...and drove to nearby New Milford, CT to pick up Vin at his parent's house and bring him back down to NYC (coincidentally, Vin and The Fatty both grew up in New Milford).
Saturday morning, I hopped into the car with Brett and Amy and we headed down to Medford, NJ (about 2 hours from where my parent's live) for Chris and Jen's wedding.
Despite only getting a few hours of sleep, we managed to pick up the van and be heading beachward before noon. Here's me, Meredith, Grant, Rachel and David and Miye in the back! Rented van, wooooooo!
We arrived at Great Adventure around 10:30am - we'd gotten a much later start then we'd planned and we were really nervous that the park was going to be mobbed.
...and then promptly fell asleep. On the road, I kept calling Scott trying to tell him that we were on our way and to wait for us at Tim's dock, but he'd forgotten his phone and Tim's boat, the "SS Farley," sailed across glorious Lake Hopatcong without us. Boooooo!
Grant (with brand new Travis Bickle mohawk!) who was babysitting the Fatty's car while we were in Texas, was rad enough to save me $30 bones by picking me up at JFK. Thanks again to Fatty, Sarah and Caryn! I had the bestest time ever.
After picking me up at the bus station she drove me around Houston. In typical Tara fashion, the first place she took me to was an abandoned mental hospital. Creeeeeeeeepy.
After I finally made it to Texas (around 11pm instead of 4pm), the cute girl I'd sat next to on the plane (on the right) offered me a ride into town when her friend picked her up. And the worst part is, I forget both of their names (I think maybe the girl I sat next to was named Amy?). Jesus, I suck. If I was the Fatty, not only would I have remembered their names, I'd have sent them both thank you cards. If you ever see this, thanks for the ride (Sorry I'm such a jerk).
We woke up early on Saturday morning, thought about skiing for a half-day, but when Fatty informed us that his pulled muscle still really hurt, it was the only excuse we needed to reset the alarm for noon and go back to sleep. We made it into the car a little before 1pm and started driving to Boston for Seth's surprise party.
...we hit the road for Vermont. We'd only gone a block when we saw this "AICHAINS" license plate. A grunge-rock vanity plate? It could only be considered a good omen.
We scored a rental car and headed to check in to our...oh, wait, did I forget to mention that our resort check-in date wasn't until Saturday and we'd decided to party the first two nights and sleep in our rental car? Hahah. Ok, so here's the story. Keep in mind, we went on this trip because my Uncle Bruce had a week at a luxury resort that he wasn't going to be able to use. That meant that we had a free place to stay from Saturday to Saturday. When we went to buy plane tickets, we found out that if we flew in on Thursday (instead of Friday or Saturday), our flights would be almost $600 cheaper. Considering we were both trying to save money (neither of us were working at the time), we decided that we take the cheaper Thursday flight and and just sleep in the rental car until Saturday when we were able to check into the fancy resort.
...which means BLAMO!, she's instantly asleep ten minutes later on the ride back north. My mom will get drunk from only a sniff of the barmaid's apron. Hahaha.
...and packed in the car to go to south Jersey for our annual Christmas Eve with my great uncle and aunt Walt and Ann (You know the drill by now, we do it every year (. Here's the backseat crizzew: me, mom and Brett's girlfriend Amy.
On the ride home we were glad to see that they finally installed a word of warning for any ladies that might be following us back to our place for a romp.
After I'd finished documenting our facial hair, we headed back to the house, showered (and I shaved, thank god), packed up and hit the road to head back down to Los Angeles (to attend the surprise birthday party that Jordana had put together for him. Shhhh!).
After food we went back to the ranch and relaxed. Then later that night we drove to the nearest theater (like 45 minutes away) to see the midnight showing of the third installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Bonus points to Grant for flipping the bird while pulling a Pomodoro Guy face! Noice!).
Saturday morning we woke up late and had to rush to get Charlene to LAX so she could catch her flight back to London. (She'd been up at the ranch visiting Grant for ten days prior to coming down to LA with him to meet me).
I was was waiting on the curb for a cab when a livery car pulled up and agreed to take me to JFK on the cheap (suh-weet!). This guy was a character, because he picked me up near Chinatown, he kept wanting to talk to me about Chinese people. He asked me "Hey, didja ever notice how Chinese ladies don't really have any butts?" Before I could answer, he launched into this story about how a relative of his worked for some jean company and when they wanted to sell their jeans in asia, they had to redesign them. "See, I'm not trying to be racist," he saw me laughing at his story, "I'm just trying to say that it's scientifically known...they have different butts!"
