I Want To Drive It, All Night Long...

"This in no longer a vacation. It's a quest. A quest for fun..." Clark Griswold, 1983

I don't know where to start...so I think I will just start last week when my friend Christine called and we excitedly planned a couple of days with our kids and our dear friend, Sally, at Christine's family home in The Hamptons...Quogue, as it turns out...or East Quogue...whatever...one of those. Anyway, it was a whirlwind of excitement...Tim was in the car with me and heard Christine and I planning fishing in the lagoon and surf lessons and sailing and frolicking about...and a grown-ups' dinner at the new Nobu, which apparently opened in Southampton (I had planned on packing 3 Epipens, and Sally is a highly credentialed Physicians Assistant on the cardiac unit and a medical professor...so I figured I could sit at a sushi hot spot and be fabulous even with anaphylaxis...)... Anyway...Tim ran home to tell the other two how awesomely righteous this vacation would prove to be...and we were all looking forward to the fun...me and Sally and Christine texting countless times a day leading up in anticipation. And my kids were beyond excited...three full days in a super fun beachy playground.

So I was finishing up my packing when Christine called...and sadly, had to cancel because of a family emergency... And all I cared was that she was ok and was there anything I could do or how could we help...(Editor's note: all is well now, no cause for concern...). But the kids...well, I sat them down and explained...and the older two were like: "well let's still go to The Hamptons..." Like as if it would be quite the frolicky good time as I promised if we were sleeping in some Bates Hotel on Montauk Highway, taking shuttles to the beach...and my kids are too cool for Nobu, anyway... Instead we would wait until we could spend our Hamptons visit with our friends... "No, kids," I told them, "sometimes things don't work out as planned...and we have to just deal and move on..." They smirked and side-eyed one another as they are fully aware that when things don't go my way, I am about as flexible and good-natured as a medieval lord... So to prove them wrong, my three little angels, instead of taking these extra days home as an opportunity to stay-cation, I frantically began planning another jaunt to fill the empty space.

I considered every g**damned beach within three hours of the tri-state and surfed all over the net for a summery, beachy resort that just might have a vacancy.... Soon Ellie piped in with: "why not a day trip to LBI on Wednesday...??" But the boys countered with: "you said we were going away overnight...!" Damn straight, I did! I blew off Ellie and suggested we try to be more creative...maybe go somewhere we hadn't ever been. She was skeptical...and I was grasping at straws. Finally I remembered that friends of ours had always gone to Watch Hill, RI...and in my search I found Westerly and Misquamicut Beach...billed as a narrow, pristine stretch of beach on the ocean from which you can see Block Island and the tip of Long Island.... Perfect, I thought...I can point to The Hamptons...that's just like being there in a private home...sailing, surfing, fishing and Nobu-ing... Well, almost like it... Ha! Told you I was reaching...

So after The Breezeway Resort and The Ocean House and The Winnapaug Inn all screamed "no vacancy," I found a place called The Pleasant View Inn on the internet...and it looked pleasant, in a crusty old New England way...I could make it work, no? Pleasant View Inn was right on the beach! every room has a view (remember this...)! two oceanfront restaurants! a pool! family-

friendly! walk to restaurants! bike rides! old-fashioned carousel only minutes away! Mystic Aquarium a stone's throw! It sounded (sounded...) cute...and the internet pics made it look sunny and cheery...and, well, pleasant. As I dialed the hotel a fleeting thought came to me...should I have asked the lovely staff at The Breezeway or The Ocean House or The Winnapaug for recommendations before I threw caution to the wind? Call my Watch Hill-going sister-in-law for her assessment on the place? Nah! I was just going to go for it!

