7/12/09 - Letter to a Friend
Dear Stefanie,
Can you remind me whether I hate the shore?
This is a serious request - I pretend to hate a lot of things and I can't remember if the shore is something I actually hate or just pretend to hate.
If I legit hate it, then this story is further reason for potential shore hatred. Saturday on my way to Ocean City NJ (aka The OC) I was on the phone (hands-free of course) talking to my old friend Buzz when my car broke down on the highway as smoke blazed out of my car's hood. Like Cheech and Chong blazed. Like it was sending me smoke signals which I believe said "turn back now, you hate the shore" but I could be wrong because I haven't practiced sending OR reading smoke signals in quite some time. Probably since college, and speaking of which did you by any chance see Transformers 2?? It is awesome you get to see all my favorite parts of Princeton's campus. Dillon Gym, Whig/Cleo, Firestone Library, Dodd Hall, Megan Fox, & Bumblebee!
So mechanic Tom from Pioneer Gas Station in Runnemede NJ tells me I need a new compressor ASAP or else my whole car will blow up (exact words were "if you drive you this car will lose everything").
While they fixed my car I hung out at Runnemede's famous Philly Sports Cafe - which by the way was baller - for three hours. A really nice cute bartender named Tara gave me free diet cokes but all her co-workers thought I was a stalker since I sat at her bar by myself for three hours in full beach gear (bathing suit, SPF 45 head to toe, flip flops, & princeton visor no joke) drinking diet cokes, watching 14 giant flatscreen TVs all broadcasting different camera angles of Lance Armstrong biking up and down the Pyrenees and making small talk like this:
"so, what do you do for fun in Runnemeade?"
"oh, you go to the shore a lot? yeah i like the shore. it's great there. Tom the mechanic is really great too. You should meet him sometime"
My game is tragic.
Typically a two hour trip, it took me seven hours and $871 to get to Ocean City (+ gas and tolls). And Saturday night I got stuck sleeping on a cot in the laundry room - the laundry room is a pseudo-addition on our shore house and it has a very frail tin roof and one wall is completely made of windows which is too bad since we had torrential downpour & hurricane winds from midnight to 6am which did not gently rock me to sleep.
So let me know whether I hate the shore so I can figure out if this weekend was literally the reason I will never go to the shore again (boo shore!) or just a fun adventure (hooray fun!).
Your friend,
Dann