The 30th Birthday Road Trip

Friday was the night away that I had been planning for a month for Steve’s 30^th birthday. I lined up a babysitter for the boys, booked a room in an old historic Victorian style hotel in Glens Falls, New York and surprised Steve with a trip to a gaming center called Jiggawatts.

With all the planning done and having everything seemingly in order we were ready to roll.

We got going an hour later than we wanted to. In our rush to load the kids’ belongings into their grandfather’s truck, we missed the bag of soccer gear that Steve’s coat had shifted over.  The overlooked bag of shin pads and cleats went unnoticed until we actually reached the hotel in New York and I had to make the phone call to a five year-old and explain to him that he would have no uniform at his soccer game the next day.

It rained all the way up 495 North to 1-90 West. Then it pored. It came down hard and fast keeping us at a slow 40 to a crawl at many times. The wipers were whipping and people were tapping their brakes as if they were keeping beat on a kick drum. Several brake downs, road construction areas and even an accident involving a car that had hit the guard rail and come to a stop sideways in two of the three highway lanes slowed us down further. In an effort to keep stress at bay I enjoyed searching for rainbows, gazing at farmland and asking stupid questions about cows and why they are shaved only in their middles.

Why are they shaved only in their middles ?

What should have been a four and a half hour trip wrapped up in about six.

Pressed for time we checked in to our hotel room and then it was right back out the door into the night. Keeping the surprise a secret I consulted a mapquest print out for direction. I held the map sideways (oops) and thus we walked the wrong way for about 10 minutes and had to turn and walk back. Finally heading in the right direction a sudden shift in the wind occurred and my rain senses kicked in. Like being able to sense snow by looking at the sky and taking a deep breath, I could smell the rain.

“I think it is going to rain again I say,” the words are just barely out of my mouth when it opens up and pours.

With the car five minutes behind us, and the destination an unknown distance before us, Steve, coat clutched over his head asks, “Which is closer, the car or the place?”

“The car, I think.”

“Ugh, he says, “let’s just keeping going.”

“The car is closer… I’m pretty sure.”

“What do you want to do babe? Do you want to go get the umbrella,” he asks, frustrated and clearly annoyed with his wife’s poor planning.

“Yeah, then we can take the car here instead of walking,” a note of hope and optimism in my voice.

“Ugh, just forget it, let’s just go.  I’m tired of walking. I don’t want to walk all over the place,” a fair grievance on his part as I have already led him in the wrong direction once.

In a strange town, on a poorly lit seedy street, walking in the pouring rain with no umbrella, he in a coat and me in a sweater now completely soaked through, I howled like a hyena. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“We must be getting close,” I said as I checked his face to see what sort of emotion was there. All I could do was laugh for all I could find on his face was water dripping from the ends of his hair into his eyes. With great control in my voice I added, “I think the rain is letting up.” Then I was lost to a fit of giggles again.

When we did finally arrive the place was mostly empty save for four thirteen year-olds, the guy in charge and his buddy at the counter. We paid for two hours of play and flopped down at the PC’s to do Left For Dead 2 or 4 or whatever it was and Steve’s PC wouldn’t load. One of the older guys, and I use the word older loosely here (he was 19 I think), decided to play with Steve the Super Smash Bro’s on a big screen TV, and I at another, got to play Mario Kart. (A win all around.) As we left Steve thanked me for “renting a friend” for him to play with and I laughed uncontrollably again.

At the hotel restaurant we ordered some burgers and a “bucket of margarita.” The “bucket of margarita” came and it was a cocktail shaker filled with margarita (maybe two glasses each) in a bucket of ice- surprise! After twenty minutes the waitress reappeared and said the cook didn’t see our order and they were just now getting the burgers on the grill and she didn’t even apologize. We laughed some more. I had hoped we would get our bucket as a souvenir for what we paid for this falsely advertised margarita night, but no, 25 dollars for a couple of Dixie cup sized margs and only a bill to remember them by.

The hotel room on the other hand was beautiful. It was very old and charming. And while the bed was ok, it wasn’t our own. Steve tossed and turned until early in the morning. Then in the morning when I was finally sleeping well because Steve was, I heard a weird thudding noise. I listened for a while and decided it must be kids upstairs above us playing or running around, or something. Then the weird noise would disappear and then reappear within a minute or so. Soon the noise was accompanied by a panting outside our door.  It was like listening to a car horn, muffled then louder upon approach and then muffling in the distance again. I couldn’t restrain myself anymore and so got out of bed and glued my eye to the peephole. The panting noise and the thumping carpet sounds had me fearing that I was really going to be a peeping Tom to some sort of weirdo right outside our room.  As the noise grew closer to the door  I could see a man was jogging in the hotel hall at six on a Saturday morning.

A man was jogging in a hotel hall at six on a Saturday morning.

I wish I were kidding.

I watched him come to our end of the hall, stop, about face and head off in the other direction. I watched him do this several times.

I gave up sleep and took a shower in less than satisfying water pressure. We checked out shortly after that and the rest of our trip was fine and largely uneventful. We had breakfast at a local diner, drove around Albany, parked for maybe five minutes and paid five bucks to do it.

It was a trip that I will remember for many years to come and one that will surly make me laugh whenever it is brought up, the best kind of trips to have.