Yesterday, I spent my morning and afternoon in the greater Hellertown/Coopersburg area. I started my day going to Saucon Community Church with Josh. The sermon was centered around Proverbs 16:1-5, which outlines God's sovereignty over all things on Earth and that we should search Him for all answers to your plans in life. Before Sunday school, we ate some popcorn in the kitchen area and were approached by Russ, the door greeter. He made my day with what he said next. He asked if he had seen Josh and I walking and holding hands or if it was just an optical illusion. We all laughed and said it wasn't an optical illusion and Russ apologized if he caused any embarrassment, which he did not. I was just greatly amused.
Following church and Sunday school, we made our way to Coopersburg for the 7th Annual Chili-Fest that was held at Mark and Heather's. About 10 chilis were entered this year and there were 43 votes cast. The winner was Heather's Texas Tom's BBQ Brisket Chili, which won with 14 votes, narrowly beating The Pursuit of Happiness, which received 13 votes. It was definitely a wonderful time of fellowship with members of the Bible study and community. I chatted with various individuals about everything from bright colored clothing, making lasagna, and making a chili with steak, hamburger, corn, and extra cheddar cheese, to running injuries, Christian community, and how to create a no-sew fleece blanket. All in all it was a splendid gathering leading up to the Halloween Parade.
Around 3pm, a handful of chili-fest goers made their way to Main Street in Coopersburg, which was right down the street, to watch the parade go by. Everybody was excited to see fellow members of the Bible study on floats, twirling, and riding by in their designated spots. We cheered each and every one on whilst snapping pictures and trying to collect candy without tackling little children in the process. Also, some very interesting questions arose depending on what was coming down the street, such as "Does that woman have legs?" and "Who is in the limo?" It was definitely a beautiful day for a parade and I enjoyed getting to know many of the fellow members of the Bible study.
The tradition of the past four years has been for me to trek to Knoebels on Columbus Day weekend for some festivities with my friend, KK, and her family. I continued in this tradition, though it was limited to just one day since I had a jam-packed weekend of activities planned.
On Friday, I set out for Sunbury, PA, to meet up with KK at the Sheetz by her house. This place alone makes me laugh because I always remember the first time I was going to visit KK and she was giving our friend, Teresa, directions and told her that we should "turn at the Sheetz," but Teresa heard "turn at the sheep" and was wondering how KK knew they would be there. Anyways, this venture took much longer than expected due to the excessive construction on I-80 west and drivers continual inability to merge into one lane when prompted to do so. I eventually found KK and we drove to Knoebels to park my car before running errands for her mom. KK was also trying to give directions to her cousin about how to locate her house and needed to call her mom to see if anybody was home to flag down her cousin. Needless to say, this involved KK being on two phones at once, which was a highly amusing sight.
We soon made our way to the Crest Haven Farmer's Market to pick up cold-cuts and cheese for our sandwiches before hunting for birthday cards in the dollar store. After mailing the cards, we made it back to Knoebels and located KK's family in the British Columbia section of the campground. We all sat down and enjoyed some sandwiches for dinner and chatted about what was new and exciting. KK's mom insisted that I eat more, which is typical, and I enjoyed arguing back since she was berating me in English and not German about eating more. After dinner, we made our way to the bumper cars for the semi-annual two hours of smashing into each other as hard as possible. KK and I shared a car for the majority of the time, which was a blast, even though many bruises began forming after numerous collisions with her dad, uncles, Gus, and Mots. Following bumper cars, we went back to the campsite to relax in front of the fire. I enjoyed chatting with KK's grandma about life. She was amused by the devilish look in my eye that I had every time I went to hit somebody during bumper cars. I informed her that my oma's nickname for me when I was growing up happened to be "kleine teufel" which means "little devil." Soon we were all exhausted and decided to turn-in for the night.
The next morning I had a nice chat on the phone with my brother and then read some of my book for the book club on Sunday evening. This was followed by a delicious breakfast of toast, bacon, eggs, and breakfast potatoes. Following my breakfast, I packed up my car and set off on my next adventure, which was to locate Josh's family cabin outside of East Canton, PA. I knew that this would definitely be interesting considering part of the directions stated, "turn into a parking lot by a milking parlor and continue around until the barn is on your left and then drive down the road that goes off into a field at an angle. Follow this into the woods and then you have arrived." Thankfully, I only missed a turn once, but noticed it on my second drive-by. Otherwise, I would have been out of luck considering there is no cell phone service in the area. What made my arrival even more entertaining was the fact that Josh wasn't even at the cabin when I got there and I had never met anybody who was there at the time. One of the three Larry's greeted me and told me to make myself at home while he went back out target shooting. I took a seat at a table and continued to read my book. Soon Josh arrived with his cousin and brother. They had their rocket boat with them, but realized that they had left the ignition button at the house, so we all piled into the car and went back for it.
