Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Me and my nephew

Monday morning, as I'd predicted, I awake as my brother was getting ready for work. I hadn't been conscious of any noise waking me, but the simple noise of him stirring in the kitchen did the trick.

So I joined him in the kitchen and ate a bowl of cereal while he had breakfast. This gave us a few minutes to talk before he had to head out.

When he did leave, he gave me a hug and told me to call him when we got home. He told us he was looking forward to seeing us at our wedding later this year.

I went back to sleep for a couple hours until my brother's wife got up with the kids. Lately my nephew seems to get shy at the breakfast table, hiding behind his hands and refusing to eat, so I took a shower while they ate.

When the children moved into the living room to watch morning cartoons, The Gryphon got up and got his shower. I had some time while he was getting ready to play some more with my niece and nephew.

My niece was having fun playing with a bongo drum, making noises by hitting it with her flat palm and also scratching the drum with her fingernails. She also enjoyed playing with a tambourine, which made a cheery noise when she rattled it.

I took some photos of her, which fascinated my nephew, and he sat on my lap so he could see the pictures as I took them.

Then I showed him all the photos I'd taken during the trip, including one of our doggie, Una, which I took before we began. He agreed with me that she's cute and seemed amazed to discover that her mother is his dog, Pulsar.

We were all packed up and had said our good-byes by about 9 a.m., stopping at a local grocery store to pick up some Vermont maple syrup.

By the time we hit Southern Vermont, we were ready for lunch, so we stopped in Brattleboro, which is, as I explained to The Gryphon, the biggest dot on the map. I'd guesstimate it's at least the size of Montpelier, the state capital.

After driving through the center of town, we parked in a municipal lot to find a place to eat. They had an interesting way of handling parking. You put your money into a machine, which then printed out a ticket for the amount of time you had. You place the ticket in your dashboard. They call it Pay and Display.

A lot of the stores surrounding the parking lot had back entrances, which was kind of neat. Several restaurants adjoined the parking lot, and we chose an Italian place called Adagio Trattoria.

I wanted to make sure I ordered something fairly light, because I'd been eating a little more than usual over the weekend, though not truly splurging. I ordered the soup and salad lunch, which that day was minestrone soup. For my salad, I had an arugula salad served with a spiced pear and two really sharp cheese balls.

The downtown had a number of quirky shops, many with funny names. We agreed that if we had more time, we would have done a little shopping there.

For much of the trip back, we took the same route, until we got to New York City, when we diverted onto the Palisades Parkway, hoping to skip some traffic. This was a much more pleasant way to go, despite some construction. At least there was more green space.

At dinnertime, we stopped for gas in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The Gryphon made note of all the expensive cars that surrounded us at the gas station, so I wasn't overly optimistic about finding a reasonable place to eat. But across the street was a place called the Bicycle Club, and the people entering it were dressed in typical office attire of chinos and button-down shirts. So I didn't figure it would be terribly fancy, unlike the restaurant next to the gas station, which offered valet parking.

Still, I felt self-conscious about walking in wearing just my orange Kashmir Sun Chai Tea T-shirt and chinos, so I dipped into my suitcase and pulled out an Asian-style blouse with three-quarter length sleeves and exchanged my sneakers for a pair of high-heeled sandals. The Gryphon was already wearing a button-down shirt with his jeans, so I wasn't worried about him.

Despite a sign near the door that said, "Proper Attire is Appreciated," we soon realized we needn't have worried. A man at the bar was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Most of the patrons, though, were a little dressier than, say, about any restaurant in Central Pennsylvania. I suppose that's not hard to do.

I ordered scallops with a salad and baked potato. The scallops were served on a bed of escarole and roasted red peppers. They were seasoned and pan seared, and I enjoyed them.

Seated next to us were a couple who might have been a mother and son or a married couple. It was hard to tell. They were both extremely picky about their orders, with the woman insisting on ordering something not on the menu and with the man complaining that his meat was always overdone. At this, the waitress suggested he order it "medium rare" instead of "medium."

The woman was wearing a turquoise top with matching cropped pants and a pouffy, out-of-date hairdo, and she had a pronounced New Jersey accent. Her dining companion appeared younger, although his hair was thinning. He wore a bland white button-down shirt with light chinos.

They talked to the wait staff as if they knew them, but aside from the hostess, who greeted them personally, they didn't seem to actually know them. Instead, they asked the waitress a lot of questions about herself. That's how I discovered the man worked at a nearby hospital and the waitress has a second job taking hotel reservations over the phone for a company from the southern U.S.

On the wall behind The Gryphon, across from me, were a number of older celebrity photos, the type that often crop up in family-owned restaurants near cities. All of the photos dates to about the 80s or, at most, the 90s. For example, there was a picture of Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee, and a color photo of an older Frank Sinatra, next to a picture of a young Neil Cavuto. There was also a photo of Whitney Houston, in her pre-Bobby Brown days.

Who knows? Maybe for a brief time in the '80s, the Bicycle Club had a bit of cache among the celebrity set, the sort of place you could pop in and mingle with "the common man."

I was in a good mood after dinner, cracking jokes and singing along with the music on our CDs. I was also feeling better. Most of the day, I'd been in gastric distress. I felt as if someone had filled my abdomen with high-pressured helium balloons, which were bumping around and trying to escape. This also made my lower back hurt.

Even though I took several doses of Tums and then Gas-X, it wasn't until dinner that I began to feel some relief. You never appreciate how good just feeling normal feels until you feel ill.

We took the wrong exit off the New Jersey Turnpike and drove through more of the Cherry Hill area than we needed to, but we still arrived home by about 9:30. Considering we'd stopped twice for leisurely meals, we made good time.

We had a little time to watch what we'd taped on TV, such as Hell's Kitchen, but first I called my brother to let him know we'd arrived safely. His wife answered, because he'd gone to bed about 15 minutes earlier. I told her that we'd arrived safely, and she promised to relay the message.

More from the trip to Vermont:

Tuesday, June 19, 2007 - Playing in Vermont

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 - Boxing and Grilling

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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