The Wolf in us All

So, we went to Great Wolf Lodge yesterday. You might describe it as a fairly large hotel with a wilderness, bears, wolves, Indians, pine trees, wood kind of theme, which also, coincidentally, happens to have a large indoor water park attached to it. The water park itself was similar to what you might find at Sesame Place or Sandcastle Park except for the part about being totally indoors.

When I say "we" went there, though, that is not really how it worked. The family of one of Erika's friends was going there and invited us along. The Yoshies of the family were up for the trip, but the Jordans, noting it was for a Tuesday night stay (with two days of water fun), demurred on the excuse of having work and stuff.

Later on, as the day of doom approached, Yoshie developed a litany of problems including a kink in her neck and certain female timing issues, and convinced me to go along despite it totally being right in the middle of the work week. This state continued until the morning of the great departure when everyone was grumpy due to lack of sleep and I was losing interest in going with the excuse of meetings at the office. So, after a minor tiff, we resolved that I would go to work, and Y and E would ride in the friends' car (don't worry, it's an SUV) to the park. We had previously told the garage to get our car ready for the morning, but at this turn of events, cancelled it.

While at work, the first thing that happened was that I realized I could drive out after work that day and so after a brief fuss with me using the google for directions (I can't even imagine how you can end up driving EAST over the George Washington Bridge on a trip to Pennsylvania), it was agreed that I'd join the crowd after work.

Now, when I got in the car after work, it was clear the car was extremely displeased. And it demonstrated its displeasure by blowing hot air through the vents regardless of whether the air conditioning was on or not. Fortunately it was only high 90's outside and the windows still worked.

Anyway, I arrived at the resort around 8pm and we all had dinner together, and then slept poorly on somewhat uncomfortable beds, but turned around and had water park fun until it was time to go home. There was a diversion to the Japanese grocery store in New Jersey where we learned to our great shock that the restaurant in the back, Matsushima, had closed. But this was nothing compared to the further additional shock we received when we rolled back into the garage that one of the car windows wouldn't close any more.

So, that, in short, is the story of how a short trip to nearby Pennsylvania seems to have done double duty on my car.