Road Trip 3 - Day 0 - On the Road Again

1/23/15

Lincoln, New Hamphsire

I know that is not as impressive of a dateline as the ones that I have been providing recently, but it is, I believe, the first time I am overnighting in New Hampshire.  In fact, I believe that New Hampshire might be the closest state to New York where I have not overnighted.  No, Delaware is closer, and I don’t think I have ever spent the night there.  It is my annual road trip with Pablo, and it reintegrating him into my life is one of the many things that I am doing to return to the old me, to do the things that I used to enjoy doing before August.

It is past midnight, and I have been on the road for five hours, so I am quite tired.  It felt weird being on the road again.  The last time I was behind the wheel of car was over three months ago when I went up to New Brunswick, which was a miserable trip for me.  The one person I had wanted with me on that trip, the one person who should have been there with me, didn’t want to come with me, claiming it was too cold, a bullshit reason, and the same bullshit reason she gave about not wanting to come to Antarctica, despite a joke she made exactly a year prior about wanting to go to Antarctica for our honeymoon being the impetus that let me know I had romantic feelings for her.

The fact was, as miserable as I was about her not being with me on the October trip, I would not have seen her for any significant amount of time, if at all, had I stayed home that weekend.  The fact that I practically never saw her during weekends in New York was the reason I was miserable towards the end of our relationship, and it was my demand that we spend weekends together that led to the end of the relationship.  There were other reasons, but that was the big one.  Actually, no, there was another reason just as big, but I will not discuss that in a public blog.  It will, however, be discussed in my private journal, as it is a theme I want to explore, how communication affects relationships, every type of relationships, friends, family, romantic, all relationships.

Enough on that.  It was my longest relationship since middle school, and it will be a long time before I am fully healed.  I don’t want to think about her anymore, and I’d rather think about the people in my life who were there for me when I needed them, the person who told me that I was fooling myself into believing I was in love with her and with whom I can talk about anything, the person who said all the things I needed to hear exactly when I needed to hear them and who makes my face light up every time I see her name pop up on my phone, and the person who called me the most genuine person she had ever met and who cheered me up when I was down just as I had cheered her up when she was down.  These are three different people, and they are three of the most important people in my life, the three people outside of the office and my family whom I communicate with the most, communication, the key to any relationship.  That is the good in my life, and I’d rather think about the good.

As I mentioned, I am tired, so I will delegate the rest of this thread to my personal entry tomorrow night.  For now, I will summarize the adventures of Day 0.  I had planned to get to wake up early, pack, get to the office by 8 AM, and leave to make the 5:04 PM train.  Well, I overslept, waking up at 8:18 AM.  I lit up a Quesada, hurried to pack and get ready and got to the office at 9 AM, which meant that I would not have time for a full lunch if I wanted to leave early.  I left the rest of my cigar at the shop so that I could finish it during lunch.  I had a very productive day at work, having my traditional pre-departure lunch at Hop Won.  Somehow I had miscalculated the distance to New Hampshire, and the hotel was 4.5 hours from the rental place, not 3.5 hours as I had thought.  I knew we’d hit traffic, and I’d knew that Pablo would delay us at our stop for dinner.  I was right on both accounts, and it added a total of an hour to our trip, which, along with the extra hour of driving, meant that it was close to midnight by the time we arrived at our hotel.

Our soundtrack for the ride was, of course, Taylor Swift’s 1989.  I had my traditional Nic Toro to start off the drive, relishing being behind the wheel of a car again.  As much as I enjoyed the boats and planes and other means of transportation of the past three months, it was good to be on the road again.  We stopped at a rest plaza for dinner.  I first got some grilled rollers with cheese, eating them with chopsticks for a pragmatic reason, then ordered a nuggets meal at McDonald’s, got my food, sat down, and ate my meal.  Pablo still had not purchased any food.  He finally bought himself a single grilled roller, which I told him he’d have to eat in the car.  He also had a soda.  I figured that he found the cup sitting on a table and helped himself to a refill.  I was right.  We got in the car.  He had no bun for his roller and no fork.  I asked him if he would like some chopsticks, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I then it up an E.P. Carrillo, the number two rated cigar of 2014, my box of which finally arrived today.  It was a very spicy and dark cigar, the kind of cigar I used to smoke before my palate become more adjusted to Cubans.  I did not think it worthy of the rating.  My next cigar was one of the aged OpusX that Raymond had found, one of the best cigars I have ever smoked, and Raymond secreted away four for me to purchase, despite the high demand for them.  While I was smoking it, my phone lit up with the name that made me light up just as much.  She had texted me to tell me how much she loved Paddington.  As much as I wanted to respond, I was unwilling to risk texting and driving.  Throughout the drive, we joked around and told stories, us both cracking up.  The funniest story was about his friend that got arrested for bestiality.  Yes, that is exactly what happened.  That is not a joke.  I was finally able to respond to the text at a toll plaza, and I worried that she thought I was ignoring her, even though I had mentioned that I would be driving tonight.

After the OpusX, I lit up a Santana, and we reached the hotel before I had finished it.  We had gone through six loops of 1989.  The lobby of the hotel was closed, but they left our keys in the mailbox.  The room was a bit away, and Pablo had needs that could not wait.  I suggested we make it Official and create some yellow snow.  That was what we did.  I had a smoking room, so I walked in with my cigar, and we relaxed a bit.  I then proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can get to sleep.  The internet is down, so I will have to publish in the morning.