we have to make it to California by Monday 9pm since I have a return red-eye flight that lands me at JFK at 6am on Tuesday morning and need to get to work 2 hours later!
we will dedicate our BLOG to our friends at the Boston Home as we try to raise money for them!
See www.summercore.com/bh for more info ... click here
Steve Bergen (bergen@chapin.edu)
whoops .. gotta go .. plane is leaving
more BLOG entries below!
Many of you have gotten to know my friends with multiple sclerosis at The Boston Home through the carnival picture judging at Summercore. Next month I will be one of the "pushers" (along with 10-15 Chapin students) as we support The Boston Home in our annual fund-raiser.
Although I rarely send along e-mails like this, the Boston Home has been such an incredible special part of the last 8 years for me, that I am making an exception to my general rule.
*** Would you be willing support our eighth annual walk on Sunday, June 5th -- Dorchester Day-- by walking with us, by cheering us on the route or by making a pledge of $100 (³gold²) or $10 (³silver²) or $1 (³bronze²) or even $1,918 (³curse is reversed²) to the Boston Home computer lab for helping our friends with multiple sclerosis acquire computers, speech-recognition and video-conferencing technology.
*** This year, the Chapin sixth grade and seventh grade girls will be helping to publish the autobiography of Colleen Powers titled ³Crossing the Digital Divide² and will again be composing Photoshop pictures as displayed on http://www.summercore.com/bh
*** For more info or to pledge, send e-mail to marathon@chapin.edu or call 781-953-9699; please mail checks payable to ³Boston Home Computer Lab² to Steve Bergen, PO Box E, Lexington MA 02420. Thanks! Every dollar helps whether you are a happy Red Sox fan or frustrated Yankees fan ;-)
Entry #2 ... On the plane to Chicago 5:33 pm
minutes away from landing in Chicago too bad my watch is broken so I can't change the time easily oh well, I will live with NYC time for the weekend will we get to Iowa by midnight tonight? will Sarah's car be fixed or will we have to wait overnight for it to be fixed will we get to California by Monday will the web connection work for most of the trip I am about to venture into the land of many unknowns gotta relax and with the flow that's the nature of an adventure so let it begin!Entry #3 ... Lots of traffic leaving the airport and getting out of Chicago
... it took us about 90 minutes to go 15 miles but pretty soon we hit good old Rt 80, the one road to take us all the way California as it turned out, the problem with Sarah's car ("engine warning light") was the catalytic converter which she could fix under warranty in California ... so the worry about her car was now over a few hours later, we crossed the border into Iowa listening to Hattie Carrol and Hurricane Carter and discussing whether the song are mirro images of each other all is going wel and we are making great time until we hear the thump-thump-thumping from behind us Sarah said it was two motorcycles but I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a truck that was making the loud thump-thump-thumping noise I slowed down to let the truck go by but the noise did not stop oh no, we both said as we realized that the engine warning light was NOT the catalytic converter but something more serious In the next minute, we try to navigate the car onto the next exit ramp, figuring if we could get to an exit, maybe we could find a gas station before the car would actually die but the next exit was yet another highway perpendicular and no hope at all ... so I pulled the car onto the side dirt and Sarah got out ... hey wait, she said, "something is burning" now we hussled to get out wondering if we were going to have an engine fire I struggled to pop the hood but finally did it meanwhile, Sarah (the observant one) saw that the back right tire was flat sorrow and joy in one instance sorrow that we had a flat tire but joy that the car had not overheated so we called AAA and simultanously started getting out the stuff to fix the flat we had 10 minutes of confusion with AAA since we said the exit on rt 80 was 29B and they insisted that was not in eastern Iowa but in western Iowa it turned out the sign said 298 (my fault of course) and they said they would have someone here within 30 minutes, although I got yelled at by Sarah for being rude to the woman on the phone (which I wasn't) meanwhile, we were frustrated by our efforts to get the jack working and then decided that we had to move the car to be all on the pavement or all on the sand we chose the sand and indeed got the jack to work we even took the bolts off the wheel but could not get the wheel off at that point, the guy from AAA was here, a wonderful man who knew his stuff and told us it was 2200 miles to San Francisco he said we would "just manage" to make there by Monday night he also said that all the jacks that come with cars these days were garbage and actually dangerous .. he told of one car today that tipped over when the jack that came with the car was being used and broke ... we said goodbye and thanks to him, after he told us about Iowa City on the way to Des Moines ... sarah whispered to me sternly to tip him it is now 10:46 pm Iowa time and we are still driving happily away!Entry #4 In a Holiday Inn at 1:45 Iowa time or 2:45 NYC time
