[24-30 May, 2022]
This was the first true long-distance road trip in the MDX (the Chicago trip earlier in the spring notwithstanding) and it couldn’t have come any sooner.
First stop was Hesston, PA where I spent a couple of nights at the Hills’ (old friends Drew and Stacy from back when Drew used to work at Honda in the late 90’s/early 00’s) vacation cottage near the Raystown Lake Recreation Area. Unfortunately, due to the cold and rainy weather, we were unable to partake in any water recreation activities. There was lots of good eating, though!
We then drove to the Hills’ primary home in Ellicott City, MD, a suburb of Baltimore where more eating and imbibing took place.
From Baltimore, it was off to see the Hsu’s in East Setauket, NY. Jim and I were old roommates back in our old Ann Arbor days, where we both went to the University of Michigan. His eldest, Peter, began studies in Neuroscience at the Ohio State University in 2015 so we ended up seeing each other more frequently during their visits while Peter was in Columbus, up to his graduation a few years ago, just before the pandemic. Of course, a visit with them in NY is not complete without a trip to Flushing for some of the city’s best dim sum.
After a couple of nights with the Hsu’s, it was on to Brooklyn to meet up with an old friend from high school, Lito from this 2018 Colorado adventure and this 2018 Ireland Bro-cation. It was a day-long gallivanting walkathon in the Chelsea, Flat Iron, and Hudson Yards districts, with a final stop at K-town for some K BBQ.
And finally, on my last day in Manhattan, it’s time to drive back home but not without first stopping by the Washington Heights area to pick up Lenin who just left his job of 6 years at Columbia University for a new (and better) one at Washington University in St. Louis.
And so ended my 1500-plus mile roadtrip through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York with neither traffic incidents nor speeding tickets. The next road trip is still on the planning board.