August 25 - 28, 2014 (Monday-Thursday)
''Week in Review''

After a weekend of multiple attempts to work out an online map route and uncover other information on how to possibly avoid paying any of the exorbitant (read: ''extortionist'')  ''Escape from New Jersey''  gate tolls, and falling flat no matter how/where I'd look, I was hoping to have some of that time to conduct such further digging and course-plotting later Monday afternoon or evening (Aug. 25) after I'd accomplished my ''D.I.Y.'' motorcycle maintenance earlier in the day.

It was the events of Monday however that finally convinced me that all of these unlikeliest of ''coincidences'' which are a persistent part of ''normal'' life are in fact more than just that, and that my responses to them should be considered more substantive than just being passed off as semi-pretentious paranoia....

It was on this particular Monday that everything that I'd been trying to do these past couple of weeks to both prepare for my New Jersey visitation and to try to save myself some serious money that some sinister force in the universe was dead-on determined to prevent me from doing any of either one!

Firstly, since my off-days' illness was a factor in my lack of motivation to do so, I gathered everything I needed in order to do a complete oil change (my first ever attempt), only to be spit in the face with the fact the ''tool kit'' provided in the motorcycle's storage compartment contained  VIRTUALLY NOTHING  that was of any genuine or effective use to me! After draining the oil using a wrench I'd owned but which was not part of the original tool kit, I thought I'd had an out and would be able to find all that I'd need among my mother's late fiancé's collection of tools throughout the garage and/or house basement, and again finding almost NOTHING but the realization that I had none of the accessible specialized tools I'd needed to properly perform & complete the job while my only source of transportation was sitting completely drained of it's most valuable protective fluid and with almost no way continuing to complete that and the next two phases of my introduction to motor mechanics -- removing & cleaning the air filters! Thus thrust into this unenviable situation, I was forced to ''improvise'' as best as I could with all the random items scattered about myself.

During this process, I would refer back to the video tutorials I'd downloaded from the ''Inter-Webs'' onto the laptop Gracie had given me which I'd had repaired for $70 dollars, which I'd brought outside so I could have the video lessons right there on-hand to guide me through these new processes! Yet, it was during this most crucial time-- after all these weeks of operation without one single hitch --that the system decided to refuse to reboot or view the display, exactly as it had been doing prior to taking the unit into the repair shop and subsequently restoring a full clean OS onto the hard drive! Part of me wants to suspect that this return to failure is partially ''payback'' for daring to save at least, or very close to, that same amount of money or more by making the declaration that my mechanically-inept arse was going to start performing some of my own cost-saving maintenance on my vehicle wherever/whenever I can do so competently. But I'm even more convinced that this was just another bomb tossed into my lap in a further attempt to dissuade me from following through on my trip plans, especially my trying to work everything in according to a preferred predetermined timetable.

Ultimately (namely, after 5+ hours) I'd finally managed to get everything swapped, cleaned, and replaced (except for the underseat compartment, where I discovered after all this time of owning it that either the previous owners or last mechanics to perform maintenance on the machine left the whole air/engine unit cover unsecured), but it left me no additional time to follow-up on ''Cherry's'' email conversation, work out a travel route for sneaking cheap into the ''Big Apple'' (which is rotten to the core with the ''Big Worm'' of greed), or try to get an extra bit of rest before having to leave for work... I was left with only enough time to wash & dry the motorcycle, shower, and barely get a quick simple meal inside of me, and I was still nowhere near ''ready'' to depart immediately after work as was initially planned.

Because of all of these factors which began showing up relatively early, I'd already made the determination to conduct a brief ''stop-over'' at the house after work (rather than just "clocking-out & heading-out") to take care of a few last minute details, but soon realized that resetting my departure time until later in the day would allow me not only the extra precious moments to gather my person and effects somewhat sufficiently but would also permit me to recharge my [biological] battery to where I wouldn't have to worry about risking on-the-road narcolepsy. That idea was pushed even harder when ''Cherry'' informed me later in the day that she would not be able to have a meet-up on Tuesday (Aug. 26), as originally planned.

