Our trip to the Q collective

***** You might want to get a bag of popcorn and a beer... it's going to be along entry *****

I knew that the trip to Rochester was coming for weeks, but it seemed to just pop up in my mind last weekend before going into full planning mode. Overall I say that we did a pretty good job (especially Jen) in getting everything together and making sure we had everything we needed. Someone to take care of the cat.. check (I guess we have too :)) Of course the mind wandered with any possible thing that we might need for the kids. The last trip that we actually took was to geekfest two years ago and we only had two kids. It's always the little stuff that you forget. I just kept reminding myself that it's not like we are going overseas, it's just Rochester, and they have stores there too. Little did I know they had a heaven-like (according to Carrie) store called Weigmans or something like that. The other factor is how the boys would do being stuck in a car for at least 8 hours. All I can say is thank God (and my dad) that we had a DVD player. So let the journey begin.....

Wednesday - I would have liked to be on the road by 9:00am but Jen was thinking more like 10:00 so we were shooting for something in between. Of course we were up by 7:00am and starting putting the last stuff together and getting ourself ready. I was waiting until the last possible moment to load the van since when I start that and the boys have their shoes on, it is time to GO for the boys. So I get the van loaded, snacks, DVD player, cooler with drinks and so on. We are pulling out of the garage a little after 10:00 (not too bad). Jen road in the back with the boys so she could be closer in case they needed anything or if Christopher fussed. I wanted to take it easy on the drive over for the boys sake which mean stopping for meals and frequent potty breaks. I have a feeling that when they get older I will be like my dad (and many other dads) and just drive drive drive until we get there. We little after the Ohio Line it gets to be around noonish so I start asking the boys how they are doing. They are fine gazing at the DVD player and Christopher seems to be pretty good too. I remember from the last vacation to Sandusky that the first "travel plaza" in Ohio is a pretty bad hole in the wall, but all of them after that are very nice, so I opt to drive further toward Toledo. The one thing that I was trying to avoid on the trip was pulling off the toll road. Yeah I know the gas is a bit cheaper and you have a better selection of restaurants, but to me it's a hassle. So we stop neat Toledo and have lunch at Burger King at a travel plaza. Now I don't usually eat at Burger King so I am not familiar with their menu, or should I say how the menu will agree with my stomach. I didn't want to get down the road a few miles and have to pull off for internal reasons. Good new is that the Jr. Wopper did pretty good with my stomach, the bad news is that the onions stayed with me until dinner (burp).The drive through Ohio was pretty uneventful. Lucky for us Carrie called to find out where we were and told us about the best way to get through Cleveland. Mapquest tells you to go through it to the South, but it's best to just stay on 90 all the way through. I guess John had emailed me that on Tuesday night but I didn't check my email before leaving. A few other people heading to Rochester had listened to Mapquest and had quite the adventure. Granted, 90 does some real funky stuff with off ramps and lane changes, but it is better. I noticed that John was right and the gas prices in Ohio are definitely better. I was going to hit the last off ramp in Ohio before going into Pennsylvania but missed it. I am thinking that this is the first time that I had been in Pennsylvania, but think that I might have went through a corner of it years ago on a road trip to North Carolina to visit my Aunt and cousins. We only travel in Pennsylvania for less than an hour before you get to New York state. I know for a fact that it was the first time that I had ever been in New York state. The scenery in Pennsylvania and New York is very nice. Lostsa trees and hills. I find it interesting that the first signs that you see in New York aren't welcome signs, but signs about what are state laws and doubled fines. A little after Buffalo we decided to stop for dinner. We got off the toll road and stopped at a Cracker Barrel. The boys did pretty good, but Andrew wanted to wander and was getting cranky. Let's just say this is the first of MANY times that you will hear that Andrew was cranky during our trip... I was trying to get to Rochester before it got dark since we had to look for the Q's house and it's easier to read house numbers and see colors of houses in the day time, but that didn't work out. I missed their house and had to turn around. Lucky for me their road isn't too busy so I could go real slow. So we pull in a little after 9:00pm. So 11 hours on the road, whew. I could have made it in 8 going straight through, but it worked out stopping when we did since I didn't feel that tired. So start the pandelerium of kids playing and running all over the house. I unloaded the van and we started to visit with the Q's. Finally we decided to put kids to bed. We put both the boys on a air mattress in the lower level of this tri-level house with a basement. Andrew started fighting me on staying on the air mattress with William saying "I don't like it" "I don't like it". He said that about 20 times that was quickly followed by his snoring seconds later. William was wide awake. I think he was excited about being there, so he kept flipping and flopping (of course shaking the mattress and waking up Andrew). I was sitting in the room with them until they fell asleep, but William wouldn't calm down. I just kept having flashbacks it the first trip that we took with William to Bowling Green 4 years ago where he didn't sleep the whole night. We spent all night trying to keep him from crying in the hotel room in fear of waking up the other guests. I even took him for a drive at 3:00am to try and knock him out to no luck. I think both William and I got about an hour sleep that night in Bowling Green. But after a while he finally conks out and I got upstairs to see it's around 11:00pm. After some more visiting with the Q's we finally called it a night around 1:00am or so. I am thinking that it will be nice to sleep-in in the morning since the boys will sleep in too, or at least I thought they would.

