East Brunswick, NJ: Rest and Replenishment

The past five days Sash and I have been laying low here in East Brunswick, NJ.  For the most part, we've been holed up in our hotel room.

It's actually welcomed moment of rest.

The ride from Baltimore to here was exhausting.  If you read about it on Motorcycle Philosophy, I tried to avoid toll roads after my frustration with expensive tolls on federally owned highways.  I don't mind privatization mind you, but these are still Interstates and somehow I'm smelling a rat.

So, I figured out a route that I thought bypassed tolls, only to find that avoiding tolls meant a lot of tedious riding through surface streets.  We still had to pay $8.00 for both bikes over the Chesapeake Bay on the I-695, and another $16.00 for both bikes on the US-40 over the Susquehanna River.

But much of the route I had followed took us through a lot of intersections and traffic lights, causing the day to stretch out.  I was fine.  I mean, since I was a kid I learned to dissociate from my emotions and pretty much stay in zombie mode.  But Sash doesn't have that ability.  The physical wear and tear of stop and go traffic all day long manifests itself into her emotions, and eventually it reaches a boiling point.

By the time we were caught in heavy traffic along the I-95 in Philadelphia, she pulled over to the side and threw her hands down and said, "I can't go anymore.  I'm done."

And if you know about our respective childhood abuses and difficulties in relating to other people, this stuff often escalates into a fight.  And there we were, on the shoulder of the freeway, fighting while commuters moving 5 MPH watched us pick away at each other.

Finally, I jumped on my bike in anger and just peeled off.  Sash was quick to the task and followed me right behind.  Further north on the I-95, where traffic let up, she pulled ahead and motioned me to take an exit ramp.  We pulled into a gas station, and she said wasn't going any further from here.  She wanted to find a room to stay the night.  I agreed, saying she could stay here while I would go on to East Brunswick.

After some discussion, some blown steam, and a few sedatives, we both got back on our bikes and took the US-1 into East Brunswick.  We got the hotel and quickly made up, understanding it was just grueling ride through traffic that made things difficult for us to handle.

And once we got to the hotel, we found the traffic and road design in East Brunswick largely the same clusterfuck, rendering us uninspired to explore the area.

However, on the way up here, we did find a brief respite in a quaint little eatery called, Pier 1 Restaurant in North East, MD.  With temperatures reaching into the upper-80s that day, a cold salad with iced tea sounded like the perfect response.  I ordered up a chef salad while Sash had a crab salad.  We followed it up with slices of lemon meringue pie and chocolate swirl cheesecake.

The following day in New Jersey, Sash suffered a terrible pain in her lower-right back.  By the looks of it, I figured it was a kidney stone.  We took her to the E/R at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and didn't leave until late at night.  They ruled out kidney stone.  They discovered a ovarian cyst, but decided it wasn't worth operating on and discharged her with orders to return if the pain continued.

And considering we still have lots of work to catch up on with our respective Internet marketing businesses, it made sense to just remain locked in our hotel room.

I never intended this road trip to be a vacation or a sight-seeing tour.  It was always meant to live our lives on the road, still working and playing as we always did, but doing it in a different location each week.

So, that's what East Brunswick, NJ has been for us the past five days.

Leaving Baltimore, we got lost trying to find the right freeway to take us over the Chesapeake Bay

Sash going tank-top on the I-695 in Maryland

Riding over the Francis Scott Key Bridge, Baltimore, MD

Highway 7, Old Philadelphia Rd, Charlestown, MD

Got lost again, going down the wrong road, but beautiful scenery

After several wrong turns and missed turns, we finally reached Market Street Cafe in Charlestown, MD where we wanted to have lunch, only to find it was closed today.

Highway took a breather to calm himself down after getting angry with himself for missing turns and getting lost.

Pier 1 Restaurant in North East, MD

They make a good chef salad at Pier 1 Restaurant, along with a tasty lemon meringue pie.

Sash waits for the light to change at an intersection in Wilmington, DE

Heavy traffic piles up along US-40 in Delaware

The I-95 comes to a dead stop in Philadelphia, PA

Lincoln Financial Field, where the Philadelphia Eagles play.

Posted by Anonymous at 8:13 PM

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Labels: New Jersey

Location: East Brunswick, NJ, USA