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Jersey barriers of New Brunswick
Monday, September 5 2016
location: near Sligo Creek Park, Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland
This morning we all sat around the circular eat-in kitchen table eating fruit and drinking coffee. As is often the case, the coffee seemed to be suspiciously devoid of caffeination. I wouldn't really notice it until a slightly headache-tinged fog of lethargy swept over me at the Ethiopian restaurant (Bete Ethiopian Cuisine) Gretchen and I took Susan and David to for lunch. We sat in the pleasant back garden at a table beneath a catalpa tree. I ordered a cup of coffee, and it came out small and strong, sort of the way you'd expect from the land where coffee was discovered (later to be ruled by the most coffee-obsessed of European countries). As for the food, Gretchen ordered the veggie combo for four, and it came out on one enormous plate on injera daubed here and there with scoops of the various wats. We were all very hungry and eating it quickly and relentlessly just felt so right. There were, of course, concerns about the injera then proceeding to expand in our stomachs. But does that really even happen?
After we did a little shopping in an Ethiopian grocery store, Susan and David dropped us off at Gretchen's parents' house and then headed for home. They'd be spending the night in Princeton at a hotel with an outdoor pool (though, in a massive miscalculation, the pool would've been closed for the summer just a few days before).
Gretchen and I would also be heading homeward today, though we first had to pack a number of things we'd been gifted as part of the pre-Watergate household downsizing. Among the items we'd be taking with us were a fair number of art history books, a couple dolls, a wooden chest covered with intricately-hand-embossed copper sheets, and a six-and-a-half-foot-tall wooden sculpture depicting various African animals standing on each others' backs (all of them ultimately resting on a turtle, because, from there it's turtles all the way down). I got the impression Gretchen's parents' had little experience carrying things on their vehicles' roof racks, because they kept trying to come up with a way for that sculpture to fit inside the car. For me, though, it was a no-brainer to wrap it in a blanket and strap it to the roof.
Gretchen went through the house, her childhood home since 1978, to say goodbye and take pictures. We also went for one last walk with the dogs in Sligo Park. Ramona, being our poorly behaved dog, caught what we thought was "a scent" and disappeared into the woods. When we next saw her, she had a large patch of something disgusting and brown on one of her shoulders that took considerable soap and water to wash away.
The drive homeward was surprisingly uneventful. Though the Labor Day weekend had seemed to depopulate Washington, there wasn't much evidence that people were returning as we headed north. And they certainly weren't leaving either; the north-bound lanes on I-95 about as empty as they get on late afternoon.
Nevertheless, somewhere in New Jersey, Gretchen began entertaining the idea of staying in a motel for the night. The problem was that it was hard to research which motels were pet friendly, especially when Gretchen was driving (she's better at doing things on a smartphone than I am). Gretchen called one motel to ask if they were pet friendly and was told they charge a $70 cleaning fee. The only suitable response to that was a shocked, "Yeah, no."
We decided to head north on US 1 and happen upon a suitable motel that way. They tended to come up fast and without warning or on the left side across the impenetrable and ubiquitous "Jersey barrier," which makes U-turns and most left-turns seem difficult if not impossible. It was best that we missed the first motels we passed, since they were in remote areas without any evident restaurants nearby. But eventually we found the perfect place, a Motel 6 right next to a Red Carpet Inn. Surely one of those motels would be dog friendly. The Motel 6 had no problem with our dogs and even had a room available around back where we could turn them loose in the parking lot. Despite being non-smoking, it smelled of stale ashtrays as well as basement funk, but once we'd been in it for awhile we acclimated. Checking in with HappyCow.com, Gretchen realized we were only a little over a mile from a vegan restaurant (Veganized) her parents had raved about, and it was not yet closed. And a very large delivery order she placed on the web seemed to work even though the restaurant was about to close.
At this point I realized I needed some sort of alcohol for the night. Not knowing the rules about such things in New Jersey, I hiked out to a nearby Exxon, where the only drinks for sale were non-alcoholic. Evidently New Jersey is one of those states. So back in the motel room, I researched liquor stores and was soon given the address of Pino's Wine Cellar across the Raritan River in Highland Park. What with the Jersey barriers and all, getting there would be complicated, but I had navigation on my smartphone to help me. After a needlessly-long drive, it seemed just my luck that Pino's was closed. Fortunately, the nearby Rite Aid claimed to sell liquor, and they were very much open. Not only did I get a sixer of Little Sumpin' Sumpin' Ale, but I also got a bottle of vinho verde for Gretchen. It was good I had my phone for the drive home, because there was nothing intuitive about taking Route 18 South as a way to get from US 1 South to US 1 North.
Meanwhile, the vegan food Gretchen had ordered was over an hour late when the guy delivering it called us for directional help. Evidently he couldn't figure out how to plug Motel 6 into his smartphone. Gretchen explained that we weren't from the area and that it was his job to figure out where the Motel 6 was. But then I told her something that, when she repeated it, all became clear. We were on US 1 north, not south. When dude arrived to deliver the food, he wanted to show Gretchen something of his navigational problems, but she had no interest, taking the bag and disappearing into our room. My eggplant sandwich was great, but the fries had gone flaccid in the time it had taken to deliver them.
Gretchen was in charge of the room's teevee and she had us watching mostly HGTV shows, including a House Hunters International wherein a construction company honcho and his trophy wife were looking for a multi-million-dollar house in the US Virgin Islands.
Every time we let the dogs out, they pushed the boundaries a little more on the sort of trouble they were willing to get into. At first it was just Ramona bringing back disgusting flattened black things from the dumpster. Then she decided to take Neville on a tour of the second floor tier, terrifying a white couple (the male of whom helpfully suggested I keep her on a leash — thanks dude, I hadn't thought of that!). At some point Ramona broke through the pickets in the fence behind the dumpster and she and Neville wandered in a weedy trash-strewn no-dog's land until I pleaded with them to please come the fuck back. In the panic attached to that incident, Gretchen badly sprained the big toe on her right foot and required a cold bottle of Little Sumpin' Sumpin' pressed against it for the better part of an hour.
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