Thursday - 7:00am Andrew wakes up and thus wakes up William. I get up and entertain the boys so they don't wake up the whole house. We go upstairs and grab some breakfast. I grab an "awful big" muffin (as Mary calls them) and a glass of milk and that's enough breakfast for me. After a lazy morning with members of the crew waking up one at a time all morning. The Q's have a real nice TV that was just purchased not too long ago so I get to surf around the satellite. After a while we decide to pack up the crew and head to a museum of play that is in Rochester. This is my first experience in following Carrie "leadfoot" Q through the highways of New York in an effort not to loose her. We pull up to a huge building that is full of all kinds of stuff for kids to do and play with. As soon as you go into the front doors there is a carousel and an actual 1950's dinner that you can eat in. As soon as we get in the doors Andrew want to be carried which is not a good thing. This is the first clue that we probably should have done the museum on Friday to give the boys a chance to recover from the car ride, but William did just fine. Andrew on the other hand was a day full of crying whining flopping and meltdowns. This museum of play is a very cool place with TONS of stuff for kids to play with and on and over and under. It's a very hands-on experience in every part of this place. I was a bit unnerved trying to keep track of the boys in the seas of kids, but we only lost track of the boys a couple of times, but it's a pretty safe place to be lost in. Upstairs in the museum they have a collection of toys from different decades. That was pretty fun to see stuff that I played with as a kid behind glass in the display. There was quite a collection of old video game stuff that I got a picture of. I will post that later on. The kids weren't really interested in this part of the museum so we didn't stay too long upstairs. We decided to call it a day and hit the carousel on the way out the door. We looked at our watches and we were only there for 3 hours but it felt like we were there alot longer than that. (might have just seemed longer due to Andrew). We got home and grilled up some burgers and dogs to feed the crew. After that we broke out Mario Cart on the Wii. Yeah the kids (especially Keith) was beating the pants off of all of us. I couldn't quite get the hang of how much to steer the wheel so I found myself oversteering alot of the time which put me in a ditch usually. I don't know if I would have had a little more time to learn how to steer if it would have been more fun. So after a while of playing that we put the kids to bed. I stayed downstairs with the boys again to make sure they got to sleep alright. Andrew fought me a little bit, but went to sleep pretty quick. I was upstairs by 10:30 or so. After we were sure that all the kids were asleep we broke out Rockstar for the Wii. This is the version of guitar hero that has drums and bass and microphone. The Q's have two guitars so it worked out that everyone had their own instrument. I opted to play the drums being the most experienced in the group even though I haven't touched a drum stick in years (decades). The drum setup is alot like the tri-toms I played in high school so I thought it would be a breeze. Surprisingly I actually sucked at it. I thought I was keeping pretty good time and hitting the notes, but not according the the game. After a while I just picked up a guitar and was pretty good at the easy level. John is really good on the hard level, but has alot more experience than us. The Q's don't have a clock in their front room so it is easy to loose track of time so imagine our surprise when we saw that it was 2:00am. I felt bad for us, but even worse for John since he still had to work during our visit. But I didn't feel too sorry for him since he could go into work basically whenever he wanted.

Friday - Another 7:00am wake up call from the boys. Five hours of sleep it not enough. It seemed like I just got to bed when it was time to get up. So another lazy kind of morning and it's 11:00 before we know it. We decide to run over to one of their malls to just wander around stores, check things out, and try and wear the kids out. Andrew is in typical form, but was happy
when I was carrying him on my shoulders or giving him "penny penny" to throw into the fountain. After blowing a couple of hours there we head back to the house. Jen and Carrie decided to take the kids over to a playground that is close. I opt out of that idea and decided to try and take a nap while they were gone. I wasn't able to do that since Christoper was being a little fussy. After that it was a lazy kind of day with the kids running all over the place. I had a pretty good back ache in the morning, but with the help of some ibuprofen it finally let up when we hit the mall. The kids went down for the night pretty well with only a little bit of fuss. Either they were getting used to the air mattress or they were just that tired. We broke out the rockband game again (I think Jen is addicted) and started playing, but I was just too tired. Not sure if it was the lack of sleep or the medicine, but I fell asleep and trudged down to bed around midnight.

