That Better Be The Best Sandwich Ever Made...

Day three – or day one depending on whether you consider the stops in Manchester and Hornell as part of the Grand Road Trip.

We left Hornell by 7:00 AM after a short adventure trying to figure out how to return the keys to Liz’s rental car. The highway out of New York State and through Pennsylvania was fairly clear, though the drizzly rain that would persist for the next thousand-plus miles had begun. We had a quick pit stop for coffee and food about halfway through the Pennsylvania stretch, thereby ensuring that at least Liz would have set foot in every state along the way. The rest of us had missed the chance to get out of the car in Massachusetts, but we figure that we’d all spent enough time there at other points that this was fairly irrelevant.

Incidentally, if you ever drive a long distance with freinds in another car, get walkie-talkies. We picked up a $20 pair in CT before starting off, and they’ve been indispensible. Coordinating pit stops and confirming directions is great, being able to point out unusual sights along the way to the other car is phenomenal.

We hit Ohio before noon, and eventually stopped at a rest stop south of Toledo for gas and lunch. Gas was $2.66 a gallon, so Ohio may get the award for best gas prices on I-90. Keith and I opted for Burger King, which went flawlessly except for the woman who didn’t understand that the twenty-or-so people asking her to move out of the way so they could reach the soda dispensers really did honestly want her to move, and her kid who so generously sneezed directly into Keith’s lunch bag while Keith reached around the woman for a lid for his drink.


Heather and Liz, on the other hand, decided to try out the new Einstein Bros. Bagel shop. It would seem that the management had no real interest in succeding, as it took over forty-five minutes for the poor girl behind the counter (at most times trying to run the whole place by herself) to make the two sandwiches. It really was a comedy of errors; she was, by no fault of her own, a good foot too short to reach anything kept above the countertop, including the microwaves and many of the bagels. Her front-counter co-worker wasn’t doing much to help the customers, and despite the growing crowd of people angrily waiting, he continued to take orders for the girl to fill. There were also two manager-types in the back of the shop, but they seemed mostly concerned with things like the reserve stock of napkins and bagels (which weren’t being bought or sold anyway).

The rest of the day went smoothly though, and we got to Michigan City, Indiana in one piece (four pieces?).

One last note, one that I foreshadowed yesterday: Red Roof Inns lies about the conditions of their free internet access. The TV ads, the listings on the AAA website, the banner on the front of the hotel management office, all of them promise free high-speed internet access. The truth? Red Roof Inns has a partnership deal with T-Mobile Wireless. Pre-existing T-Mobile customers get free access with their pre-existing accounts. Meaning that if you’re already paying to have access to the global T-Mobile wireless network, Red Roof Inns promises not to charge you again for it. The rest of us? Red Roof Inns will be happy to overcharge us for one night of Wi-Fi access if we promise to also sign up for a T-Mobile subscription of some sort. Ugggh.


Okay, more catch-up tomorrow...