So as Tuesday rolled around I tried to cover everything from getting sufficient rest (which was next to impossible) and attempting to figure out travel routes (especially those which avoided the paying of exorbitant tolls), then I sent a follow-up audio email that she needn't worry about canceling our Tuesday meet-up, explaining to her that because of the way things had fallen together on my end that it would not have been possible for me either, so I offered Wednesday (Aug. 27) as an alternate option, which she agreed would work better, and she said she'd meet me at the American Museum of Natural History, where she had originally invited me to tour with her: I later told her that based on the travel route I'd plotted out for myself I'd contact her via text message when I'd reached Catskill, NY (my intent having been to cross the Hudson River at the ''Rip Van Winkle'' bridge), which I'd estimated would likely be somewhere around 11:00 in the morning. Because the meeting was still to take place at the museum, and since I still could not seem to be able to hash out any reasonable options regarding parking in the area, I'd accepted that I would most likely have to be relegated to paying for parking inside the museum's own structure, which would've cost me upwards of nearly $35.

While doing my research and making preparations, my mother just could not cease aggravating me with all sorts of questions and warnings (among inquiring about which supplies I'd planned on bringing along, all while trying to push her own select choices upon me), most of the time making it seem as if she were actually attempting to prevent me from going. At one point she even raised the prospect of driving me there herself, even though I'd told her repeatedly that I'd planned on ''touring'' and visiting New York City and she'd made it quite clear that if she were to go to New Jersey that she'd have had no intentions of venturing into NYC, so what other purpose would she have had for even making such a suggestion? But it still wasn't enough -- she just had to keep being up-&-around (well past her normal routine), and still periodically bugging me as I was trying to focus on getting my information and effects consolidated, until I'd finally managed to rush out at almost exactly Midnight (Wed. morning).

Even though I was overheating in the sweatshirt and heavy wooly polyester pants that I often wear during the winter months, in preparation for what I'd expected to be a chilly ride, the air did not seem all that uncomfortable by the time I was ready to head out, but knowing how seemingly ''contradictory'' things like that almost always lead to some sort of after-the-fact ''set-up,'' I opted to leave everything just as it was... which was a good call of foresight, because it became quickly evident that even for as ''heavily'' dressed as I was, I was still quite  under-dressed! So by the time I'd arrived at the first rest area on Interstate 81 I warmed my hands under their washroom blow-driers multiple times (even though I'd had my hands ''gloved'' during the entire trip) and then put on the extra sweatshirt which was part of what was originally intended to have been part of a ''change of clothes'' set I'd also brought along... and it still wasn't enough!

During this leg of the trip also, I did manage to run into that bank of fog which my mother on Monday had also forewarned me about (which I had at that time taken as both another ''[s]care tactic'' and a ''new discovery experience'' joy killer), but because I'd forgotten all about this warning well by the time that I'd headed out on the trip it did manage to come as a surprise and I did (finally, for once) see the cause for legitimate concern, as the fog, though not necessarily ''thick'' in any sense of the traditional way, wreaked havoc with visibility in the form of the heavy condensation it would form on viewscreens. (I want to say it took place somewhere near the Lexington area, but I did not commit that much attention to the details.)

Another sign that I'd interpreted to be an indicator that the disruptive forces of the universe were out to do everything to make this trip/visit NOT happen was the fact that not long after I'd begun traveling down Interstate 81 my problematic shoulder launched into its most intense and excruciatingly painful episode to-date!

