A group of us planned a Labor Day Weekend camping adventure at Hickory Run State Park in eastern Pennsylvania. But how best to escape New York?
Rental car companies jack up rates for prime travel holidays like Labor Day and with New York already besieged by stratospheric prices, a cheaper alternative is New Jersey. Megan and I met at Penn Station this morning and took a 1:28 p.m. Northeast Corridor train, transferred at Secaucus and arrived at Rutherford around 1:53 p.m. And then we waited for the complimentary Enterprise Rent-A-Car shuttle. And waited.
Then we waited some more.
Then I bought some sodas for us to drink while we waited.
Then Megan fielded increasingly vexed calls and text messages from our camping compatriots waiting in Manhattan for us.
Half an hour later, a shuttle showed up, but it was for two other people who’d reserved a pick-up about half an hour before us and were that much more bitter. And, no, we couldn’t share a ride because it was a pickup truck, and apparently it’s against the law for live humans to ride in the bed of a pickup in New Jersey, so there was no room for us and our rapidly diminishing patience.
Megan and I decided the new tagline for Enterprise should be, “We’ll Get You There... Eventually.” Finally, an animated cherubic-faced Italian-Jersey fellow by the name of Michael showed up, full of apologies and anecdotes about how he himself had tried camping several times, but kept getting hampered by the weather, which didn’t sound as bad to me as getting hampered by a delayed courtesy shuttle.
He said things in earnest like “Yous guys” and noted at one point that he lived with his mother. We tried to rush him through the car inspection but he was keen on crouching in the lot and studiously inspecting our Ford from various angles, looking for scratches longer than two inches and dents larger than golf balls. His business card, which he handed to me just before our departure, gave his title as “Management Trainee” and we complimented him on a fine job. I’m sure his mother is proud.
Upon arriving at Vincent’s apartment complex on the East Side, we combat-loaded the cars with coolers, supplies and people. I took off in the Man Car with Vincent, Aaron and Paul and there was periodic bickering over GPS-obfuscated shortcuts and temperature control. By the time we arrived, the folks already at the site were cranky because we were late, and it was dark, and they’d seen a black bear in the woods, and why the fuck were we off buying beer when our car contained all the equipment? Surliness swirled like campfire sparks in the dark but it was O.K. because the real adventure was to begin tomorrow.
