After a good half hour or so of frantic playing, it was back into the rig and back on the road by just before 10am. Our agenda was again fairly loose, work our way across New York and end up somewhere near Boston. A couple of things transpired along the way to make our trip a bit more eventful.
First, the NY Tollway, US90. We discovered yesterday that flat-towing a vehicle unlocks new and exciting ways for Big Gubment to get their hands in our pocket. The multiplier of the common man's toll that is used for us? 3.8. Yup - because our MH is over 7' high, and we count as 4 axles, we get hit for almost 4x the normal tolls, because of course we are causing 3.8x as much wear on the highway with this setup. We experienced this firsthand as we forked over $59.65 upon exiting NY state. At least Eliot Spitzer could have bought us dinner first.
We did, however, get to see setups like this. When you have money and you don't know exactly how to consume it, you do things like this. "Honey, what's the quickest and least practical way to burn $1.1M?" "How about a 40' Mercedes motorcoach, with a freshly shrinkwrapped Victory Vision bagger mounted on the back?" Yes, this happened.
The next phase of our trip came a bit out left field. We had been telling people we were heading to the Northeast & asked for recommendations. One of our good friends (Thanks Ed!) let us know that his old college roommates had started a brewery straight out of college, and it was doing very well. Since we were going to be within 45 minutes of it, and had no real timeline (no matter what Kim says, we rarely do), we decided to go check it out.
This is the first time either of us have driven in the Boston area, and the best way I can describe the roads on the way to the brewery is that they must have been derived using the formula from Good Will Hunting,
...then the postal service switched the construction blueprints with the instruction manual to Rollercoaster Tycoons 3. This is the exact route we drove to from Worcester to Wachusett.
Enough of the backstory. Everyone has a few college roommates that say "We should start a brewery!!!!" and then have 7 more beers and pass out. Our friend's roommates actually followed through with a business plan and are now seeing their beer being sold all across the Northeast region, as well as inside Fenway Park, with this stroke of marketing genius.
We stopped in to Wachusett Brewing Company to see what it was all about and grab a growler to bring back home. They couldn't have been more inviting and informative, even if they sounded like direct relatives of Linda Richman.
It was pretty cool to see that 3 engineering nerds from a school called Worcester Polytechnic Institute could parlay math, science, and chemistry classes into a thriving microbrewing business that is slowing taking over the Northeast US. See kids, engineers are useful, and not just the embarrassingly socially awkward beings that buy all the ComicCon tickets.
After grabbing a couple of growlers & some cool mancave souviniers, we stopped outside for a photo op. What self-respecting microbrewery doesn't have its own fire truck? Here's Jordan and I with our newfound WBC swag.
On to our accomodations for the next 2 nights. I would love to wax poetic about my love for RV-specific parks with multiple pools, a clubhouse with dancing for the adults and $5.50 bundles of firewood consisting of 3 wet poplar logs, but if I go any further, the inside of our RV will look like this, and I will not be the cat.
Tomorrow, we hobnob with the 1%ers by driving down to Newport & the Cape. If I get asked to valet park something, someone's getting throatpunched.
More to follow...
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