When all of that did nothing to dissuade or discourage me, the only thing that there was left to do (short of involving me in any sort of devastating accident) was to screw-up my plotted travel courses and destination times. This first occurred when I'd somehow gotten off track and wound up at the ''Bear Mountain'' bridge crossing rather than the one at Catskill, which on the surface could be viewed as a ''positive,'' since that particular Hudson River crossing is actually much closer to NYC yet charges the same toll rate ($1.50), but the ''negative'' that resulted from this was the fact that I had arrived some  two hours later  than what all of these online travel-planning map services indicated... so I called ''Cherry'' from location and explained both ''where'' and ''when'' I was, and that I was concerned that we might not have much time to spend together (my main concern being that ''museum parking'' was only good for as long as the museum was open during its normal hours of operation, which closes at 17:30, and I'd arrived at Bear Mountain Bridge literally seconds before 14:00 sharp): she said to come anyway, that she was already at the museum and would even likely be still in the surrounding area upwards of about 19:00.

As I was continuing on toward the City I was marveling over how beautiful the surrounding natural areas were (hardly what one would expect given how media and the entertainment industry portray anything associated with New York, especially the City), and because of the time restraints I had to withhold on any photographic documentation I may wanted to have done en route. It was also during this last leg of the journey that the final ''troll blow'' hit me in the form of an impending headache.

It wasn't until I had (by sheer chance) passed by her college that I'd decided to break out my mother's GPS device to aid me in finding the rest of my way, until I got to the Central Park area, whereby I turned off the device to conserve power, which it was sapping rapidly. I did ask a couple of ''New York's Finest'' whom I'd found standing in one of the blocks in the general area if I was on the correct side of the park where the museum was located. It was during my venture along the avenue that I'd spied a space between two cars parked alongside Central Park across from 71st Street just sufficient enough for me to park inside and still leave relatively ample room for vehicles to move their way in or out! -- and from all indications, as I could deduce, the parking was ''free,'' though I was still somewhat hesitant, but my greater concern, honestly, was geared more toward whether my motorcycle would be made to endure any sort of physical damage from getting bumped by some else's vehicle.

I let Cherry know I was walking toward the museum, then met with her in the front lobby, and I almost immediately remarked how so much  prettier  in real life she is as compared to any photographic or videographic imagery I've ever seen of her (but I didn't mention how ''different'' she sounds ''IRL'' as opposed to ''electronically,'' although neither is necessarily anything to judge in any sort of ''plus-or-minus'' category: it was just an ''observation'').

We did not get to spend very much time inside the museum (I'd finally arrived at the main entrance somewhere around 16:45), so since time was tight I just told her to let me tag along and view some of the areas she had found interesting. After the announcements that the museum was closing, she showed me which pizzeria she wanted to stop in for lunch/dinner (she had stated during our planning phase that she would cover our museum entry fee if I'd spring for the meal). I was so exhausted by the road trip and even more overwhelmed by the stifling heat of the City (rare to ever hear me complain about the heat) that it was making my stomach feel queasy, which was compounding with the headache, so I wasn't eating anything, opting instead for a bottle of  ''Mountiin Dew,''  in the belief that the combination of caffeine fluid replacement would help to alleviate my headache (the latter of which being the reason I suspected for the onslaught of the head pain in the first place, since I'd not drunk much of anything during my entire time out on the road), but I did try a end-tip piece of one of the pizza slices she'd ordered, and even without the upset stomach feeling I thought it was pretty nasty.

We finished up our visit with her taking on a small tour of Central Park, which I was actually much more impressed with than the museum! The ''hype'' about Central Park really doesn't do it any justice, in my opinion, and it was almost enough to make me want to excuse the fact that a thriving ''African-American community'' had been displaced in order to turn the project into a reality.

Even though it didn't seem like it, Cherry and I had spent somewhere around four and a half hours in each other's company before she finally saw me off at 71st Street where I was parked (thankfully with no citations and no noticeable physical damage). My next step was to try to find my way out of the City, and for this I appealed once again to the GPS, hoping it would have enough battery power to at least get me to whichever bridge would take me across the Hudson into New Jersey, but it died just blocks away from where it would've been directing me to anyway, which was the Lincoln Tunnel. Now prior to us even parting, I'd already told Cherry how I dread traveling through car tunnels due to the ''hypnotizing'' effects I experience each & every time, but because I saw myself as having no real alternative this time around I did the undesirable, and surprising, just as with my experience with the City itself, I did not find myself feeling too ''intimidated'' by it, although I did still experience some unease in both instances -- in this case, the tunnel trip was made a bit more ''tolerable'' given the fact that it did include a ''curved'' portion to break the dreaded ''always looking ahead'' monotony of typical tunnel travel.