Once back at the cabin, we all wandered down to the pond to test out the rocket boat. I was part of the rescue crew for the first attempt, so I went out in a canoe with Josh's brother-in-law so that I could film the attempt and then retrieve the boat. The first attempt wasn't terrible, though it flipped when it caught a wave. The second-attempt was quite zig-zaggy, while the third attempt was a beautiful straight shot to the shoreline. Our favorite attempt, though, was the fourth because it went straight for about half the length of the pond before becoming extremely unstable and flipping over. Watching the video amuses us every time. After rocket-boating, we went inside for a tasty dinner, which made for good fuel before going out and shooting rifles. We shot at spinner targets and plastic cups, but soon upgraded to jugs of oxygen acetylene. There is no describing the effects of this, so it is best that you watch the video at the end of this post for the full effect. It was definitely one of the highlights of my weekend, though. We then went back inside and played Settlers of Catan before getting some sleep.
The next morning we ate a heart breakfast before having a little church service at the cabin. Following the service, Josh and I went for an hour long walk through some pastures, woods, and corn fields. It was definitely great to be out in nature again hearing the crunch of leaves under my feet and enjoying the sunshine. After our walk, we played a game of Rivals of Catan before a lunch of lasagna. I had to trek south to the Burg after lunch so that I could shower and make it to my book club down in Coopersburg. It was a refreshing evening chatting about how sin, not men, is the main problem, along with the importance of a woman maintaining her identity, while embracing the roles of wife and mother. The importance of Christian community with fellow women was also discussed because too many get sucked into maintaining their nuclear family and we must not forget what we can learn from each other's experiences and gain from communication. All in all it was a very entertaining and refreshing weekend.
Let me begin with where this idea was born. About two weeks ago while watching television, Josh and I saw this commercial for the new Dodge Journey.
I had every intention of going on YouTube to discover the rules of the search, but I completely forgot. Luckily Josh remembered to look it up and, after screen capturing some of the clips from the initial commercial, determined that the Dodge Journey had to be somewhere in Northeast New York or Vermont. This opportunity to find a new car was too awesome to pass up, so we decided that we were going to drive to the area on September 24th to give it our best shot. In order to prepare, we bought an atlas of Vermont to try and give ourselves a search radius. We also came across an invaluable blog that was dedicated to solving video clues for the East search, so we scoured the comment board for ideas as well. What we eventually discovered was that Dodge made a mistake in offering a wide frame shot of the final location of the Journey in the East Search, and by using Google Earth, most people determined that it was on Mt. Independence in Vermont. This brought up many questions about the fairness of the search. Many figured that the Journey would either be found within five minutes of the contest starting, while others were hoping that Dodge was aware of the discovery and that they had a contingency plan for another location. Luckily, the latter is what occurred.
On the morning of Saturday, September 24, Josh and I departed from my parents house in Galilee, PA at 7:40am. We drove straight to Queensbury, NY, and found a Starbucks to setup shop in because I had a plan of sorts. Since everybody assumed the Journey was at Mt. Independence, we both figured it was pointless to go to such a congested area, especially since one needed to take a ferry from Ticonderoga, NY, to even get to that location in Vermont. By staying in Queensbury, this gave us a central location to Ticonderoga and Albany. Our reasoning was based upon the numerous inconsistencies and paradoxes within the original commercial because it shows the Dodge Journey driving in four completely different directions.
The first clue was launched at noon and gave us a starting radius of 500 miles from Albany, NY. This came as a bit of a shock because many were assuming a radius of only 100-200 miles. The bigger surprise was that the next four subsequent clues that would be released each hour until 4pm only narrowed the radius by 25 miles each, giving a radius of 375 miles on the final clue. (If you would like to watch the clues released by Dodge, which I would highly encourage, you can go to Dodge's YouTube Channel and scroll down to where it says, "And the clues that led to the Journey.") Considering we knew what the first four clues were going to be in terms of location, we felt it was best to sit in Starbucks until the final clue was released. We occupied our time with trying to determine a direction and checking on a live update blog, the live feed of the Dodge Journey, and Twitter. Once the final clue was released, and it oddly saying that the Journey was within 25 miles of the last clue, we determined that it would be best to drive to Vermont via Route 4 to avoid any congestion. We knew Dodge had put up a sign right before the turn onto Route 73 off of Route 74 east in Vermont, so we assumed that we had to just look for these signs.