The lady who answered Pleasant View's phone sounded sweet and vaguely New England-y and she told me the only room she had left was called a recessed room, because it was in an adjacent hallway to the main floor, and that it had a view, but mostly of the lawn chairs, and less of the ocean. Ok well...that's ok, I figured at this short notice...right? Right! And at $231 per night? Sounded like a bargain (sounded...). I booked it... The kids and I ran around for an hour pulling ourselves together, finished packing the car and off we went...pulling out of our driveway at 2:22 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon...only an hour after we planned to depart for Quogue...or East Quogue...whatever... And the drive over The Tap and up the coast of Connecticut was simple...we chatted and sung along to a CD I found buried in the console...apparently one I made for a Christmastime dinner party with the DPs and Sobkowicz and Houldsworth and DeLeos back in '07...and it featured Bob Seger's version of "The Little Drummer Boy," which Will made us play over and over and over...that pa-rum-pa-pum-pum lulled Tim right to sleep as we passed Rowayton and he didn't stir again until Branford... Less than 3 hours after we left Wyckoff, the Garmin said we had 20 minutes to go...soon we exited and followed the road to the "Rhode Island Beaches"...along the way passing the pretty New England summer homes with hydrangea and Black Eyed Susans populating the lawns and window boxes... And as we approached the water, the Garmin told me to turn right onto Atlantic Avenue and arrive at destination on left. And I did...

Oh Chr*st!

As I slowed down to get a look the first thing I noticed about The Pleasant View Inn was a giant fence around a decked in pool...and three floors of rooms and balconies overlooking said "pool" with beach towels thrown over the railings everywhere I looked. I think I even saw the Budweiser towel my sister Cathleen had back in '77 hanging down, drip-drying with a hundred others, probably covered in 34 years of sand and chlorine. I silently began to hyperventilate, trying not to let my inner medieval lord come out when Tim goes:

"This doesn't look like an Inn. This looks like a motel..."

Motel... The magic word that sets my heart into a panic and brings my inner elitist control freak to the surface. I was born this way...it is not learned or taught...my parents are decent and down-to-earth, but they birthed in me a complete and utter inability to function in less than 4-star accommodations...3-star if I am feeling adventurous. My father gave up trying to save a buck on family vacations by the time I was 7 when I cried through the night in some motor lodge in Pennsylvania. My idea of roughing it is The Westmoor Inn on Nantucket (RIP), where the floral wallpaper was a little sun-faded and the beach was across the sandy lane down a steep ropewalk. I am sure I have missed out on a lot of fun because of this problem...this is why backpacking through Europe was never something to consider...or road-tripping in college, I wouldn't dream of sleeping on the dorm room floors of all the East Coast universities my high school friends attended...or getting a shore house with 35 of my closest friends each 20-something summer...and mark my words, unless Elvis Presley rises from the grave and books a limited engagement at The Garden, you will never, EVER, catch me sleeping out for concert tickets. I wish I could do those things...but I can't... I will eat a greasy burrito and cheese fries in a joint off the highway...I will drink cheap beer at a tailgate before a Motley Crue/Slayer double bill of I have to (if I am invited...)...I will drive the Southern back roads looking for the best gas station/barbecue pit in the universe...I will go back to Graceland a million times over...I will take part in all kinds of simpler pursuits...but motels? Not on your life.

I tried to be positive...I don't want my kids to share in the real or imagined anxieties about lodging and all I could think was, maybe the rooms are quaint and pretty... I pulled into the super tiny circular drive by the front entrance, put on the hazards and approached the front desk. Ok, so it looked a little worn...and the paint was chipped...and maybe there was a mustiness...it might still be ok... I attempted positivity until I looked to the left -- Ah, look at that...not only can you see the pool and the cacophony of wet beach towels on display from the street, but there are floor-to-ceiling windows across from the reception desk from which you could watch the gaggle of 14 year old boys playing Marco Polo as well...and I could see the "ladies" sunbathing too. Oh yay! I saw Tim and Will staring out these windows in amazement as I approached the clerk and gave her my name...she went around the divider and got her colleague to deal with me...and so a chubby, non-made up gal in a t-shirt and a ponytail comes back around and says:

"Oh there are four of you?"

"Yes," I say (here comes the medieval lord...) "When I reserved the room, I was quite clear as to whom I was traveling with..."

