Within winter's verdant grasp

So, the four of us took off for New Haven, and ultimately Montreal, two days ago on Friday. We sentimentally named ourselves after the Fantastic Four (dibs on the Thing) and hightailed it out of the perimeter and up I-85 to get Shannon.



A special guest came along for the ride.

The trip along the eastern seaboard was marked with spotty performance. Ryan started driving first, as is obvious by the fact that we went in his car and from the pictures above. We made it through South and North Carolina, stopping only to visit Taco Bell for a quick beef injection. Oh yes, I went there. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of it. But it was pretty standard Taco Bell fare. Oh, the Hot Sauce packets they had there were purple instead of the standard red; correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the Hot Sauces were red and the Fire Sauces were purple. In any case, each and every one of the Hot Sauce packets also had the following text on them: “DirectDaniella.com”. Just a tad bit awkward.

Afterwards, Masato took over driving until about 100 miles into Virginia, at which point I took over. At this point it was about 10:00PM. This exchange occurred after fuel retrieval and a trip into Subway, which is deemed worthy of a story. As you should remember, our hobohookah Jean-Pierre Laurent-Michel Delacroix was with us. At this time of night it had been going for almost six hours and needed a nice cleaning. So Ryan removed Dela and brought it into the Subway restroom to clean out while the rest of us ordered food (driving is hungry work). The workers inside the Subway completely freaked out and thought we were bringing marijuana into the store. They managed to explain it away to them (I think I was peeing at the time), but in hindsight (apparently) the stuff could be considered to be drug paraphernalia and thus a legitimate legal concern. But fie on all that. They threw our food at us and all but kicked us out of Subway so they wouldn’t be implicated in our possession (because that makes sense).

I drove through the rest of Virginia and West Virginia and into Maryland, where at 2:00AM we stopped at an auspicious landing that contained a closed Wendy’s (!), a closed McDonald’s (!!), a closed K-Mart (?), and no sign of a Wal-Mart despite the fact that there was a Sam’s Club right in the vicinity. However, there was this wondrous store called Martin’s with freshly baked goods in the early morning and bins of dried goods and candies that you were able to mix and match with. Thomas ended up with some German fruit candies and some sesame candies, and I ended up coming away with a pound of banana chips and a half bound of honey roasted cashews. TAKE NOTE, PLANTERS. IF YOU MAKE IT, I WILL BUY IT. Do not pass up the opportunity to cash in on this… cash cow.

Ryan took over again, and at this point both Thomas and I were dead tired and passed out in the backseat while Ryan and Masato commanded the car. Apparently Pennsylvania and New Jersey have SHIT for roads and the car was bumping and crashing up and down with a hurricane force. But I was able to sleep through it somehow. I don’t believe it, but whatever. When I woke up, we were already in Connecticut and Ryan was bitching about the New York/New Jersey toll road systems. Typical. We missed our FIRST OFF-RAMP FOR THE ENTIRE TRIP because the ramp was off of the left side of the road. I personally don’t see how that happened because I specifically wrote in the directions, EXIT OFF THE LEFT SIDE. Oh well.

We finally got to Shannon! The Fantastic Four has become the Planeteers! I know it’s a stretch, but hey, there aren’t many other famous fivesomes. No, I am not saying the Power Rangers.

Thomas took over driving upon leaving New Haven. And over the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go… in Quebec.

We finally saw snow in Massachusetts (yay!) whilst plugging along on a toll road (boo!). I've seen snow before, but never draped on mountainous peaks like the ones in upstate New England.

Speaking of tolls, this is one of the booths from the toll in New York. You know you're nearing Canada when...











The border! Yay we made it! From here it was a quick trip into Montreal (with a very tired and very obnoxious Ryan in the back seat) for a lunch at local feeding hole where we had poutine. Poutine poutine poutine. Deliciousness. There will be more of it in our future.















Then it was just a short trip to our hotel, or auberge. This place is a freakin' resort. More pictures of the surroundings later.

And now, the week has just begun!



Thomas is sitting there in the back of the sled thing. More about Vince and his kids tomorrow.