New York Bound

I was going to post yesterday, but I never got around to it.
I meant to post before I left for Albany this afternoon. Again, I forgot.
So I'm writing now from my hotel room in Albany.

Saturday, I was going to tell you about picking up the rental car. No, everything went fine.
Gak dropped me off at about 8:30 to pick up the car. They don't open until 9. My reservation was for noon. Oops.
That's OK, the people there are very nice and they had a car available. If I'd remembered, I could have had them pick me up, but then I would have missed going to the gym and I really needed to get a third time in this week.
This meant that I had about a half hour to stand around outside the rental place.
It was a gorgeous fall day. Yes, all the leaves are off the trees, so it's looking a little brown. But the sky was so blue and clear. The air was crisp but not cold. All I could think about was how many mornings like this I'd woken up on a camping trip. (The rental place is near where I used to turn to go to my GS camp.) I kept picturing how happy I would be with my feet up near a fire, a mug of hot chocolate in my hands. Or making breakfast of French toast over the fire and getting smoke in my face. I loved those trips. Most of the other girls in my troop would complain about how cold it was (it had to be about 50 out) and how miserable they were and why wasn't breakfast ready and all that jazz. As senior patrol leader most of my time in Cadettes and Seniors, I could have easily delegated the cooking to others. Instead, I took the whole morning routine upon myself and my closest friends. (In hindsight, they were kinda like my version of senior staff from West Wing, with less drama usually...) We usually had everything all but ready when the others woke. This meant I got to delegate cleanup. Or at least in theory. I usually ended up helping with this too, or it would never get done. That's OK because on cool, crisp fall days, if you aren't moving, you will get cold.
Those were the thoughts that kept me smiling for about a half hour before I picked up my car.

Today I drove to Albany. Actually, it was this afternoon, since it's only about a 4 hour drive. It was a fairly enjoyable ride. I didn't take the turnpike up, since that would have been west of where I wanted to go. Instead I took 287, aka the New York Throughway. Not a bad drive really, except that it started getting dark around 4:30 and the exits aren't by mile marker. I stopped for dinner on the way at a rest stop (I still owe Scout a chocolate shake...). The Roy Rogers was out of chicken, so I went over to the Nathan's Famous. Famous for what, I'm not sure. The chicken sandwich I had was OK, but the bun was really dry. The fries were either cold and grease soaked, or half done and grease soaked. And they gave me a diet coke. Now, I can see why people drink the stuff. Me, I can't get past the chemical taste. All diet soda tastes this way, trust me, I've tried. I guess you could get used to it, but I prefer to ration the real stuff.

Anyhow, I've got a 7:30 am start time and need to get there a little early tomorrow.
Peace to all and may your travels be easy.

Oh, yeah, and this morning, I had a really great adventure with Rodentia, Syn, Charitee, Gak and Kas in Mistmore Catacombs. Oh yeah, Phae (Phred) joined us after a bit too. I'll try and write it up tomorrow, but I've rambled on long enough for one post.