from Canada took about two hours of waiting for the border guard to take their sweet ass time allowing Americans to come home and Ontarians to vacation. We wanted to save the last three disks of Harry Potter for the open road, so we listened to my iPod instead. The last song to come on before we got through the gate was Tom Petty’s “The Waiting is the Hardest Part,” and the first song to come on after passing through the guard was Simon & Garfunkel’s “America.” When I dropped Penelope off in New York City, the song that came on my first time alone in my car for a week was Patti Smith singing “Goodbye to You.”

Learned About the Value of Life:
In Illinois, there are road signs in construction areas that rather alarmed Penelope. They say, “Hit a worker, pay a $15,000 fine.” We couldn’t believe that the state would actually put a price on a person. Then, we realized that if you’re a construction worker, don’t get a job in Michigan, where the signs say, “Hit/Kill a worker, pay a $7,500 fine.”

Confirmed that I Hate the Yankees:
The Cubs were kind enough to have an away game so that we could find parking near Juvenis’s close-to-Wrigley-Field home. The Twins were nice enough to delay their game until after we already parked in the adjacent-to-the-Metrodome parking lot also used by the Guthrie Theatre. However, the Yankees, the Damn Yankees, had to schedule their game to let out right at the time I needed to be taking the Major Deegan home to the Hudson Valley after dropping off Penelope. Needless to say, an hour of waiting for Jersey drivers to realize that they have to be in the right lane to get to the GWB is not what I had in store for the very last leg of my trip.

Tasted Wine:
Wine tasting, an activity that I feared for a long time, has become one of my favorite things to do. While in Mackinaw City, I tried an absolutely fabulous Merlot and chased it with a Cheeze-it. (I guess that’s how they do it in the Midwest.) In Niagara, we tasted ice wine, a delicious concoction of sweet grapes which are harvested at -8 degrees (Centigrade.) The man who poured the wine looked a bit like Milton from Office Space, but completely endeared us by tactfully explaining that it was okay if we didn’t taste “essence of pipe tobacco” or “hints of dark chocolate” because most of that crap is made up by snooty tasters and everybody has different body chemistry and therefore taste wine differently.

Filled Up My Gas Tank. A Lot:
New York has the most expensive gas EVER. Ohio and New Jersey are the best, price-wise. Everyone else is sort of in the middle. I have no idea what kind of prices the Canadians charged us because 1) The prices were in Canadian dollars, 2) They use the metric system, so the prices were in litres 3) They don’t use decimal points on their signs, so I had no idea if we were being charged $1.013, $10.13, or $101.3 a litre. Penelope bought that round of gas anyway, so I’m crossing my fingers that her credit card bill doesn’t contain one outrageous charge.

Unintentionally Second-Hand Smoked:
I have been so happy with New York’s smoking ban, and was delighted to see that Illinois and Minnesota are cool like that, too. However, Michigan is still a smoker’s delight. As we entered the Upper Peninsula, we stopped at a restaurant/bowling alley that didn’t even have a non-smoking SECTION. Then again, they also had lotto cards in the place where napkins should go, and the grilled cheese was only $3.95, so who am I to complain? (cough cough) I would like to note, however, if you are a trucker in Michigan and you chose to smoke, please do not throw your butts out the window towards oncoming traffic. It may just land in the air vent of two girls traveling the other way and it may just cause their lovely car to be filled with a vile smell. It’s also possible that those girls may not have ever learned how to open the hood of a 2007 Saturn Ion, and it may cause them a significant amount of frustration until one of them realizes that the air vents are located right below the windshield wipers. I’m just saying…

Resisted the Temptation for Tacky Souvenirs:
Mackinac Island is a really classy place, despite the fact that you can’t swing a cat without hitting a fudge shop. In fact, the Grand Hotel has the audacity to charge $12 a person for the privilege of walking on the street in front of the establishment. So, towards the end of our brief stay on the island, we were a bit shocked to see that the golf club by the Grand Hotel had a sign proudly announcing the “Kitsch Convention.” Upon closer inspection, however, the sign was for Kitsch Attorneys and Consultants and included not a single schlocky figurine. True kitsch had to wait for our foray to Niagara Falls, Ontario, a town that Penelope noted has the highest wax museum per capita ratio anywhere in the world.

Oh, But We Ate Food Too:
Highlights include scant but delicious tomatoes made by The Grey Boy, Mexican in Madison, Asian Fusion in Chicago, Free Breakfast at the hotel in Mackinaw City and Niagara Falls, blueberries from the cooler in the car, Italian in a pseudo-ski lodge in Mackinaw City, craving-satisfying pizza in Minneapolis, and fried asparagus with a side of cute waiter in Minneapolis. In fact, we arrived in Minneapolis with minutes to spare to see a production of a play called Hunger produced by The Grey Boy and Dude The Girl’s theatre company. I guess one should suspect that theatergoers at a play about a woman who can’t stop eating would be likely to want to snack during the production, but we were still shocked by the couple in the front row macking on a never-ending bag of Chex Mix like they were at the circus.
Oh, and in case you were worried, I got back to the Hudson Valley in time for Free Pizza night at Planet Fitness on Monday.