Adventures

I remember when i was in high school, first getting my license and thinking, FINALLY I will not be bored! Then realize WOW, was i wrong. But at least you were bored with your friends and gas prices were less than a dollar. (jeez..... remember that?!) Instead of going into the woods and getting drunk or stoned, my friends and i would eat tons of sugar, get a sugar high and drive around trying to find out what others are doing. Sometimes drive around following people and exploring. My favorite was trying to get lost. We would actually TRY to get lost in our own town. I have found this helpful now, so i don't freak out when i actually do. I look at it as a new adventure.

When we would get lost, we would find the most interesting things. That was like the treasure at the end of rainbow. I remember once finding the tackiest mini golf course and go-kart place. That made us so damn happy. Or just random oddities. Those were fun too. Like some statue that you have never seen or place that was spooky. There would always be dares to have someone go do something and music being blasted out the windows (heavy on the B-52's.... something about those beehive hair-do's).

I haven't had adventures like that in a long time. I missed them. I love exploring in a car and driving to random locations. But now they are more planned out or have time restrictions. But accidental ones don't happen like they did, except for this past Sunday. My friend and i were going on an adventure to Wegman's Grocery Store, since there isn't one close to us. Now Wegman's is an adventure in itself, as it is HUGE and completely insane. So we printed out directions to get there, had a HUGE cup of coffee prior and headed out. Now for those of you that don't know what it is like to drive in Northern Jersey, it's kinda confusing. Lots of damn streets that i am convinced are marked incorrectly and criss cross to confusion. Or they label things after the fact. Or have two lanes going in the same direction, but you can't get to the other lane. Those kind of things. Well, the directions were all sorts of messed up. But we found some roads that looked like what we were supposed to be on, but wasn't sure what direction to go on it. So we get all excited to find this one road and head "WEST" or so we think. We start to look for street names to turn on and it's getting more desolate. Then we come across the most amazing place. The first thing i see that tips me off as strange is the top of the building. It has a "palace" look to it. That was our first clue that something was strange about it. Then we look into the courtyard and see a huge fountain and these strange "light" fixtures and a tall figure sculpture. So we initially drive by and say- oh shit, what the hell was that.....

We drive down and realize it is an Indian Best Western Hotel. There is an Indian restaurant and banquet room there as well. The figure was huge and was an Indian man. We slowly drove around and saw that there was an event going on. We said to ourselves that we have to come back here with cameras and when it is warm one day to check it out. At least the fountain will be going and the lights on. The tacky factor was extremely high. So we drive off, in search of the missing road. We continue down and come across another Jersey staple, random convention areas with lots of hotels and nothing else. So we realize, this is so not the way and turn around. Now, meanwhile, we can not get that hotel out of our minds. We then dare each other to go in to ask for directions. So we pull back in to the hotel and walk up to the banquet doors. Now two very white girls look a bit strange, so this guy stops us and asks if we need anything. We both stop and my friend holds up the directions with the Wegman's logo on it. We tell him that this was the road the directions told us to go on and we don't see it anywhere. He then tells us how to get there, which by the way was not even CLOSE to what those directions told us. Either that or we just totally suck at reading directions. He leaves us and we sneak in. There was a huge Ganesh at the end of the corridor and beautiful designs on the ceiling of the hallway. Due to the fact that a real event was going on, we couldn't get to look around more. We were dying to check it out. I did take a picture with my cell phone of the sculpture outside. And with both of us being artists and her being a medical illustrator, we were tearing into the fact that the sculpture is terribly mis-proportioned.

We finally drove off, got to Wegmans and bothered fellow customers by flying down the isles with our carts and riding them. We of course played bumper cars and laughed hysterically when people starred at us in the store. I felt so great. I was a kid again. I would ride the cart down the isle, which i pushed as fast as possible, and come to a stop and throw my hands in the air and yell- I AM 34 YEARS OLD!

It was great to have that adventure and laugh and enjoy myself. The energy rubbed off from the two of us and even when i got home (I had been gone for over 3 hours). I needed a good laugh and adventure. That certain fountain of youth so to speak.