We head north for the funeral. I can say we, because the three of us are fully vaccinated, a safe(ish) bubble encapsulated.
The first part of the trip is my (old, soon to be again) commute to the office. The standard loops, the familiar stopping points. Good practice for the office reopening.
Somewhere along the way we see a huge military plane coming in for a landing, right across the road. There’s a base nearby, but this one part of the trip is new! Even so it reminds me of other sights, other skies in my morning commutes.
Next stretch is across the DelMemBr, and then we take 295, familiar to my folks, and for a stretch it’s their turn to walk memory lane. This exit goes to this place we used to… that exit leads to the old…
Northward, eventually meeting the Turnpike.
The exit my father worked at this out that job, the familiar rest stops taking me to or from college.
My college exit.
My former home exit, where some 20 years of my life and some of my dearest friends are. “Hey guys should we pop off the highway and go visiting?”
But alas the trek calls us north, and the weather is getting sour. Better to make tracks to our destination.
The Parkway. South would lead me to my best friend from college, north leads toward home, the train station that took me to NYC when required, and again to friends.
Then we’re clear of my stomping grounds. But dad’s career has been long and varied; shortly we’re back on one of his regions and he knows the exits. Inexorably northward, I have one last hurrah passing the exit for a town my old manager lives in (so far as I know).
Then we are out of NJ, into NY. One exit error at the last minute nearly gets us run off the road but we live (as you see), and then we are a quick loop into the Garden Inn for the night. Which is so like the others that I have a moment of remembrance, not for this hotel but the one exactly like it when I went to a wedding in NJ a few years ago.
Unpack unwind check in with S, and step my steps…
Bed. Sleep.
Tomorrow we continue on.
aka gringita 