July 20, 2016

Roadie!!!

It's a beautiful day in Mr. Robinson's neighborhood. Would you be mine, could you be mine, won't you be my personal servant who waits on me hand and foot? Purty please?

Silliness aside, I are now semi-comfortably back in the old homestead. The cows have been slaughtered for fresh Sir Loin of Beef, the goats have been let loose on the back forty, and those nasty little tofu chunks have left the building.

Free form silliness aside, I had a delightful week that featured the usual cast of actual smart folks (my co-workers), super smart folks (the mentally midgets inept I do payroll for), and the wickedly smart forks (Humane Resources). My co-workers came through with flying colors for my payrolls and the stress I thought would be there when I got back, weren't.

This weekend was good, in that I visited the annual town festival for the first time since I tried to get a booth to hawk this book (of which copies are still available for purchase here):

Book Trailer
And even saw a mini-clone of The Westboro Baptist Church protesting for some seriously unknown reason in a prime downtown location.



But, enough about that. Let me now regale you with tales of brave G.B.'s action packed road trip that took place July 2nd through July 9th. Let us state at the outset that I will be talking about said road trip (the first since 2008) for at least the next month and a half or so. Why? Cannon fodder, my good reader, cannon fodder.

And now, let us begin at the beginning.

Whenever I do a road trip, I always have one particular place I want to visit. One year we did the R&R Hall of Fame. Another year it was the Nebraska Zoo. Still another was the Zane Grey Museum, the U.S. Civil War Museum and the Columbus Zoo. This year, it was this wonderful place:

This was the one particular place that I wanted to go. A lot of fun things happened on the way to Cooperstown, NY, of the which the first was that even though my vaca started on July 1st, I had a ton o' errands to finish up on, so we left on the 2nd roughly around 10a.

We needed to follow the directions on how to get there from here (I-90W to exit 25A; I-88W to exit 24, NY Rte. 20W to NY Rte. 80, NY Rte. 80S to Cooperstown). So being the intrepid explorer I is, we took CT Rte 8 to I-90, because it was the quickest indirect route there. Roughly 3 hours later, we find ourselves tooling down I-88W, when out of the corner of our collective eyes, we saw the brown highway sign that said Baseball Hall of Fame Exit 24.

Excited, I roared down the exit ramp and followed the signs towards Cooperstown. Imagine my surprise when I saw the green road sign at the traffic light just over the bridge that said "Cooperstown, 51 miles thataway".

I said, "Seriously?"

So I hopped back on the highway and continued down I-88 for another 10 miles or so, when I spotted signs that said "Lodging yonder thisaway". So I took the exit for yonder thisaway, and after making an initial poor choice, we stopped at a Super 8 Motel, where we promptly experienced the first of exactly two price gouges for lodging on the trip. At this Super 8 Motel in Cobleskill, NY, where we expected the price to be about $90 (being the weekend when rates are slightly higher and that it's a Super 8), we were told that it was $125. After picking up our jaws from the ground, we paid the fee and tripped the light fantastic checking out the sights and sounds of Cobleskill NY.

I give this example of why you should take directions that a business has posted on their website with a huge bag of rock salt. On the website, they imply that its simply a hop, skip & a jump to there.

Tune in next week when I regale you with tales of the trip from Cobleskill, NY to Cooperstown, NY, and our experiences there at Cooperstown.

(c) 2016 BOOKS BY G.B. MILLER. All Rights Reserved.

14 comments:

  1. Ninety bucks for a Super 8? That is gouging. I've stayed in really nice hotels that weren't that much.
    I have a feeling your continued posts will remind me why I hate really long road trips...

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    1. I've found most Super 8's to be relatively cheap, simply based on the location (semi-crappy section of town). The front desk person at this one tried to cheer me up by saying there was one up the road that charged $165.

      Feh.

      I've gotten mellow over the years, so this road trip was a complete 180 over the ones I did in the 90's.

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  2. Price gouging during prime holiday time is a scourge upon the face of the earth, but whaddya goin to do, eh? I guess they have to make money while the sun shines to make up for all those dreary winter weekends when no one's around.

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    1. I'm thinking that the price was a tad higher than normal on that particular weekend because there were events going on in the area. The parking lot was quite full when I got up the next day.

      Still, here in the States (don't know about Canada) motels/hotels always charge higher rates on Friday/Saturdays, as opposed to the read of the week.

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  3. That's way too much. Sorry you had to go thru so much trouble for such little reward.

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    1. It wasn't too bad. The trip itself overall was pretty good. Most of the driving was like what happened on the first day.

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  4. Quiet rural towns are great because we don't have protests...yet.

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    1. Yes they are. And I'll be highlighting that portion of my trip in the coming weeks.

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  5. Yeah, 50 miles is a long way to drive. I've been mislead by signage before, getting off the freeway thinking a KFC is only a mile away and then find it's 5 miles.

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    1. The furthest we've driven for food on this trip was about a mile from the highway. I was determined to eat at a DQ, so when I saw a sign for one, off the highway I went.

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  6. Sounds like a nice road trip - my favorite kind. So neat you're going to see Cooperstown.

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    1. Overall, it was. And it was very cool to go to Cooperstown.

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  7. I don't think I'd have the patience for a long road trip. A couple of hours of sitting in a car per day is about my maximum. But I am looking forward to vicarious travels with you!

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    1. Thanks.

      I did take frequent breaks during the road trip, mostly because I did all the driving, but also because my body can't handle more than two hours at clip behind the steering wheel.

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