July 5, 2005

Today is travel day. Lots and lots of travel to be done. Good thing that I enjoy travelling.

I got up at a decent time this morning. Min got me up when she got in from work at the hotel and I rested for about another half an hour before actually getting out of bed. I got up and showered and then I took Andy over to Enterprise so that he could rent a car to drive to interviews this week. He ended up getting a pretty good deal on a Hyundai Elantra. His car is getting pretty old and he doesn’t feel that he can rely on it.

I managed to hit the road around 11:00. In addition to my regular travels, I had to go down to Binghamton to drop off a lease desktop down there. Fun fun fun. Always so much to be done on every trip. This is my first ever trip with New Jersey as a destination and, as far as I can recall, the only the second time that I have ever driven any significant distance in New Jersey. Of all of the states on the eastern seaboard, it has to be the one with which I am the least familiar. Even Delaware I have spent some time in. Actually, my grandfather was from Delaware and I have been to the town that he was born in a couple of time at least. Once when I was really little and once about two years ago with Min. I took US476 south out of Scranton but then instead of going down through the Philadelphia area, like I should have done, I went east to the center of Jersey and drove down NJ206 down the middle of the state. What a mistake that was. The trip was scenic and I enjoyed seeing so much of Jersey that I had never seen before but traffic moved at the most incredibly slow pace. I couldn’t believe how slow that it was. It took be over two hours to move just 18 miles at one point. And it wasn’t like anything was wrong. That is just how traffic moves there. That really sucked.

I finally made my way down to Princeton and called Min to have her walk me through the directions to the hotel. That is a really tough area to get around if you don’t know the roads. But Princeton itself is an incredible town. I can’t believe how attractive and nice that it was. It is a beautiful town. I am definitely interested in moving to this area someday.

It was around 5:30pm when I finally got to the Clarion Palmer Inn Princeton on US1. I was surprised by how nice the hotel was. It was just renovated this year so even though the building was decently old, it felt very new. I liked the layout of the place, very comfortable. And I got the easy to remember room number of 123.

I got settled into my room and set up my laptop. As always, I selected this hotel because it had free wireless Internet access. That makes all of the difference in the world. I can’t live without my Internet access! What would I have to do? Nothing. I would just sit there like a bump on a log.

I had a few hours before I had to head back up NJ206 to Bridgewater for work so I ordered some coconut shrimp from Charlie Brown’s which was inside of the hotel and worked on the computer. They didn’t have room service but I just had to walk a little way to get to the restaurant. My hotel room faced into the courtyard of the hotel which I liked. The view to the outside of the hotel is always just highways and traffic but to the inside was very attractive. It made for a nice change. Although it wasn’t good for privacy. I was on the main floor so people walking down the sidewalk would go right next to my window.

I left for work at 7:30. Wegmans in Bridgewater was only 13 miles away but the drive, evening in the late evening, took over an hour. Work was rough tonight and I ended up being stuck working until 6:00 am. I bet Bob is glad that he decided not to come down here with me.

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