Once out on the other side I caught this spectacular view of the NYC skyline at night, and I was determined to find a spot from which to snap a photograph. I scoured around for about an hour and a half until I'd eventually come across the perfect spot... a little ''park-like'' area that was clearly designed to take advantage of the NYC skyline view in a place ironically referring to itself as ''West New York, NJ'' (à la ''East St. Louis, IL'').

Finding my way out of New Jersey, without the aid of GPS proved near impossible, eventually finding my way to ''US Route 1,'' of which I do have ''some'' familiarity, and enough of a familiarity to know that it would not take me anywhere near any ''I-80'' access points! (I would've been just fine if the guidepost signaling ''Route 22,'' which I'd already known from my last visit there would connect me on an almost direct path, had not shot almost out of nowhere at the last possible second during my entire time on that particular stretch of roadway whereby causing to not only miss the access point altogether but offering no immediate way to turn back again! So I spent another hour and a quarter trying desperately to find some way that would take me west out of New Jersey, until I reached some point along the way to someplace where I had no clue, whereby I surrendered myself to doing the unthinkable: I tried to access ''maps'' online using my cellphone! Of course, there was going to be a ''problem'' with that angle as well, which came in the form of my phone telling me that I'd needed ''java'' installed before I could utilize Yahoo!'s ''maps'' feature  (...I don't know why I didn't think to just look at images of ordinary ''road maps'' some other websites might have posted online -- ''hindsight, as they say). After this failure, I did the other unthinkable and contacted my mother to ask her to look online for me and coach me through, but she had to inform me that the request could not be carried out because for some reason the computer was not granting her access to the internet. I decided to continue on down Route 1 until arriving at the ''Highland Park'' exit, whereby I called my mother again, this time in hopes of getting some ''from memory'' directions, since her familiarity with that general area I thought might help me through... but alas even the directions she'd given me there resulted into even more confusion, and I was driving around the ''New Brunswick'' area for a couple more hours until I'd finally decided to pull up to the parked cabbie whom I'd passed about a half-dozen times in the process who was sitting on a side street near the train station, and he gave what seemed to be the clearest answer, even repeating his instructions with certainty and effect, but which also ultimately proved almost unreliable as he had given me an erroneous turning direction, which I found being confirmed after I'd initiated a reverse-direction course. It was well past 04:00 in the morning (Thu., Aug. 28) before I'd finally gotten onto the road that would lead me westward out of the state!

But no... the ''fun'' hadn't quite come to an end yet, because due partially to (admittedly) my own arrogance, I had to be ''rescued'' by one of my ''Guardian Angels'' (if such indeed exist) when I'd deliberately bypassed one fueling exit base on some personal prejudice I'd had when I knew I was running very close to completely empty, believing that I'd still have enough drips to make the 6-mile trip to the next station (I'd undershot it by just two miles). So I called my mother again, this time to ask her about her  ''AAA-plus''  roadside assistance benefit, which even though it's in her name and assigned to her vehicle, she suggested I call her about anyway in the unlikely event that I would find myself in a roadside situation where I needed help. Just a few short minutes after disconnecting with her while she could go out to the garage and pull out her information, a pick-up truck towing a short boxed-in trailer stopped off the road in front of me. I'd told him what had happened, and he explained that he was on his way to (Pittsburgh? I believe) to pick up a motorcycle for a client, saying that his business involves transporting motorcycles for dealers and other types of clients, and that he would transport us to the next fueling stop. So in this one case (at least as far as any ''immediate'' and ''direct'' benefit was shown to manifest), here was one of those situations where something ''bad'' and unpleasant translated into something ''good'' and desirable.

