Another Vermont Trip

As I mentioned earlier this week, I spent the long weekend of labor day in Vermont with my wife and son.  Once again, the weekend went by way too quickly and left both my wife and I longing for at least one extra day or two before heading back to work.  Unfortunately, we couldn't stay an extra day.   But back to the weekend.  This past camping weekend was a little different than any other we had gone on with our son.  All the previous trips were made as a family with the three of us and our two dogs packed into one car.  Things changed a little this past weekend as my wife had to work and couldn't get out till 230 in the afternoon.  With that late of a start, we wouldn't get to Vermont till at least 6, the latest 7.  That would have left us with scarce little sunlight left to cut the grass and get the entire camp set up.  In addition, with our son's bedtime being at 530, we would have had a fussy little guy on our hands.  Instead, what we did was take two cars up, my wife's car and my work van.  As I had the day off, I packed up the car with the food, clothes, our son, and the dogs and headed up early in the day.  We were on the road by 10 and in Vermont by 1:45 which included a stop to feed our little man some mango's and peaches.  I was expecting the trip with just the boys and the dogs to be a little trying as I had to take care of everyone.  I was kind of hoping our son would sleep most of the way up, but instead he decided to sit there and stare out the window or play with the straps holding him in to his car seat.  Out of the almost 4 hour trip, he maybe slept about 40 minutes.  Not ideal, but he didn't fuss at all the rest of the trip so I really can't complain too much. 

When we got there, I let the dogs out to run around and got our son situated in his stroller with his bottle of milk to watch me work.  And work I did.  As he was sitting watching, I trimmed a good 75% of the grass and weeds, got the tent set up by myself somehow, and got almost the entire kitchen and eating area up and running.  The whole time he just sat, watched, and babbled away.  After I had everything pretty much set up, which took me about 2.5 hours, it was time to play.  At the end of any day when our son is getting tired, all he wants to do is walk around and tire himself out some more.  Vermont was no different.  So we walked around the clearing multiple times and ended up sitting down in the grass so he could play for about half an hour.  He was absolutely fascinated by the tall grass, the clover, and the variety of weeds that grow randomly up there.  As he was sitting there, he would gently go to grab a stem of grass with some seeds on it, and once within his grasp, rip it out.  Most of the time, he would just throw the grass to the side and grab for some more.  Every so often, he would offer up a gift of grass to me and place it in my hand.  It is very cute to watch.  But Friday offered us only limited time to play in the grass as I had to spend the rest of the time setting things up.  The part I was worried about most was putting him to bed by myself.  Every single other time we had gone camping with him, he screamed his head off the first night we were up there for at least half hour to forty five minutes and throughout the night.  Often times, my wife would head in to calm him down so he could get back to sleep in our tent.  I was expecting the worst as I headed into our tent, bottle and baby in hand.  As he drank his bottle, I sang to him trying to settle him down.  By the time he finished, I could see he was tired, but he hadn't quite fallen asleep in my arms.  Figuring the best option was to place and run, I placed him in his little pea pod tent and made my escape.  The worried look on his face as I placed him into his tent and re-assured him everything was OK was priceless.  He didn't start crying right away, but about 30 seconds out, he started his screaming. 

As I was expecting the worst, I sat down and waited to see how long he would carry on for.  Much to my surprise and delight, the crying/screaming only lasted about 5 minutes if that.  He was then silent for about half an hour before crying/screaming again for another 5 minutes after which I heard nothing till the morning.  It seems that as he grows older, he is getting more accustomed to sleeping in a tent in the middle of the woods.  The only downside to camping with him right now is that he doesn't want to nap during the day and if he does manage to fall asleep, it is only for a very short time and then he is wide awake and ready to go.  Aside from the minimal naps, he did very well.  He slept more than he usually does through the night averaging 13 hours instead of his normal 12.  He didn't even mind the cooler weather that we had this past weekend in Vermont.  It got up into the low 70's during the day and 40's at night.  Perfect weather for camping.  We still have one more family camping trip planned for October.  It will be right around his birthday, Columbus day weekend, and it is sure to be quite a bit chillier up there.  I am sure that he will be fine as he normally is.  For now, as I work through the long days, I will think about the cool relaxing weather up in Vermont and wait for the weather to slowly make its way down to Connecticut.  Hopefully the cool weather will come sooner rather than later and push all this nasty humidity out of here. 

