August 4, 2008

A quick drive to New York & New Jersey for family visits

HEWLETT, New York, USA - We highballed down the highway Friday to visit with my brother Tony and his family and my sister Anne and her clan.

Tony lives in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, Anne in Hewlett, NY, only a little over an hour apart, except for traffic.

And traffic there was.

NY traffic jam
New York on a good day

But Friday we arrived at Tony and Marion's in time for lunch (thanks to a new GPS, more on that another time). We had a great visit with a lot of their family, shooting a little bit of video of my nephew Michael's children bounding into the pool at the beach club where the family congregates during summer.

That night Michael cooked up a fantastic dinner - Mexican food, of course - which was great and shared by several of his brothers and their families. The evening reminded me of Mexico, too, with the temperature just comfortable and the smell of ocean air. No tequila, no Cuba libres, but plenty of beer and wine, too.

Saturday, after one of those lo-cal, eggs, potatoes, sausage and toast breakfasts at a seaside restaurant, we battled with a few thousand (maybe more than a few thousand) people headed out to Long Island and the beaches. It's likely the torrential rainstorms kept a few people off the road, but it also made driving hazardous.

New York doesn't have the best roadway drains.

At Anne's we had a visit with nieces Jeanne and Anne Jr. followed by dinner at a local seafood restaurant where we were waited on by Anne and Bill's granddaughter who gave such good service, the other tables were starting to complain. Personally, I think they were jealous of the great lobster dinner that Bill inhaled, er, ate.

Now, back at Seneca Lake, it's countdown to Sasha Fox time. Cami is due to deliver the baby in Puerto Vallarta at the end of the month and Admiral Fox is frantically trying to get everything ready to fly down for the birth in case the August 30 date gets moved up - a likelihood the doctor has started to mention.

We had a little betting pool going on this, which if I am right, the Admiral will leave in just a few days.

Below is a short bit of video (with a couple of stills) from our muy rapido motoring adventure.

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