so an hour after we leave the site of our flat tire, we stop for gas, coffee and bathrooms ... Sarah discovers she has 2 ticks on her arm and had to remove them "Dunkin-style" ... she gets worried about Lyme disease and calls her friend Hal in California who puts Jess on the phone ... she reassures Sarah that the problematic ticks are in Maine not Iowa and that any tick she can see is probably not a problem so all is well and we keep driving until we get to Des Moines, the state capital we check into a Holiday Inn and go to the two rooms, calling it a long but satisfying day 15 minutes later, a security guard knocks at my door and asks me to change rooms, saying the manager messed up ... so I get visibly upset, demand to speak to the manager who apologizes and after some more dialogue, especially since I find out that he needs Sarah to change rooms, he agrees to comp the rooms
Entry #5 ... Entering Nebraska, Friday 1pm
so we are finally out of Iowa and into Nebraska ... our goal is to get to Cheyenne, Wymoming by tonight
here is one note that I got from Kerry, the activities director at the Boston Home
here is a very funny one that I got from Gene Sullivan, avid Yankees fan and also Director of Security at Chapin
by the way, click here for the BLOG of Gene SullivanI finally learned the mystery this morning of the Holiday Inn messup last night ... it turns out that I gave the priority club member number of Lynne Schalman when we checked in at 2am so at 2:30 am, the person at the desk thought he had made a mistake since the rooms given to me now were recorded as belonging to Lynne Schalman so that is why the security person came up at 2:33 and asked Sarah and me to vacate our rooms the manager apologize profusely for his mistake and gave us comps on the two rooms along with directions to the nearest place to buy a new tire and so off we went ... the first tire place had been replaced by a mall .. the second one had a sign that said CLOSED but a nice guy in the back said he would get us the tire for the TOYO ("they can't say TOYOTA in Iowa") and told us it was an incredibly rare tire ... but he said he would not have it until 5pm today and so we went to tire place #3 and the woman was nice but unable to get the tire from anywhere finally, we went to Firestone ... they had one left in a warehouse across town ... Sarah and I went to have breakfast (Atkins for me = bacon and eggs) and waited for them to call us ... so at about 10:30 am, we hit the road again and left Des Moines
it was on this leg of the trip that Sarah had asked me about teaching in an environment where the kids were "not so entitled" ... I promised her that "I was not dead yet" and that one of these years I will do so! Afterall, I have worked in 5 Ind Schools since I graduated college in 1973 -- St. Anne's, Wooster, Concord Academy, Nobles and Chapin -- one of these days I will ABSOLUTELY make the change!
Entry #6 ... All the way past Cheyenne ... Friday midnight
Well, we just arrived here and can now get 6 quality hours of sleep before we hit the road again at 7am ... this has been the longest interval without a mishap, so I hope this note does not jinx us After leaving Des Moines, we were able to cruise through Nebraska where the speed limit is 75 MPH ... the roads in the plains were so straight that I was able to drive 5 straight hours without crashing or scratching my hair ... we got to Cheyenne at 7pm and had dinner (buffalo of course) ... no alcohol for me, since I am still taking medicine for that cough which is now much better ... all during the game, Sam was text messaging me from Yankee Stadium where the Red Sox were taking a 3-0 lead ... he and Lynne had seats about 10 feet before the left field foul pole but left in the sixth innning when the Yankees went ahead ... I cannot believe that I lost yet another $18 chai bet to Gene Sullivan and that the Yankees are now ahead of the Sox in the standings ... I wonder if Les who owns the hardware store on 90th street will call to rub it in the way he claimed last week ... he and I have an $18 chai bet on the series, so it is possible that I could lose $54 to Gene and $18 to Les ... this is ridiculous ... I need to find out when the Patriots are playing the Jets so I can win it back from Gene looking at a map, it appears that we have covered HALF of the trip from Chicago to Santa Cruz in a day and a half ... this makes me optimistic that we will get to Sarah's new apartment for the summer by Sunday evening ... this will also help since the Memorial Day traffic in the San Francisco area will be as congested as NYC once we got past Cheyenne, we could see the Rocky Mountains ... it was really amazing in one day to go from eastern Nebraska which is totally flat to western Nebraska where the hills begin and the elevation begins to rise ... and then we got to see our first big buttes which I could figure out how to pronounce ... big "beauts" or big "butts" but just to give us that