Victim of Vandalism

Who, you might ask, am I talking about in the title of my blog?  Myself, unfortunately.  For the most part, the area where I live is quaint, quiet, and nice.  There is one street about a block away that harbors a good amount drug issues, but any issues that arise rarely spill out of its little enclave.  There is rarely any violence in our whole town and theft doesn't seem to be a big factor either.  Vandalism, however, has been an issue this past summer with whatever punks are running around thinking its fun to destroy people's property. (7 above ground pools have been slashed)  What makes it even more surprising to me is that we live on a fairly busy street that people use as a cut through to the heavily trafficked main street that runs through town.  On top of that, I have been the only victim on our street that I know of.  This past Thursday night was not the first time my van was vandalized, but it was by far the worst.  The first time it happened was probably about a month and a half ago.  That first time it was merely a drive by egging on the back of my van.  It wasn't a big deal as I noticed it first thing in the morning and was able to wash it off before it did any damage.  On top of that, my van needed a good wash down so I didn't really mind to much.  This past week, however, was a different story as the punks walking around in the wee hours of the morning decided to use grey spray paint and cover one whole side of my van with crude and obnoxious words.  I won't repeat the words here, but suffice it to say that any well raised boy would be pummeled if he ever uttered these derogatory words to his mother.  Needless to say, I was livid when I found out.  Even worse, my wife was taking my van to work on Friday as I was leaving early with our son in our car for Vermont. 

So Friday morning, amidst my pacing, venting, a scheming, I called the police, filed a report, and got told that they would keep an eye out.  Beyond that, they couldn't do very much, which is understandable.  Unfortunately, that didn't quite satiate my immediate desire for revenge.  I won't lie, I was promising all sorts of bodily harm to the punks if I found them.  The first idea that popped into my head for revenge (if I caught them in the act again) was to bring out my sledge hammer and break their kneecaps on the pavement.  By doing this, I figured that it would pretty much prevent them from ever running around with a can of spray paint again.  Think about it, how many punks do you see vandalizing things on crutches.  It is just not an optimal way to go about vandalizing things if you want a chance at getting away.  While that desire to break knee caps has diminished greatly, it has not entirely disappeared yet.  After calming down for a few days, I began to think more practically about the situation and a more rational reaction if I caught them again.  Despite the struggle I would fight within myself to not grab the eight pound sledge hammer, I decided that a more measured response if I caught the punks would be to give them an option.  That option would be, clean this off now and go home or I would call the police and have them arrested (and possibly break a knee cap or two).  I figure that by giving them an option to clean their vandalism or get arrested, it might have a longer term impact than just breaking knee caps.  I started actually empathizing with the perpetrators and thinking about what brought them to the point where they felt the need to run around and destroy people's property.  What is their home life like if this is what they resort to for fun?  I also thought that just calling the police wouldn't really make an impact.  Chances are, if the police were called and they were arrested, the cycle of vandalism would merely get put on hold and the anger within them would not dissipate.  However, if they actually got the option to clean their mess and go home instead of sitting in a holding pen overnight, they might actually change.  It still might not make a difference, but at least I wouldn't feel horrible for simply breaking their knees. 

But that is neither here nor there.  The incident is over for now and hopefully it won't happen again.  The only change I have made so far at the house is to move my van from the end of the driveway to the front where it is less likely they will attack it (it is a big blank white canvas after all).  I had thought about getting one of those infra red, motion sensor cameras, but I probably won't do that because it will just make me more paranoid.  For now, we will just leave things as they are and hope that something like this doesn't happen again.  The part of this whole story that made me change my mind about how I would react if I caught these wily punks in the act was what happened when my wife drove the van to work, which happens to be a high school in Woodbridge.  Obviously as she drove in, everyone saw the side of the van and stood aghast as she drove by.  Within minutes, it was all over twitter and essentially the whole school knew.  After a while, a few of the teachers and administrators told her to bring it over to the auto shop in the school and see if they could clean it off.  Well, about 4 or 5 high school kids brought out brake cleaner and scrubbed the side of my van till the spray paint was gone.  I was utterly surprised when my wife drove into our campsite in Vermont and the van was clean.  I was preparing myself to wake up early Saturday morning and start scrubbing the van with a different cleaner that probably would have ruined the finish.  So in addition to having my van cleaned, I now know how to get spray paint off of a vehicle.  So despite the frustration and anger that I had as the incident occurred, I now am overly grateful to the kids at Amity High School who cleaned my van for me.  So I will buy a few cans of brake cleaner for them and thank them profusely .  For now, the incident is behind me and I am only hoping that it doesn't happen again. 