Saturday - Another 7:00am wake-up. The Q's had to take care of a couple of things in the morning, but we finally were ready to hit the road to Niagara around noon. We had to stop at the cellular store to let John get a new cell phone since he broke his (or it was broken for him) on his recent vacation, guys event, or whatever you want to call it. Before we left I find out that we only
need birth certificates to cross over to Canada and won't need passports until 2009. I have heard that the Canadian side of the falls is a little nicer, but it has been years since I had been there so I didn't know. Unfortunately we forgot the birth certificates so we were stuck on the American side. We headed to Niagara, not on the main highway, but on a kind of scenic back road. Actually it was a very nice 4 lane road that went right along Lake Ontario. This was a real nice change of pace to the crazy Highway 90 to buffalo and it gave us the opportunity to see the lake. Checking out the lake was another of the things that I wanted to try and do during vacation. We didn't get a chance to go the the shore, but I got a chance to see it which was fine. We passed a couple of state parks that were shore front that I am going to keep in mind for the next time. After a while the 4 lane highway became a 2 lane road that went through a lot of small towns and farmland with just about everyone selling firewood for some reason. It was nice to see that New York was kind of like Indiana in that aspect of small towns and agriculture. As we get to Buffalo this little road runs next to the main roads of Buffalo, but without the stoplights. The condition of this road is pretty poor and looks like they have been thinking about working on it for the past 10 years. When you can see 5 inches of dirt around barricades you know they have been there for a while. We stop at this nice little park near Niagara for a picnic lunch. At the far side of this park you can see a place downstream of Niagara that acts like a whirlpool. From the Canadian side you can take a gondola over the whirlpool.

After eating lunch and dealing with a very persistent bee that wanted John's Dr. Pepper we headed to Niagara which is pretty close to the park. We get to the main area of Niagara where the falls are and get stuck in a traffic Jam. It tells you to go straight to park, but you can't get through the intersection without getting stuck, and then the cross traffic gets blocked and so on and so on. Finally John just turns left and I do the same after the next light. We pull into this pretty sad looking parking garage that charges $10 for the day.We unload the kids and try out best to try and figure out how the heck to get out of the garage. Again this is a pretty sorry garage that doesn't have any instruction or directions on how to get to anything. We finally ended up carrying the kids and strollers down 4 flights of stairs since we couldn't find the freakin elevator. We get to the street where John asks me which way to go. I just point a direction since it seems like all places lead to the falls. I was wrong and we ended up having to walk around a run down building that added another couple of blocks to our walk. Someone is really missing the boat in this area with the crappy run down buildings and lack of any real tourist attractions. Either that or we just choose the worst place to park around the falls. As we are heading toward the crowd I see this guy kind of mulling around the front of this run down building. I just kept telling myself "he is going to hit me up for money" and sure enough he walked up to me and said "excuse me". I just ignored him and finally said "go away" after he persisted. I must look to friendly to panhandlers. We crossed the street to head to Niagara Park. I expected a little nicer area for tourists with some better stores and things. I wasn't expecting all of the "hot dog" carts along the pathway selling all kinds of food. We finally get to the falls after some more misdirection of where to go. That's it, I am going to stop following John :). It's still an awesome sight to see Niagara falls. The beauty and majesty of it is overwhelming. We finally found out how to contain Andrew. Strap him into a stroller and don't let him out. He actually didn't mind being in the stroller for most of the day, but did want to get out and roam a little bit. It was a very busy day around Niagara and filled with a TON of Indian people (dot not feather) for some reason. We went to the visitors center for a potty break but it was too small and too full of people. Again I think someone is missing the boat. We walked around for hours and went on the observation deck to get a better view of the falls. I thought about trying to do the Maid of the Mist ride with the boys, but I think I will save that until they are a bit older and can really appreciate it. We headed from what I think are the horseshoe falls over the the main falls through a real nice park. It was alot of walking, but it wasn't really that bad. The boys did really well and stayed with the group for the most part. It helps having Carrie coral the boys also. We saw where we needed to go if we ever want to go to the caves of Niagara with a huge line waiting to get in. Our last stop was at the main falls. It is so strange that a 4 foot "fence" keeps you inches away form the rapids at the top of the falls and from the falls themselves. Most attractions like this you can't get that close to ever.