competitive edge, we decided to drive a few hours past Cheyenne after dinner, even though it was now dark ... Sarah did the driving while I mostly slept in the front seat ... no internet connection via my cell phone in Nebraska and Wyoming which is why I have not updated this BLOG until midnight when we stopped in a little town called Rawlings at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains no big hassles this afternoon, the car actually behaved itself ... our only mishap was MINE when I forgot to tell Sarah where to turn to get to the Bison Restaurant and we ended up on a highway in Wyoming that took us into Colorado with no ability to turn around for 10 minutes okay ... our goal for tomorrow, Saturday, is Reno Nevada assuming the snow in the Rockies does not slow us down
Entry #7 5/28 Salt Lake City UTAH 11am Utah Time or 1am NYC time
we are close to Salt Lake City ... we got on the road at 7:30 am this morning and covered 200 miles in 2.5 to 3 hours ... all is well and we headed downhill (literally and figuratively) with under 1000 miles left to Santa Cruz CA I finally found a good solution to having brought too many clothes I am leaving the previous day in the motel room so the return trip to NYC will be lighter! Since Lynne and Sam make fun of most of my shirts which are from the year gimmel, I am sure this will make them happy! speaking of "getting lighter" ... I decided to go off the atkins diet for a while yesterday --> macdonald's thick shake --> fries --> tcby oh well ... I am back on it now ;-)Entry #8 Sunday May 29 10:33 AM from Auburn CA
so yesterday was our best day of driving, but not on purpose ... we had planned on getting to Reno, Nevada at the best, if everything went well ... one thing that did not go well was at the gas station, where one time, I came very close to putting diesel fuel in Sarah's car (shades of France where I actually did this years ago and we had to hire a professional to empty the tank) ... another time, Sarah and I both thought the other person had taken the gas hose out of the car and then when we drove off, we each realized that the other person had not ... fortunately, that had no consequence other than a noise that made us stop and attach the hose and pump back where it was supposed to be well, we made it to Reno by 7pm but then found out that there was not one motel or hotel that had any vacancies within an hour of the town ... this was afterall Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend ... so, after an hour of making phone calls, we found a place an hour north of Sacramento that had rooms in a small town called Auburn ... so as much as we did not want to do it, we drove another 90 minutes or so through the mountains of California at 9:30 pm and go to our destination ... the only good thing is that it means our trip to Santa Cruz today Sunday will be shorter!
Entry #9 Monday early morning from Santa Cruz CA (Final Entry)
Well, I thought Day 4 was going to be an easy one ... we slept late in our Auburn motel, had breakfast late and for the first time in several days did not have to get up and out in the morning ... we left Auburn at 12 noon, drove thru San Jose (since we did know the way) and got to Santa Cruz around 4 due to traffic ... the afternoon drive was around 185 miles, Sarah moved into her new apartment and we went out for dinner at an ocean front restaurant ... Sarah then drove me to the motel and we went for a short cruise by car around Santa Cruise, what we call a Santa Cruz Cruise ... Sarah drove me back ot he motel and all was well (for a while) Well, what happened is that I walked from the motel to the beach to see the Santa Cruz boardwalk ... I walked in the Pacific Ocean (too cold to swim) and then left the beach to go onto the Santa Cruz pier that protrudes into the ocean ... I was determined to buy Lynne some southwestern jewelry before flying back to NYC after that, it should have been an easy one mile walk back to the motel ... just get to water street which goes straight to my motel ... well, I got so horrendously lost and it was now 10pm that I was scared ... no car ... no map ... no cell phone batery left and not much to do but sing ... and there was no way I could solve the problem, so I fixed the blame (me) ... why did I take a different way back ... why didn't I retrace my steps ... why didn't my cell phone have more charge so that I could call the police or Sarah who could have looked at the Santa Cruz map ... I really truly got scared and could not calm myself down ... so I started singing this song I got the can't find water street, lost in santa cruz blues I got the can't find water street, lost in santa cruz blues Found my way across America but now I'm paying my dues click here to listen! Finally after circling what seemed like endless streets and going nowhere, I came across a group of 10 teenagers going for a walk. I asked them for help and they directed me to turn right on Broadway, go 1/2 mile and then you will see water street I was so exhausted when I got back to my motel room that I could barely walk. As Bobby D once said "I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough."
