In the Beginning

Hello and welcome to the exciting adventure that is my Spring Break '06. My mom and I went to the east coast to visit colleges but we also explored a lot of stuff that lacked the intellectual sophistication of college. . . i.e. Times Square. So, let's see, we'll start this story at the beginning. The Friday that school got out, 3/24/06, is when I finally decided to start packing. It didn't occur to me that we were leaving at 3 AM that next morning until that evening, so I decided just to stay up all night long and pack during commercials. In other words, I took about an hour of packing and stretched it out from 9 PM until 3 AM. YAY for 6 hours of packing! But, I finished, and after taking a quick shower we took off to catch the HUT bus for the airport. Luckily for us we purchased our boarding passes on the internet so we could check our bags at the SkyCab instead of having to stand in that big ol' long line. Ah, that was nice, so we went straight through security. Of course, leave it to me, Mr. Small-Portable-Electronics-Boy to have to pretty much strip down to get through the metal detector. I had to take off my watch, cell phone, iPod, shoes, wallet, Carmex, backpack, money, and hat. I felt bare. And, of course, it took a while to get all that stuff put back onm but eventually I was all set and we boarded the plane to Cincinnati. That was just a connection (with a very good burrito stand called Burrito 360) and after that we went to BWI (Baltimore-Washington International). We got to BWI, finally found our luggage (they were the last out of the chute) and went to get our rental car. On the way to the rental car we found a really cool sculpture hanging fomr the ceiling. Here's a picture:

We got our red rental car (Pontiac Sunfire, yeah, I've never heard of it either) and it was pretty sporty, here's a pic:
After getting the car we had a 6 hour drive ahead of us to Mystic Connecticut. Oh, by the way, we picked up the car at 6:00 PM, so it was pretty much going to be a long night ahead of us. My mom drove and I was official navigator. We had everything MapQuested so we figured we'd be ok, and we were for the most part. We had moments though. Since it was our first time on the east coast we experienced some new vocabulary, mainly which were "toll booth", "turnpike", and "service station". The toll booths were crippling, $2 here, $5 here, $4.50 there, and it added up really fast. We brought a stack of 50 one dollar bills to use on toll stations and we burned through those REALLY fast. We took a picture of our first toll booth. Wanna see it? Sure you do! Here:

Yeah, exciting. Anyways, we got lost on our way to Mystic and spent about a half an hour trying to get our way back onto the right turnpike. It was very frustrating because I was the navigator and was trying to figure out a) how to get back on track and b) how to get my mom to actually do what I told her to do. Eventually we made our way back onto the right street and in the right direction. Finally, at about 12:30 AM, we made it to Mystic Connecticut (w00t!) We made it into the hotel, got ready for bed, and then crashed. Driving for 6.5 hours after flying for 6 and having not slept since the night before (remember, I thought it would be fun to stay up that whole night packing?) I was absolutely exhausted. I had been awake for 44 hours and was, well, pooped. Day one. . . . over, next is day two!