Driving in the Third Lane

I must say, this labor day weekend was absolutely beautiful.  As is normally the case, we were up in Vermont for the entire time camping and the temperature never rose out of the 70's.  On top of that, the humidity was almost non existent and the evenings were wonderfully cool.  But more about the weekend later this week.  Today, I want to talk about traffic and driving in the third lane, or second for that matter, on longer trips.  With yesterday being a fairly big travel weekend for some, the traffic coming home yesterday was nice and heavy.  Despite the congestion, it still managed to move along at a very good pace, there just happened to be a lot of cars on the road.  In general, I find that the majority of people know how to drive on the highway and actually know how to follow the unwritten rules of the road.  However, there are the few people who take matters into their own hands and create the traffic and backups that every driver despises.  (OK, so maybe there are a few twisted people out there who actually enjoy sitting in traffic, but I am not one of them).  Now the written rules differ for two lane highway travel versus three lane highway travel.  On a two lane highway, you are not supposed to pass on the right, only on the left, and after you pass on the left, you are supposed to move over to the right lane for normal travel.  On three lane highways, its pretty much a free for all with passing allowed on the right or left.  On three lane highways, there are certain designations for the lanes which some people have forgotten about.  The right lane is for slow travel, the middle lane is for normal travel, and the left lane is for the speeders and passing.  Where I drive is dictated by the amount of traffic on the road.  On the way up to Vermont, there wasn't much traffic and as such, I drove mostly in the right and middle lanes except to pass.  The trip back was an entirely different animal with a much larger amount of cars on the road. 

So what did I do then, I pretty much rode the left lane all the way home.  The only time I will travel almost exclusively in the left lane is if there is enough cars to create a pack and if there are perpetually slow drivers in the right lane.  Both factors must be met for me to travel non stop in the left lane.  For me, if these factors are not present, I consider it too great of a risk for getting pulled over by the police for speeding.  Now, a pack of cars to me is at least 6-8 cars in one lane traveling approximately the same speed.  I find that if there are at least this many cars, the odds of getting picked out of the line to get pulled over diminishes greatly and you actually get to drive faster.  However, one driver can wreak havoc with a normal flow of traffic if they don't know what they are doing.  When driving in the left lane, there are certain unspoken rules that most people should follow.  (Let me preface all this by saying that yes, I know that everyone in the left lane is mostly likely driving much faster than the speed limit, but that is not the point.)  If you are the driver of the first car in a long line and there is no one in front of you, move over because you are most likely not driving fast enough.  If after moving over you find that the person behind you is not passing you, then by all means, move back over, but at least be courteous to those who really like to speed.  Also, if you are driving in the left lane and NOT passing anyone, then you are driving too slow and should move over to let other people pass you.  If people followed these two rules alone, traffic on the road could be kept to a minimum and people would get where they are going more expeditiously.  While those two rules are the most important, there is one other minor one that really causes issues when not followed.  If you are traveling in one of the right lanes and want to pass a slower person in front of you, make sure that you are not going to be cutting off someone doing 15 mph faster than you are.  This is just asking for an accident to happen. 

If someone driving in the left lane of either a two lane or three lane highway is not following these unwritten rules, then they should be passed as quickly as possible on the right.  Even though it is not technically allowed on two lane roads, it is sometimes necessary to pass on the right.  I find that when everyone is driving where they are supposed to, traffic literally flies along.  Yesterday, for most of the ride home I had the speedometer pegged at 80 mph and I was keeping up with traffic.  Trust me, I wasn't the fastest one on the road, I was merely part of the pack driving in the left lane.  It almost seems as if those who know how to drive in a pack successfully drive better than other people meandering in the slower lanes.  Granted, there are those reckless maniacs who put everyone at risk, but for the most part, they are on their own.  I believe that driving 80 in a pack in the left lane forces one to focus a little bit more on the road and cars around them because of the speed they are going.  I know that yesterday, time seemed to fly because I was entirely focused on driving, the road and cars in front of me, and of course, the cars behind me.  I always made sure that I was keeping up with the pack and even on occasion moved over the let a few faster cars pass me.  See for me, if someone wants to pass me, I am not going to be an ass and sit in the left lane just to piss them off, I will move over because that is what I would like someone to do for me when I need to pass.  But alas, there are a few stragglers whose licenses should be revoke because of their inability to drive properly or safely.  In any case, despite the heavy traffic yesterday and few backups here and there, I still made the trip in 3 hours 15 minutes.  Not a bad ride at all, just tiring.  For more on the weekend, check back later this week.