Trip to Maine

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The other weekend we drove to Maine, and by we, I mean: me, my girlfriend, and our roommate.   We were going to visit my girlfriend’s family (she hadn’t been home in about a year).   My girlfriend had made the eight hour drive many times before, and I was quickly becoming a veteran myself, but this was the first time my roommate was going.  It was also the first time we were using a GPS, a brand new GPS that was my Christmas gift to my girlfriend.

Now, the week before the trip, my girlfriend had been feeling ill—nauseous and generally uncomfortable in the stomach.  But she’d more or less ignored it, feeling more excited about the chance to go home.

So, we loaded the car with our things and ourselves, hooked up the GPS, and snuggled my sick girlfriend in the back seat with some blankets and a big pillow.  We were leaving around midnight to avoid traffic and so we would arrive in the morning and be able to spend the full day awake and visiting.  I was the first to drive.  My girlfriend, who knew (more-or-less) how to get there, was asleep, and I was trusting in the kindness of our new GPS.   I soon found out that the trust was misplaced.

The first thing to go wrong, was when the GPS directed us to turn onto the PA turnpike.  I’d only brought about ten dollars, cash, for tolls, because that was all we had needed all the other times we’d driven.  The PA turnpike turned into the New Jersey turnpike and all our toll money was spent.  We had to stop, at near 2AM, and find an ATM.

Now, around York, finding an ATM isn’t hard.  You just stop by any Rutter’s and you’re done.  No ATM fees, no hassle.  The place we finally found in Jersey?  $3.00. Yep.  Three whole dollars to withdraw the $10 I needed to make the rest of the trip.  And by this point I wasn’t feeling so good either.

Soon afterwards I was feeling quite ill.  The energy drink I’d had to gear up for the drive wasn’t sitting well at all in my stomach.  Shortly, I was in the back seat, curled up under blankets; my girlfriend was in the passenger seat, also in blankets, trying to provide addled addendums to the GPS’s already skewed directions.  And our roommate, who’d come under the condition that he would not have to drive at all, was attempting his first 8 hour drive to Maine.

Much of the trip beyond this point is fuzzy, the one moment that does stick out is, for some reason, we’re in downtown New York City.  Our GPS thought that the shortest route to Maine from York included making our way through several avenues in downtown NYC.

The weekend improved from there.  I was violently ill, my girlfriend either re-caught whatever we had or it got much worse, my roommate got sick, and my girlfriend’s mom and brother got sick too.  We spent the whole weekend groaning, not eating, and trying to keep down fluids.  Then I drove most of the way back home.

All in all, it was a good weekend.

~Jesse