One. December 30, 2015. 6:32AM. Long Term Parking, JFK International Airport. Row A-19.
This is the first in presumably a 14-part series on my most recent 60-hour escapade in the city that never sleeps, currently being written by a girl who feels like she may never sleep again. Fourteen posts feels ambitious, but why the heck not, you know? (I’m in the stage of sleep deprivation where I feel pretty darn invincible so fourteen posts feels like pssh please. If someone told me I was a cyborg, chances feel high that I’d believe them. And go outside right now and try to fight the robots. Just to give you some perspective of where I am mentally right now.)
Anyway, before I kick this thing off here’s what you need to know. Three girls (me, Rachael, and Ashley), one dream (and by that I mean Rachael has wanted to spend New Year’s Eve in NYC since she was 12, and Ashley and I are just suckers for adventure and travel), and one hella long road trip to New York City babyyyyyyyyyy! The trip was truly wonderful in every way. I took 14 polaroids to commemorate the experience so consider each post an elongated caption. Alright, here goes.
To kick things off, here are 10 notable (semi-notable) things that happened on our way to the Big Apple:
1. Traveling is all about flexibility and adaptability. And by that I mean, you may have bought your $80 cross-country, round trip bus tickets in October but you gotta be ready for that day-before-your-trip Google search that reveals that 98% of people report having had a negative experience with the bus line you chose. It also is worth noting that 96% of people wouldn’t use said bus line again. Which begs the question, who are these 2% of people that despite their negative experience would venture to do it again? I’m left to assume it’s someone like Daryl from The Walking Dead. Ain’t scared of nothin’. Alright well point being that we made the epitome of a game time decision, decided to eat the $80 cost of the bus tickets we'd already bought, forgive ourselves for the total lack of foresight in not having realized the bus we were scheduled to take was sketch mc-freakin-sketch, rented a car (got double charged for the rental, but that’s a different story Hertz has already heard a lot about), and geared up for what would be a 14.5 hour - through the night - road trip to NYC from Atlanta. So to recap, for two months we thought we were bussing to New York, but we ended up renting a car last minute. The moral here is you gotta stay on your toes, people. Gotta stay on your toes.
2. People do weird stuff on the roads of America at night. We saw a cyclist just beat bopping along the interstate (yep, interstate) outside Washington D.C. circa 2:30AM. No reflectors, grey clothing, going with the flow of traffic, which I guess is your best bet if you’re choosing to bike on the interstate. Also, did I mention their was a majooooooor fog situation going on out there? To put all the pieces together, it was dark, it was late, it was foggy, it was cold - which doesn’t really affect visibility but just sucks - and IT WAS THE FREAKIN' INTERSTATE, and this fellow was just riding his bike like he was on a beach cruiser on Kiawah Island.
3. Beef jerky is the ultimate snack. Truly. Not just car snack, but snack snack. We may or may not have blown through five bags of premium jerkey in less than four days. We felt a little like cave people, but what better way to connect with your ancestors than to gnaw on some dried meat?
4. Car naps beat bus naps. Especially sketchy bus naps
5. Versas get amazing gas mileage! Which was nifty seeing as to how the toll roads up north ROB YOU BLIND. Seriously, a $15 toll just feels unethical.
6. Rachael would rather her husband have spaghetti for arm/armpit hairs than spaghetti for nose hairs. Ashley and I stronglyyy disagree. But to be clear, our collective preference would be for regular human hair.
7. So about the parking situation at JFK. In an effort to try and save $18 on parking, we decided to not park in the official JFK lot and look for some supposedly cheaper parking we found online. Thirty minutes later and somewhere around 22 loopty loop turns on the crazy roadways (quite literally), we were back at the entrance to the JFK parking lot. There was no mystery cheap parking lot - I hate when the internet lies - and to get back to where we started was nothing short of an act of Congress. The northern roads were not our friend this morning.
8. uberPool is a thing. Think carpooling but with Uber. We had a lovely expereince with our driver whose name I cannot pronounce (or remember) and a Brooklyn native, Euthoria? Eurethlia? Regardless, I'd recommend the 'pool.
Other than some naps, some laughs, some stops, some jerkey, some songs, some more jerkey, some Serial (not for me, I was out cold), some more jerkey, and a nighttime driving tour through foggy northeast America, that about sums up our 14.5 hour car trip, which started at 3:30PM on December 29th and had us arriving at JFK around 6:00AM on the 30th.
Stay tuned for the second installment, coming your way (potentially) sometime soon.
love and sleeeeeeeep, k