The Road Trip Portion Begins in New Jersey
Monday, July 22nd, 2013
It had been a great week in New York city and just as soon as I had grown accustomed to the Big Apple and its ultra-convenient subway system, it was time to leave Manhattan behind and begin the second portion of the two-week trip – which would be continued on the road. I slept in as long as I possibly could before packing up, but was still able to meet Bob and his merry band of travelers down in the lobby by 10am. A shuttle picked us up shortly thereafter and we headed out of the city toward Newark, New Jersey and the Liberty International Airport. It was Friday, May 31, 2013, and it was time for Phase B of our New York trip. Read the rest of this entry »
With the number of times that I’ve flown into New York City, I have spent very scant time doing anything there. The first time I made it into the city was in 1994 when the Sons of the Desert Convetion was held in Tareytown, on the far northern outskirts of the city. My family and my friend John Poe took a train into Grand Central and walked around, doing little else but gawking. My friend Peter guided me to 
Bob and I awoke bright and early on the morning of Saturday, July 14, 2012, in the cleverly christened Mic Mac Motel in York, Maine. We had just barely crossed the Maine border the evening before, but this would officially be my first venture into Maine, the northeasternmost state in the union. In order to get a jump on the day, we left before 7am on this day, heading northward, stopping for breakfast at the Egg-Ceptional Restaurant in Poland for some corn beef hash and a pair of double yolkers. Then we moved on to yet another city named after a country: Paris, Maine. 
I had stayed up later than Bob the night before watching the TV pilot episode of Newhart on my laptop after Bob had already fallen asleep. The reason why is that I was sleeping inside the Waybury Inn, in East Middlebury, Vermont – which was used as the establishing shot of the Stratford Inn on one of my all-time favorite sitcoms Newhart. Mind you they never actually filmed anything here other than shots of the inn. Bob Newhart had never even been at the inn. But in watching the show, you see it two or three times per episode, so it had become ingrained in my mind, so since the beginning of this trip’s inception, staying here was a must.