After viewing the falls we hit the gift shop and got the boys a couple of T-shirts so they could remember the trip. The Q-kids got a couple of stuffed birds that chirped and sang. (I feel sorry for Carrie:)). Then it was the loooonnngg walk back to our cars. But again it didn't feel that long and we had Andrew contained in the stroller. I was making a contest of seeing if I could hit people with the stroller as they cut in front of me, but I didn't have any successful hits. After going through the gauntlet of crappy stores and people selling hand made jewelry we made it back to the parking garage and find out that they do have an elevator. We thought that we were parked on the 3 rd level, but when we got there we didn't see our cars. John opted for talking the stairs down a level, but I didn't feel like doing that again so opted to just follow the ramp down to the next level, but the ramp didn't exactly go down to the next level. Like I said this is a messed up parking garage. We finally had to jump a railing and pass over the strollers to get to our cars. I so wanted to make a comment to the teller as I was paying my $10, but decided against it. We head back to Rochester on the busy highway 90. I am trying to keep up with John around traffic and through toll gates all the while watching the lightning flashing in the sky. We decide to stop at at Bob Evan's on the way home and feed the children. Ironically it's the same exit that we had stopped a couple of days earlier to eat on the way to Rochester. While we were eating the heavens opened up and it poured rain, but finished before we had to leave. Dining with the boys that night and all during vacation went pretty well in restaurants. Andrew wanted to wander a little bit, but he ate well as long as it was mac and cheese or some other generic kid food. After that it was back on the road with another stop at the Cheesecake Factory for dessert. How Rochester rates one of these and Fort Wayne doesn't I will never know. I didn't realize how close the restaurant was to the Q's house... lucky buggers. We get home and put kids to bed pretty late. I had my dessert and headed for the bed as well since we had a long drive in the morning. I think Jen might have played rockband a little more.

Saturday - We get going with a tearful goodbye. Again shooting for 9:00 but actually leaving a little after 10:00. I get the fun of driving through rain, sometimes downpours, until we get just outside of Cleveland (so about halfway). As we are going into downtown I can see the Cleveland skyline and Lake Erie next to each other. I am not sure how I missed it the first time, but I was probably worried about traffic. Sometime I would like to stop and check out the Rock and Roll hall of fame and an area called "the flats" that my brother and co-workers recommend, but not until the kids get older. After crossing the Ohio state line I started looking for a place to eat. Since we have McDonalds coupons I look for the golden arches. They aren't that easy to find in New York and Pennsylvania (or at least they aren't on the road signs). I pull off on the first sign of McDonalds and end up driving 4 miles into a quaint little town with the restuarant. I would have preferred to stay near the interstate to keep better time, but I wasn't sure how often we would see the signs. Of course just about every exit from there on in had a McDonalds right by the interstate. We make pretty good time through Ohio with another stop for a potty break near Toledo. I decided to fill up Herbie (what the boys call the new minivan) at a toll road rest area. The name of the gas station is Volero so I have never heard of it. I pull up to the pump and get out to pump the gas, I swipe the card and the screen on the pump says " key zip + enter ". Huh? what the hell is a key zip? I know what a key gen is but not a key zip. I figure that it might be some special thing that only Volero gas stations have. I look around the pump to make sure I am not at a special pump or something but don't see. I cancel the transaction thinking that I might have hit a wrong button, but it asks it again. I cancel again and go ask the attendant. "What is a key zip?". He tells me that I need to put in the zip code for the building. What? how the heck would I know what the zip code is for this building??? "No" he said "the zip code for your billing not the building". Opps I felt like such a dolt. I am surprized that Jen didn't poke her head out the window wondering what I was doing. The freakin' display on the gas pump has enough room for at least 80 characters, how hard would it be to actually type out "Key in billing zip code and press enter". Let's see....39 would do it. So anyway, we get to the Indiana state line and to hwy 69. The next 40 miles are a cake walk since we do it all the time coming back from the in-laws place. It is around 7:30pm and we figure that if we go for it we could be home before 8:30, or the other option was to stop for dinner. We chose to stop for dinner since there wasn't that much to eat at home since we purged most of the food due to vacation. We decided to do one last splurge and go to Caruso's at the lake James exit. We love this place, but rarely get to go since it is too far from Fort Wayne to drive and we are usually too tired after visiting the in-laws to stop on the way home. We had a nice dinner and the boys did pretty well also. The last 40 miles went real quick, and it felt good to get home. Another 11 hours in Herbie, but again the boys did very well with only a few little fusses. We got home to a cool evening that allowed us to open the windows and air the house out a little bit. We get the boys to bed and do a little bit of unloading and putting away and just general collapse. I finally get up to bed after 11:00 and fall asleep very vast. Unfortunately I forgot that it was Sunday night so the garbage truck comes promptly at 5:30am which is even louder since we have the windows open. William joins us at 6:00am but he finally falls asleep in our bed. I got up at 6:30 since I had to take Herbie into for servicing on the way to work. And also I get to be out on the floor walking back and fourth and helping with a phone book for the past 4 days, so I am still trying to catch up on sleep and rest. And of course trying to find a few minutes here and there to write this blog entry. It's taken me 4 days!!!

Besides some of the issues that we had with Andrew the trip went well. Herbie did well too with 1250 miles in all of our driving around. He got a little better than 27 mpg on the way out but a little less on the way home due to the rain and windy conditions. Thank you to the Q's (if you are still reading this diatribe) who have a very nice place is a pretty cozy city. We hope to see you again real soon......