Layover in Pennsylvania: Leg 1.5

Wednesday, August 28th → Thursday, August 29th

“The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
Alan Watts

There is a great portion of me that realizes how embarrassingly ironic it is to post a retroactive update on our brief time in Pennsylvania over three weeks ago after making broad declarations of crossing the Rubicon, keeping our resolve, and remaining steadfast and yet, I firmly believe in being thorough over being timely. I would assume that anyone who knows me outside of this trip would register a great deal of truth in such a sentiment, as I am not necessarily known for my punctual communication, but am rarely a man of brevity and literary lethargy. And so here we are; or, better yet, there we were, in Pennsylvania, over three weeks ago as of today.

It may come as a surprise to none that Marshall and I grossly overestimated our ability to “hit the ground running,” originally planning to drive down to Washington, D.C. on the morning of Wednesday, August 28th, and find housing by nightfall. What at first felt like an attack on our competence, and an undervaluation of our abilities, quickly revealed itself to be a sage forewarning of the difficulties of sleeping in a car in a city neither of us were familiar with. So, strong-armed by our delayed departure in the early afternoon, Marshall and I decided to spend the night in Swarthmore, PA with my Godfather Peter Atsaves, who had kindly already offered us refuge, should we have needed it, for that night. So, Marshall and I drove through the many — and very expensive — turnpikes of Northern New Jersey, and made it an hour through the green hills of the Garden State before pulling over to make our first stop of the trip: Wawa.

Oh, Wawa. We had heard tales of yore about the majesty of the establishment, but neither of us had ever seen it with our own eyes. Despite my many trips to Pennsylvania throughout my life, and Marshall’s own proximity to the franchise in the tri-state area, our paths had both danced around that of Wawa’s own, a tango of magnetic repulsion that quickly turned to opposite attraction as we walked into the cooled air of our first Wawa. And how beautiful it was. The stories were true! Those red aesthetic highlights. The gargantuan self-help espresso bar. That mahogany cabinetry, wrapping around an endless array of assorted candies and snack foods. The ever-enticing hot-foods bar, with salivating images of hoagies and pizzas freckling their bright LED screens. And the perishables. Oh, the perishables! Islands of ready-to-eat lunches, smoothies, fruit boxes, and cheeses of every kind. Pre-wrapped sandwiches and boxed salads, and what a variety of health drinks. Marshall and I were in heaven. And yet we were forced to leave our oasis for a date with the oppugnant outdoors; where an antithetical sea of gas pumps littered the driveway of Wawa’s property. And yet, we were forced to be the enemy and fill our tank in order to arrive in the Philadelphian suburbs without any gas concerns. Yet in the spirit of trying new things, Marshall and I were also treated to our first run-in with the New Jerseyan antiquity of gas attendants; a young man who filled up our gas tank without us having to ever step out of the Blue Beauty.

With a full tank, and a reborn optimism in the world courtesy of Wawa, Marshall and I then hit the road again for Narberth, Pennsylvania, where we had scheduled a long-awaited rendezvous with Dave and Holly Bugbee, who had invited us to their home and a dinner out with their son Jake and his long-time girlfriend Kaz. We ate at “Not Your Average Joe’s” in Ardmore, PA, where I got the Caprese Chicken Sandwich and feasted upon one of Dave’s Crispy Bang Bang Shrimp. The meal was absolutely delicious, and the company was quite fantastic too; it was an absolute treat to see my cousins in a context outside of our summer refuge on Heron Island, Maine. And yet, despite the different geographical context and scenery, it’s nights like these that confirm that the connections are more than real. That they are genuine, deep, and vital to who I am as a person. That they are not the result of some magical heaven-on-earth but instead the result of a family bond, and the type of person that would find heaven on that small half-mile-long island in the Gulf of Maine. Only the best of us love it enough to realize it is just that special. After hugging goodbye to Dave and Holly, and discussing the array of Maine-related and Heron Island-themed memorabilia that the Bugbees have collected over the years — including a Maine license plate from an old flea market — Marshall and I got in our car and drove to Swarthmore, PA to see my godfather, who I confusingly call “Uncle Pete.”

There is nothing quite as special as arriving at the Atsaves’s home in Swarthmore, and seeing Peter Atsaves on the front steps, gleaming with the brightest smile and most overwhelming warmth that you will ever encounter. A close second to this experience is the knowledge that a hug is awaiting from that same man; the type of embrace that echos of nostalgia and childhood memories of his visits to California, the chimes of the Liberty Bell, and hot-dog dinners on the South Porch of Sprucetops in Maine. Regardless of what mental souvenir rises to the surface in these moments, these moments also serve to remind me that there will be many more causes for reminiscence to come; with every visit and with every passing year. In that home that I have known so well to be a safe place, especially during my challenging second semester at Wesleyan University, Marshall and I exchanged summarizing exchanges of our past couple of months with Peter and Kristina and were surprised by the wonderful appearance of Noah, their middle-child and my mother’s Godson, as he grabbed a last slice of pizza before returning to his work.

