2002 Cross-Country Roadtrip
Day 13, St. Davids, PA August 1st 12:30pm
My delinquency is increasing not at a linear rate, but at some kind of parabolic speed. Or maybe logarithmic. Anyway, the short version of the last ten days: we ate, played tennis, chatted with relatives, drank, swam, rode horses, played croquet, ate, drank, played more tennis.
And the long version: Though it took a long time to adjust (about 30 seconds) we finally settled in to the country club lifestyle. Cedar played a lot of tennis, including against his brother James (there was plenty of good ole fashioned sibling rivalry, though not nearly enough heckling), and with James against other family members in doubles. Shree (Cedar’s sister) and I went in a lovely ride up to the reservoir (sorry, no pictures) during which Shree’s horse only tried to buck her off twice (just kidding!).
When we weren’t playing tennis, croquet or riding horses, we were either preparing to eat, eating, or recovering from having recently eaten. There was so much good food (lox, pasta salads, cold cuts, pastries), but the apex of the glutony was Saturday’s dinner, which was the official party for Canny and Ruth’s birthdays. Canny is Cedar’s grandmother, who turned 95 and Ruth is his grandmother in law (I don’t remember how old she turned). Saturday’s dinner included delicious Shell steaks cooked rare, salmon, salad, tomatoes and mozzarella, carrots, potatoes and cake. It was fantastic. Everyone had a great time, including bartender James who regaled the masses with his wit and good humor. We even took a picture of all the Westonians attending the party that we plan to send to Westtown. 65 people ended up attending for Saturday’s shindig.
We left the farm on Sunday, driving with Shree to her apartment in Brooklyn, which except for the 100 degree temperature was lovely! It was unfortunate that our 2 days in NYC were the hottest we’d encountered. It was really hot: “can’t sleep because you’re too hot” kind of hot. Monday we walked around Manhattan, trying desperately to go to a museum, but of course they were all closed. Particularly vexing was the International Center for Photography: We took the subway uptown to 94th, found that it was being renovated and had temporarily moved to 43rd (or thereabouts). So we took the subway back down, only to find out that it was closed on Mondays. Luckily Shree worked very near there, so we stopped by and had lunch with her. Then we scooted on down to Soho to wander around and see the Apple flagship and Prada stores. Both were really cool, and I highly recommend seeing them. I really liked the Soho district, and I’m told lots of New Yorkers do too, given that rent prices are so high. We also managed not to get mugged or peed on (thanks to Dave Barry’s travel guide).
We met Shree for dinner at a great Italian place in Soho called Max. The food was really yummy and quite reasonable ($9 for most entrees!). I want them to open one up in Seattle: there is no good, reasonably priced Italian in Seattle, it is all expensive or bad. We chatted with Shree and Damian (her boyfriend, I’m not sure how to spell his name) after dinner while sipping cold beverages, applying toenail polish, and sweating.
We left NYC Tuesday morning and drove down to PA to commence visitation with my family. We’ve been unwinding from all the strenuous socializing and tennis playing by reading Glamour (not Cedar of course), swimming, admiring air conditioning and playing on the computer.
We’ll be heading down to West Virginia on Saturday, and tomorrow my Mom and I are going purse shopping (woohoo!).
Quote of the day: “Putting on clothes is punishment” - Shree regarding getting dressed for work Tuesday morning when the heat wave was at its most ferocious.
