On Friday, everyone left work a bit early and met up in the hopes of leaving early and beating some of the rush hour and cottage traffic. But Ben couldn’t find his passport and so we were delayed, which was ironic because he was the one that suggested we leave early! Fortunately for us, we met at a convenient location (Victoria Park/Sheppard) and there was a bank nearby to get USD, a Dairy Queen for some snacks and a Chuck E. Cheese for some fun. Finally at 5:30ish, we were assembled, split into two cars (Pauline and I, Victor, Richard in one and Ben, Joanna, Nelson, Kitty in the other) and hit the road.
We also quickly hit traffic in the Pickering to Oshawa stretch of the 401, and it was not looking good for an early reasonably late arrival. We decided to take the east route through Kingston instead of the west route through Buffalo because we expected there to be a helluva lot of traffic at the Niagara crossing. The drawback was that our route was about 50km longer for a total of about 850km. At a reasonable speed (120km/h) and quick rest stops, we expected the drive to take ~9 hours. That estimate was not looking good.
To further compound the issue, we quickly realized that we had forgotten to pack any CDs with us — an essential component of any road trip (fortunately we had snacks). This wasn’t a problem yet, but as we got further into the states, the radio stations became particularly transient, and only lasted for a song or two.
So we motored along slowly, through the traffic. We had some FRS radios with us and so were able to amuse ourselves by chatting with the other car — until our radios ran out of batteries. Then we switched to texting, which ended up being an essential communication medium this trip. Too bad each text in the US cost 40¢.
Anyways, back to my story. We made it to the border at the Thousand Islands at a reasonable time, around 8 or 9pm I believe. We passed through without trouble but Ben’s car got delayed for 30-40 minutes so we leisurely made our way into upstate New York, stopped for some gas and jerky, were scammed by a McD’s sign (drive 4 miles into town? forget it), before finding a closer McDonalds at exit 31 on I-81 north of Syracuse. We sent a text to the other car that we were stopping for food, but they had inexplicably made up half an hour of time and almost missed the exit because they got the message too late.
This McDonalds was posh, it was decorated like a Starbucks with stadium lighting made by Ikea. We had our washroom break, ate a late dinner, and hit the road again. By this time, it was 11 something and we were only halfway there. We drove pretty quickly and ended up arriving by 3 in the morning. Not too late, and there was still time for some sleep before starting the day on Saturday.
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