"Well, you see, we only have one room available and there is no..."

"The recessed room? I know...that's the one I booked.." Why was I even arguing? I should have been running...

"Well, yes, but there is a problem with the one we initially offered you and it isn't available. The only room we have with two double beds is also a recessed room, but..." Wait for it....

"...it has no windows."

"No windows or no view?"

"No windows. Do you want to see it before you decide?"

Uh...

She hands me a key and describes some convoluted route I needed to take to find this windowless room in this beat up, scuzz pit, roach motel, when another patron sporting frizzy hair, a sweaty shine, denim cut-offs and a bikini top (in a VERY unsexy way, I might add) offered to show me how to get there since she "has been coming here since before she was born..." So we followed her like a mile through the place...across a bridge, around a bend, down an alleyway...and to a doorway, behind which, in a normal hotel you might find a janitor's closet or a stairway...at The Pleasant View Inn, we found emergency lighting and three guest room doors...one of which was ours. I opened the lock and the room was pitch black, so dark...like the inky black darkness of hell...and I fumbled for the switch and the lights popped on as we entered.

Holy Mother of J*sus, Lord...

The first thing I saw were the rickety double beds with mauve-ish bedspreads that probably hosted a number of STDs and viruses and probably served as the baby making platform for generations of trailer trash...and then I heard the dripping sound. I looked to my left and found that I was standing next to a huge plastic bin, which was catching the water leaking from the air conditioning unit jammed into the wall. Now we can add West Nile virus to the many circulating in this stagnant air.

Ellie: "Are we staying?"

Tim: "This place smells..."

Will, tears in eyes, hyperventilating: "I don't like it here at all...how far is it to LBI?"

I knew we weren't staying, but for good measure I raised all of our anxiety levels and envisioned a fire starting in the hallway and the four of us roasting to death because we had no alternate egress... Like the misguided mother I often am, I verbalized this to the kids...Ellie and Tim were speechless, Will sobbed.

"We aren't staying..." I said.

We somehow found our way back to the desk, almost knocking over this woman with a walker, on whom I am certain they modeled the Aunt Edna character from Vacation... Holy Hell...wait a second...Vacation...we were the f**king Griswolds, weren't we? Anyway...I told the front desk lady that my son was claustrophobic and it was impossible for us to stay in that room...she frantically offered another room with a rollaway cot...I glanced at the kids and Tim mouths: "Let's just get out of here!" I turn back to front desk clerk and shake my head "no"...she tried to apologize, but we are already bolting for the car...just like in Vacation when Clark Griswold steals cash from the Old West hotel...we couldn't get the hell out of there fast enough...

We were laughing hysterically as we pulled out onto Atlantic Avenue...but I took this as a teaching moment and said:

"Kids, let this be a lesson to you -- never stay in a place that allows you to hang your beach towels over the railings..."

I made an attempt to drive along the beach to see if we could find another place but all we saw were the "walkable" restaurants and the "family-friendly" entertainment at Misquamicut Beach, which it turned out was kind of a little like a mini-block-long-Seaside Heights. There was a busted up water park with one slide, an arcade, and that antique carousel -- more like a rusted-up merry-go-round... I kept apologizing and laughing as the kids mocked on my poor choice of lodging...we kept telling and re-telling the story to one another...everyone guffawing when we came to the part when she asked if we wanted a room with a roll-away cot instead.... It was so funny for some reason...bonding over what many people would have found a complete disaster...

At one point among our giddiness I hear Tim say to Will: "They should call that place The Un-Pleasant View Inn..." and Will goes: "or no...The No-View Inn...you know, no windows??" Hilarious!!!! Then Tim says, in mock exasperation: "If only your friend didn't have to have that family emergency we would be living large in The Hamptons right about now instead of sitting here parked in front of Benny's in sucky Rhode Island!" I looked in front of me and there was some giant place called Benny's across the street... Benny's... Then is struck me...bennies...the local Jersey Shore vernacular noting "clueless tourist." Damn straight, "Benny's" said it all!!!