Again, due to the lateness of the hour, I'd chosen not to venture down the ''Blue Ridge Parkway'' as originally planned-- not even as a ''preliminary test run,'' opting instead to head straight back into town, stopping first at the jobsite to get follow-up on the latest issues of concern I'd raised prior to leaving on my trip. Once back inside the house, I did nothing but shower and jump straight into bed.

August 29 - September 1, 2014 (Friday-Monday)
''Holiday Weekend in Review''

When I was finally ready to face my regular routine when Friday (Aug. 29) rolled around I was told by my mother that Gracie was considerably more upset than what was displayed by her when I made the brief stop at the worksite the previous evening, even being told that she'd huffed about how I'd supposedly ''messed up'' something involving her banking account before I'd left, as a result of my having asked her on Monday (Aug. 25, prior to gathering everything I'd needed to begin working on my motorcycle maintenance) to make an ATM withdraw of $40 from her account so that I might have ''cash on-hand'' for my trip, for which I'd written a personal check in that amount as a replacement of those funds but which she instead chose to cash outright at the teller's booth and hand me the cash that way (in other words: ''What the hell is she talking about? 'What' exactly, regarding her banking account, got 'messed up' or 'disrupted' in that process?'').

I'd also sent a lengthy follow-up audio email to "Cherry" detailing my exploits in trying to ''Escape from New York'': she responded back again sharing that she'd also enjoyed our brief visit together and to tell me that she'd enjoyed the pair of ''mix tape'' music CDs I'd produced for her which I'd given her upon meeting her at the museum.

On Saturday (Aug. 30), still feeling heavy under the post-travel lag, I left the job letting Gracie that I had no intentions of hanging around trying to have any sort of conversation. But when I came back to relieve her from her workshift I made certain to express to her with no ambiguity whatsoever, before I allowed her any chance to raise the issue, that any ideas of the both of us riding out that distance on motorcycle together as operator and passenger, as she's constantly been pressuring me to consider doing, was essentially never going to happen since, truthfully, not only would she not be able to have the endurance required in order to make such a stressful trip (even if it'd included frequent stops) but also, again truthfully, it would place too much stress and uncertainty on myself as well to where such a trip would definitely be a struggle and unpleasurable but also potentially dangerous.

Also on Saturday and the following day (Sun., Aug. 31) I came to realize that Gracie seems to thrive on stirring people up and ''frustrating'' them to the point of arguing with her: this was first concluded when, on Saturday, she turned such a seemingly trivial matter as reorganizing the contents of the worksite refrigerator to accommodate not only her items but also the ones I'd brought earlier which I'd not utilized throughout my workshift but intended to leave on site for when I would return for the next shift into several emphatic demands that I remove my items altogether and take them back to the house (only to return them again), acting as though she hadn't sufficient enough room for all of our items, even trying to make the claim that as the refrigerator becomes more full the ''less cold'' it keeps things! -- then again on Sunday, when I'd tried to get her to take a photograph of my back shoulder in order for me to get a clear image of the sore spot on my back, which I'd for some reason had difficulty getting taken via ''timer'' setting.

Regarding the sore shoulder, I'd finally managed to get a few of my own images later Sunday night, and was confronted with the same dark reddish/brownish blemish I'd documented back in late-June, which is now accompanied by a small series of red vein-like discolorations further down my back, and of course still in intense pain, causing me to more seriously suspect (rather than doing so somewhat ''pretentiously,'' as I had been doing up to this time) that what has all seemingly been interconnected symptomatically since October of 2012 may in actuality be  ''cancerous.'' I brought this and my concerns to my mother's attention early Monday evening (Sep. 1), in making the advanced request to use her cellphone to try scheduling with a different ''primary care'' internist whom I can make an appointment with right away, rather than waiting until next month when her doctor will be accepting new patients.

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