As we got closer to Route 74, Josh thought it best that we try to take some back roads to search on because the West and Midwest locations had been remote. Also, the last clue spoke of a marathon, so we were trying to search an area that was 26.2 miles from Schroon Lake, NY. We soon began coming across numerous vehicles from out of state who were obviously taking part in the search. We drove down remote dirt roads and dead end roads leading to farms trying to determine where this barn was, as this image of our Google Maps route indicates.
Around 5pm on Dodge's Twitter we realized a bit of bad news. They said that the Journey really wasn't within 25 miles like the last clue video had stated, but within 375 miles. They also said that a slideshow would be played starting at 6pm to show landmarks on the way to the location. With this slightly demoralizing news, we decided to pull off the road and access the internet for the slideshow. My mom was watching at home and calling with tips of possible directions to drive in. After about a half hour of almost useless pictures, minus a handful of buildings, we decided that our best bet was to drive back on 74 west and take the turn onto 73 like the Journey in the 500 mile clue. This seemed to be everybody's idea because we soon found ourselves in a convoy of about 8 cars all driving frantically in the same direction. Any place there was a passing zone, cars went zooming by, or I passed the slow drivers in front of me. We began to see some of the buildings from the slideshow in Orwell, VT, which gave us hope that we were on the right track. Josh was on the phone with my mom and watching the slideshow to try and figure out which direction to go in. We made it to Brandon, VT, and pulled off the road, just like all of the other cars, because that was the last image given in the slideshow. Instead of waiting for it to continue, we made a wild guess and hopped on Route 7 south. This happened to be a very smart move and we actually found ourselves ahead of the clues in the slideshow. Josh's friend Dan was also trying to keep us updated to a direction, as were my parents. My dad discovered a barn behind a restaurant in Killington, VT, that seemed promising, but then the next slide indicated otherwise. I continued to drive as fast as I could without drawing attention down Route 4 towards Woodstock, VT, and Quechee. After some careful thinking, we felt it was best to get on Interstate 89 south, and got off in Lebanon, NH, so that we could pull into a parking lot and wait for the next clue. Unfortunately, this was at 9pm and Dodge wrote on the chalkboard in the live feed that the slideshow would continue at 9am the next morning. This was quite demoralizing because we had such high hopes that we were ahead of the crowd and on the right track. As much as we wished to continue, we knew that we had to be back in Hellertown for Josh to teach Sunday school in the morning. On one last whim, though, since we didn't want to give up too easily, we realized on the blog that somebody had mentioned that there was a Journey's End Farm outside of Providence, RI. This was 204 miles from where we were currently, but it fit into the radius that Dodge had implemented, so we gave it a shot. Around 1am, we rolled slowly down a dead end road past this farm and saw a barn with lights on. After 3 drive-bys, we determined that the barn didn't seem to match the one from the live feed and we didn't have the nerve to trespass so early in the morning. I didn't think getting shot at while in search of a car was something I wanted to chance. With that in mind, we began the journey back to East Stroudsburg. We took I-95 south through Connecticut and around 3am, decided to pull off in a rest area for a 1 hour nap. I then drove the rest of the way home through the Bronx, across the George Washington Bridge, and through New Jersey before making it back to my apartment at 6:30am. All in all, it was a very fun excursion. We managed to travel through 8 different states all within the span of 23 hours, so not too shabby. For all you visual learners out there, a map of our entire route can be seen to the right so you can visualize how far we actually drove. Also, once I work out the technical difficulties, I will be posting a video of our entire excursion. On a final note, the Journey was found around 5pm on Sunday up on the northern coast of Maine.
Last night, as a means of avoiding some loitering followers of the Insane Clown Posse and their all-too-real-looking rifle, I took a short fifteen minute drive over to Stroudsburg to enjoy my weekly visit with Grigs. We are both quite competitive when it comes to Nintendo Wii, which is a great outlet for her job stress and my over-thinking stress. To make things more interesting, we each slowly consume a bottle of beer during our 2 hours of jumping around the living room trying to recapture the power serve in tennis. Maybe it's because I'm a lightweight, or maybe it's because I haven't eaten for a few hours, but I've discovered that a bottle of Golden Monkey packs quite a punch. Those Belgians must have special hops for brewing, which is much more pleasant to consider than them using fermented monkey feces. Needless to say, I'm glad that we jump around for two hours so that my body can metabolize the alcohol before I drive home. Once we get tired of exerting ourselves in tennis, which I tend to dominate, we move on to bowling, which I struggle with at times, especially when I forget to release the ball properly and end up with a human strike, which involves tossing the ball into the crowd standing behind me. Grigs and I are both amused at our change in temperament between tennis and bowling. While we are still competitive at bowling, we tend to compliment each other when we get strikes or spares. Tennis, on the other hand, is much more cut-throat with threats and our bodies bouncing around the living room. It is definitely one of the highlights of my week, though, to just be able to let lose and pretend like a kid again. As Grigs likes to say, we are channeling our inner middle school child.