As we came to a fork in the road Ellie says: "Let's just go back home, get up early in the morning and go to LBI for a day trip..." The same suggestion she made 5 hours earlier... The boys cheered and I agreed..and I was laughing so hard I was crying... I assured them that one day they would be road-tripping with their own children who would be b**ching about the long drive and they will be able to whip out this sick story and their children will all pee themselves laughing at how we drove 3 hours to the beach just to turn around and drive home again. I told them they could call it "The Road Trip From Hell..." And in response, without missing a beat, Ellie and Tim simultaneously bust out on the top of their lungs with: "I'm on the Highway to Hell..." And I am totally stunned for a second -- "How do you now that song?" I asked... "We love that song," Ellie said. "...It's on our iPods..." added Tim.

Move over "Little Drummer Boy"... this trip has a new theme song!

So I can't even begin to go into the stop we made in New London for dinner...on the waterfront that I expected to be picturesque and inviting, but instead housed rock clubs, tiki bars and tattoo shops...kind of like the badly-styled waterfront where Patch lived on Days of Our Lives back in '88... New London is a full story on its own... Suffice it to say we made it back to NJ safely and were in bed by 10 p.m. that very night...

We got up early on Wednesday, packed the car, picked up Ellie's go-to travel companion and bestie, Kathleen R....we were on the beach at Essex Street in Beach Haven by 10:30 where the kids played in the surf non-stop and Will mistakenly picked up a sand crab that he thought was a rock and I perfected my bright red sunburned nose... We hit Barry's Do-Me-A-Flavor for lunch and ice cream...had a refreshing dip in Allison and Kevin's pool on Glendola (thanks guys!!)...and went to the Holiday Snack Bar for dinner (which Will promptly threw right back up...again, a story for another time...)... I bought the kids LBI t-shirts at Breezin' Up, the girls in matching orange...then we hit the rides at Fantasy Island for a mere $100 in tokens...I even rode the Bumper Cars with them... And soon, it was time to go...but not until I spent another $30 on cheesy airbrushed

tattoos administered by a true Jersey Shore boardwalk goddess...

So after all, it hadn't been quite so necessary to make up for the change of plans by trying to create some fantasy jaunt for them... We had a perfectly fantastic day the humble, dependable Jersey Shore...me and my favorite people in the entire universe...the only three people who would still love me if I drove them 3 full hours to spend 15 minutes in a crappy beachside inn, only to turn around and drive right the hell back... And I just have to remind myself of that sometimes...that being around the ones you love, no matter where or in what circumstances, being able to laugh and sing out loud to Christmas songs in July...to collectively know just by looking at one another that you are cut from the same cloth and want the same things and that you were born to be a part of one another... That you don't need plans to make the days turn into precious and fun-filled memories...you just need to be around each other. Making that connection was the best part of the entire experience...and I would drive double that time and back if it meant having more ridiculous yet ordinary moments and a windowless room-full of laughs with each of my beloveds...

"Because getting there is half the fun. You know that..." Clark Griswold, 1983

xoxo S

Photos:

1. Oh it will make my YEAR if these yahoos are there when I finally get to Quogue!

2. My three...how can I deny those beautiful darlings a mid-week beachy vacay?

3. My (not so) alter ego... Ok, and maybe he's not exactly medieval, but he's got style, so there you go...

4. Misquamicut Beach on its best day...I think I see the tip of Long Island...just the tip...a little maybe? Nah....forget it...

5. Not The Un-Pleasant View Inn...but about as well-appointed....

6. Ah...pretty dresses and sport coats and a luxury resort...more my speed...

7. Actual photo of the actual windowless room full of viruses...just before we scrammed...

8. This Aunt Edna is far more gracious and appealing than the one we saw at The Un-Pleasant View....

9. Dinner in New London...Ellie's face just says it all...

10. Middle-schoolers and future Princeton swimmers in tattoos...far more elegant than a roach motel...

11. Wonderful moments with my three, this one on our last night in Bermuda this June...