Although I would have loved to remain in that living room, Marshall and I excused ourselves to the Blue Beauty, where we hoped to perform a test run of what setting up the car would be like every night. As terse words flew around the streets of Swarthmore, and anxious and unsuccessful attempts to shove misshapen privacy screens into the windows of our 2006 Toyota 4Runner freckled the silence of the night sky, Marshall and I reached an unfortunate realization: that sleeping in the car was going to be absolutely awful. It was in that glass-shattering moment that we created a goal to sleep in a bed as much as possible on this trip. At that moment my brain went into hyperdrive trying to think of every single person I remotely knew on the Atlantic, Southern, and Pacific borders of the United States. Not only was the car much less comfortable than we had imagined, as we had not considered the condensation of the car at night or the extreme temperatures we were to face, but it was also much less private and secure than we had hoped. The privacy screens were going to have to be jerry-rigged using velcro, tape, rags, and potentially paint, and we weren’t going to be able to use any lights in the car at night, as any internal light source would light up the car like a vehicular firefly. The only consolation of this moment was our absolute shock at how much of our stuff we could fit in the front two seats of the car, as we reorganized everything to set up the Luno mattress in the back. A travel bag, two backpacks, a suitcase, a 45-quart Yeti Cooler, a duffel bag, and every other miscellaneous item that would not fit into our Thule or in the center console could be shoved into the front two seats. How marvelous! And yet a consolation was exactly what this surprising storage capability was. The majority of our mood and perspective at this moment was negative, and our idiotic hopes of potentially testing out a night’s sleep in the car in Swarthmore were quickly abandoned for the hospitality and comfort of Uncle Pete’s two guest rooms.

The morning came sooner than we had hoped, and our goals to rise at 6:30 AM in order to “seize the day” were felled by the cruel reality of what a 6:30 AM wake-up actually feels like. So, after snoozing for about an hour, I sauntered down to the kitchen and was met by a loving text from Uncle Pete explaining that he had taken the loving liberty to prepare two almond croissants for Marshall and me, along with a pot of hot coffee, and an assortment of dairy/creamer and sweetening options. So, on the first morning of our road trip, I sat in the kitchen of my Godfather and ate an Almond Croissant while sipping on some delicious coffee. Life was good. I finished what was at that point a demitasse-sized drink on the back porch of the house with Uncle Pete, hoping to make the most of the alone time that we would have together as Marshall prepared the car for our departure. I bookended our visit with another classic Uncle Pete hug, and then we were off; on our way to Gettysburg, PA where we anxiously awaited a long-overdue reunion with our Wesleyan friend Finn Clarke.

The drive to Gettysburg went smoothly, with one pit stop in Hershey, PA for some gas and a bathroom break. With Finn having spent the morning wake-boarding out of town, we actually beat Mr. Clarke back to his own residence and filled the dead time with some soccer in his front yard and some cuddles with his dog Cleo in the living room. When Finn returned we got a quick tour of his house and learned that it was his younger brother Quaide’s eighteenth birthday, and then piled into his Subaru hatchback for a lunch date at Tacos Monarca in downtown Gettysburg. I had been to Gettysburg once or twice before but had little memory of the actual town itself. Instead, my vague recollections of the historic location were just that; the battlefield, monuments, old cannons, and gravesites that peppered the rural countryside of this South-Pennsylvanian town. In the spirit of trying new things on this trip, I had my first Barrito tacos and my first Jarito (Guava), and enjoyed spending an hour catching up with Finn on how his summer went, from his medical internship to his trip to Italy and efforts in beating Super Mario Bros. with his high-school friends. Marshall and I were blessed to receive a tour of Finn’s old high school and middle school, as well as Gettysburg College itself, which had not been originally added to the Redacted Plan’s list of colleges but was a nice addition to our journey through higher education.

But, as all good things do, our time with Finn came to an end. Despite being able to catch a glimpse into what my close friend’s childhood and adolescence must have been like in this rural town, I was brought to the brink of melancholy upon recognizing that I would not be able to catch the same glimpse of his trip into adulthood at Wesleyan anymore. I am to be across the country from this marvelous person and dear friend, but perhaps I can experience it asynchronously and from afar. It is life’s greatest demand of me at this point in my maturation that I become a better communicator, as too many dear friendships currently stand at the risk of being lost at the hands of geographical distance. I shall beat the mileage. I will beat the gaps between. But in the meantime, Marshall and I were to learn my enemy. We had places to be, and we had a country to drive across. We had terrain to cross. And with all six windows of the Blue Beauty down and the Gettysburg wind in our faces, we drove out of Pennsylvania and into Maryland on our way to Washington, D.C. The next stop? Georgetown University: the first of the sixteen colleges that will end up making up the Redacted Plan.

Brodie Zeigler