ROUTE: Newport, MI to Windsor, CT: 796 miles (693 loaded + 103 deadhead)
I had requested home-time in New York for the weekend of March 28th. My son gave me as a Christmas gift two tickets for the Saturday game of the Season Opener Series of the NY METS versus the Pittsburgh Pirates. This assignment would get me home. The closest truck stop to Rye, NY where I can leave the truck unattended is at the Pilot in Milford, CT. There’s a Travel Plaza in Darien, CT, but I cannot leave the truck unattended there. Once they towed my truck by mistake and I learned the hard way, but since it was their mistake I was not charged for the tow.
Thursday March 26th I dropped off the load at the consignee in Lansing, MI, stopped at our terminal in Canton to fuel up and picked up this load in Newport, MI, at 8:45pm just before their closing time of 9:00pm. I wasn’t going to advance much this evening but that way I had a head start for the next day. I drove an hour south to the Petro at Perrysburg, OH.
Friday March 27th, I started the day with a shower at the Petro truck stop as I did not have time to shower at the terminal the day before. The game was set to start at 4:10pm on Saturday and I had agreed to meet my son at his mom’s apartment in Rye at 2:00pm. I had reserved a car at the Budget in Strattford, CT and a hotel room at La Quinta in Stamford, CT. The Pilot’s free parking spots fill up quickly and need to be there between 9:00am-1:00pm otherwise the paid parking cost $25 per night. It was about a ten hour drive from where I was but I would only get there around 10:00pm. Instead I drove to the Travel Plaza in Darien and spent the night there.
Saturday March 28th I started my day at 9:00am and drove 30 minutes to the Pilot where I was able to find a free parking spot without a problem. Had I arrived on Friday night I would have had to pay for three nights of parking, so my strategy saved me $75. I took an UBER to pick up the car rental and then drove 45 minutes to Port Chester, NY, where I have my stuff in a Westy’s storage unit. I found some METS gear and then drove to Rye to meet up with my son. He lives in Boston and drives my Ford Bronco SUV. He drove us to CitiField in Queens and we got there around 3:00pm. It was a warm sunny day when we left Rye but it was cold at the stadium since it is close to the water. I used to take the kids to METS’ games when they were kids but it had been over ten years since we had been to a game. We had a blast. After the game we drove back to Rye and had dinner at one of the local restaurants.
Sunday I had the day off and spent some time with my eldest daughter. I was supposed to meet my other two daughters for dinner but something came up and they couldn’t make it.
Monday March 30th I fueled the truck at the Pilot where the truck had safely spent the weekend and I drove an hour to make the delivery.
BOOK REVIEW (1): Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman (2020), FICTION – RATING (**)
I did not understand the point being conveyed in this story. I found it tiresome, disrespectful and irrational.
Judy Vogel is a fifty-year old one-hit wonder author that had an extremely successful children’s book that even was made into a TV show but her next two books were flops. Her husband, Gary, is a pot smoking individual in a dead-end job with extreme anxieties. Teddy is their thirteen year-old son. They are going through financial hardship and are having difficulty paying Teddy’s school tuition. Judy and Gary are having marital problems and decided to separate but because their financial hardship they are co-habitating in the same house though in separate rooms.
Judy comes across a sling she used when Teddy was a baby and decides to use it again to provide her with some sort of comfort. She tries with several materials but misses the warmth from carrying around a baby so decides to place her twenty-pound dog in it. Eventually it turns out to an all day thing though she does not register the dog as an Emotional Support Animal (ESAS). This is supposed to be the amusing part of the story but I had the complete opposite effect on me.
The main issues that bothered me:
- Gary is the one with anxiety issue but it’s Judy that comes up with this radical idea of carrying their dog on a baby sling attached to her body.
- The focus is on Judy and how she’s hauling the dog around in a sling forcing empathy towards her. I felt empathy for the dog that is being forced out of her natural habitat. ESAS offer comfort to their owners but continue to live a normal pet’s life.
- The relationship among a married couple going through a separation is similar to COVID protocols, they maintain a safe distance of no less than six-feet apart. Especially when financial circumstances force them to live under the same roof. Judy and Gary carry on as best-friends that simply are not having sex.
- The children’s book that Judy wrote is mentioned ad nauseam.
There are side stories to make the narrative more amusing but they fail to do so due to the absurdness of the dog being carried in a sling.
I struggled to finish it.
BOOK REVIEW (2): The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley (2024), FICTION – RATING (*****)
Lucy Foley does a great job building the suspense while providing a clear description of all the players and the surrounding circumstances.
The Manor, a luxury boutique hotel-spa on a beautiful cliff of a quaint town on the English countryside not too far from London is crucial to the plot of this story. Its official opening is set for the weekend of the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. No expense has been spared. Francesca “Frankie” Meadows is the owner, she inherited the property from her grandfather, and where she spent many summers of her youth when it was his home. Her husband is the architect that designed the remodel and how they met. Bella Springfield is the protagonist, she is one of the guests that weekend and not registered under her real name. That is not the only secret she is holding. She and Frankie go back to their younger days but have not seen each other for fifteen years. There’s a slew of other characters including the hotel staff, the inhabitants of the farm next door, a caravan park nearby and the local town folk who believe in the legend of bird-people that live in the woods adjacent to The Manor and protect their way of life.
As many of Foley’s novels the lives of two or more of the characters have intertwined at some point with a dark secrets between them but enough to justify murder?
Suspenseful, well written and entertaining with an unexpected ending.