On September 10, Josh and I left early in the morning to head to his parent's house in Granville Summit. Most would view this as nothing out of the ordinary, except two days before, remnants of a tropical storm dumped 9 inches of rain on the Susquehanna River Valley, which in turn submerged numerous roads and towns. As we headed north, we noted many flood ravaged areas and could actually see how high the water had been considering there was a layer of mud on the tree leaves. We stopped at the Asylum overlook in Marie Antoinette so that we could get a nice view of the swollen and muddy Susquehanna. Once we reached Wyalusing, we needed to start taking detours because water still covered numerous roads, making them impassable. After some meandering around, we made our way back onto Route 6 West, only to be diverted again outside Wysox. After the detours and taking the other end of the road, we finally made it to Josh's parents. We ate lunch before Josh set to work fixing the shift cable in his car. I spent my time pacing and discussing different topics with his family. Once the car got fixed, we decided to go for a walk to look at some of the flood damaged roads. There was one road that was completely chewed up by all of the water at one end. As we continued walking along the road, it soon became apparent that the road was no longer a road, but a stream. The pipe going under the road had become partially blocked, which diverted the stream from it's actual route and converted the road into a stream. As you can see, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Josh and I then backtracked and made our way to the other end of the road he lives on to see why it was closed. Pretty much, the pipe was washed away, caving the road in so that there is now a 20 foot drop-off. Needless to say, it's amazing how powerful water can truly be in immense amounts.
The rest of our evening was quite pleasant. We all had pizza for dinner and the general consensus was that chicken wing pizza with bleu cheese tastes like paint. Following dinner and conversing, we decided it was best to begin the trek south again. In order to avoid the detours we encountered on the trip north, we opted for driving through Williamsport on the way back to East Stroudsburg.
After a nice dinner at Elegante in Honesdale with my brother and Matt, we trekked down to the Delaware Water Gap to the Deerhead Inn to listen to some jazz. The quartet was made up of drummer, Drori Mondlak, alto saxophonist, Karolinna Strassmayer, bassist, Phil Palombi, and vibrophonist, Stefan Bauer. The waitress had suggested that I get a new dessert that had just been made that was a mocha mouse with chocolate chips. In my own words, it was fantastic! As was the jazz. The songs that were played included, "The Tragic Lives of Maximilian and Carlota," "After All," "If You Could See Me Now,"and "Look Up." After the first set, we all were chatting with Stefan Bauer. He is from a town along the Ruhr River in Germany and two days earlier, he had just played a gig in Hawley. He really likes the Water Gap area and could see himself living here one day. It was definitely a very chill evening and if you happen to like jazz, I would definitely recommend the Deerhead Inn. As for the mass exodus, Hurricane Irene, is bearing down on the east coast and New York City Mayor Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacuations of parts of the city. This of course means that everybody is flooding into the Poconos at the moment, which has left Interstate 80 West at a near standstill since it is flooded with out of state cars. As much as I don't want anybody to get hurt, these evacuations better be worthwhile and not just a waste of people's time. I guess we will know more about that come Saturday night and Sunday.
Yesterday, I spent my morning and afternoon in the greater Hellertown/Coopersburg area. I started my day going to Saucon Community Church with Josh. The sermon was centered around Proverbs 16:1-5, which outlines God's sovereignty over all things on Earth and that we should search Him for all answers to your plans in life. Before Sunday school, we ate some popcorn in the kitchen area and were approached by Russ, the door greeter. He made my day with what he said next. He asked if he had seen Josh and I walking and holding hands or if it was just an optical illusion. We all laughed and said it wasn't an optical illusion and Russ apologized if he caused any embarrassment, which he did not. I was just greatly amused.
Following church and Sunday school, we made our way to Coopersburg for the 7th Annual Chili-Fest that was held at Mark and Heather's. About 10 chilis were entered this year and there were 43 votes cast. The winner was Heather's Texas Tom's BBQ Brisket Chili, which won with 14 votes, narrowly beating The Pursuit of Happiness, which received 13 votes. It was definitely a wonderful time of fellowship with members of the Bible study and community. I chatted with various individuals about everything from bright colored clothing, making lasagna, and making a chili with steak, hamburger, corn, and extra cheddar cheese, to running injuries, Christian community, and how to create a no-sew fleece blanket. All in all it was a splendid gathering leading up to the Halloween Parade.