Thursday afternoon, I hopped in the car with my parents (minus little brother Brett, who lives out in Indiana and went to his girlfriend's parent's house in Ohio for Thanksgiving) and headed to my Aunt Elaine and Uncle Wayne's house in Clark, NJ.
...and headed for the nearby shore town of Leigh-on-Sea. (Beyond the lovely scenery, the best part of the trip was the Abott & Costello-esque conversation between Grant and the Fatty where Fatty thought the town was called "Leon's Sea.")
Prettier! After Grant gave up on trying to catch a peacock (we were actually rooting for him - we figured if he actually did manage to catch one, we'd be able to get some great shots of him getting the living shit pecked out of him), we hopped in the car and drove westward back to Rethymnon.
At one point, we were driving with the windows down laughing and talking and all of sudden a pack of (incredibly loud) motorcyles screamed past us doing well over 130 MPH. I managed to get my camera out in time to catch the tail end of the last rider as he sped past us.
The road we were traveling ran through the mountainous, northern coastline of the island. Out the left window all we could see were mountains with rows of olive trees haphazardly planted. Out the right window were more scraggly mountains that dropped off right into the sea.
Being that all the road signs were in Greek, we elected Chris to drive. We packed up the car, busted out the map, and started the 80 kilometer drive from Heraklion to Rethymnon.
6:40am (local time and still pitch black out). We spent the hour-long drive into Reykjavik betting on what time the sun would rise. Price Is Right rules in effect: the one who managed to come closest, without going over would be declared the winner. It was then agreed upon that the winner would get to make out with Gemma, Grant's hot little sister, (mmmmmm....Gemma) when we stopped at Grant's parent's house in Essex on the last leg of our trip. But then we all remembered that Gemma had a boyfriend. (Booooo).
When we got out of meeting we had some time to kill before we had to head back to the airport and I remember that my good friend (and former ModemMedia co-worker) John McHale lives in Atlanta. I called him and found out that he his work was just a few blocks away from where we were calling from. He hopped in his car and five short minutes later, Johnny was on the spot.
After finishing the entire CONQUISTIDOR, I made the mistake of thinking that it would be a good idea to get dessert. Just my suggestion made everyone else start burping. But then when I saw there was a Cinnabon place, I couldn't resist. I ended up getting a large Cinnabon and a hot chocolate, thinking that we could all share it. Everyone else was too full to even touch the Cinnabon - so I just ate the whole thing (whoops!).
Oh my god - I don't think I've ever been so full in my life. I overate to such a degree that I actually broke into a sweat (My stomach was quickly beginning to understand why my dinner was called "The Conquistidor"). I spend the car ride home trying not to throw up everytime Nina's car hit a bump in the road.
We hopped in Fatty's Probe and headed to Newport to meet up with the rest of the crew. (Frank drove in solo from NYC, Colin drove in solo from visiting his parents in CT, and Seth was coming in the next afternoon from Boston).
After breakfast we said our goodbye and hopped in our respective rides. Colin, shown here in his Ford Focus SVT (only 7,000 made yaknow!), headed back to Brooklyn solo and Seth headed back up to Boston solo. Grant, Frank, Fatty and myself decided we were going to go back to Manhattan and see "American Wedding." We split up into two cars (me with Fatty, Grant with Frank) and decided we'd have a race back to NYC. First team to make it to the movie theater wins. Aw, yeah.
I was trying to take a video of us rocking out but took a picture instead and managed to capture us in the midst of some pretty serious MetalFaces (check out Fatty pretending to play kit in the background with his DrummerFAce in full effect. Hahaha).
This photo's called "Taking A Picture While Driving a Motorcycle." Make sure you spend some time appreciating it as it almost cost me my life to take it.
After visiting with Ann and Walt - we hopped in the car and headed north for the Battjer's Annual Trip to Church™ (Christmas Eve services at midnight, baby).
We meant to leave work at like 10:30 - which by the time we got out to my car meant we'd be able to be on the road by 11:30 at the latest. But we all ended up running late and we didn't get on the road until almost 2pm (which basically put us right smack dab in the middle of the "leaving town for the weekend" rush.
After sitting in 2 1/2 hours of really slow traffic all through NYC and Southern CT, we finally hit some open road.