PaulGraz's Daily Blog for The Great Ice Cream Run!

Day 5, Wednesday June 13th: Frackville, PA to Sturbridge, MA:   

This day is going to be a little weird.  I started out running late - I got up early, but somewhere I lost track of time in the morning and I walked out to the parking lot to find that people were about ready to leave!  I hustled a little and managed to get out with the main group.  I would have rather drove with the S'Creamers again, but apparently I missed them.  Like pretty much every other day, we're apparently not following the route sheets today - leaving at 8am instead of 9am as published, and taking a different route.  I was contemplating just taking the highway route today because I have to pick up my daughter Nicole in Newburgh NY.  My wife Nancy was going to drive up to Newburgh to drop off Nicole with me - the plan was to meet there around 11am.

Since we were leaving so early, I figured I would join a group on the alternate route, and then I would just split away when we got near I-84 so I could head to Newburgh.  I also assumed this meant that my daughter and I would just be driving the rest of the day by ourselves, as the odds of catching the group would be pretty slim.

Well, shortly after starting to drive with the main group, we had to pull over to let someone catch up - at that point the S'Creamers go driving by!  I seized the opportunity, said goodbye to the main group and joined in with the faster group.  We were heading north on rt 209 through PA, with a stop planned at Port Jervis, NY.  That's where I would leave the pack and head to Newburgh.  And that's exactly what happened.

As it turned out, I missed one of the best ice cream stops on the run.  The place in Port Jervis has a special "fried ice cream" that was reported to be out of this world.  And I missed it.  Oh well,  I only live about 2 hours from there, maybe I can make another trip there and "catch up" someday....

This brings us to the part where I nearly totaled my car.  I was heading east on I-84, all lined up for a 11:10am arrival in Newburgh.  Nicole text'd me and said their ETA was 11:20 - good, I had time for a quick bathroom stop.  The nav told me there was a rest stop about 8 miles outside of Newburgh, so I pulled in there.  When I pulled out there was one of those tractors from the NYS DOT setup for lawn mowing, driving down the exit ramp from the rest area - it started to move to the right, as if it was going to do some mowing on the right side - so I moved left, and went around him - then without warning, the tractor turns to the left, directly towards where I was heading!  If I was going any slower he would have clobbered me.  Luckily I was accelerating to get on the highway so I was moving fast enough to miss him.  He must have been inches from my back bumper as I went by.  Whew!

A few minutes later, I was on the I-84 bridge which passes over the NYS Thruway - and Nancy saw me go over the bridge as she exited the Thruway.  We arrived at the Alexis Diner within minutes of each other!

(Side note, for decades, this was called the Lexus Diner - but along comes Toyota with their Lexus car brand - and they sued the diner to change their name.  How stupid is this?  The diner had the name long before Toyota did.  But the diner lost and had to change the name simply because Toyota had more lawyers.  What a travesty of justice...)

So Nancy, Nicole and I had lunch at the diner, and went back to the cars.  I had accidentally left my 2-way radio on and as we got into the car, I heard a few familiar voices - the main group had caught up to me and was driving right past the diner!  I asked them to pull over for a minute and we fired up the MINI and split...  What are the odds?

After that it was over the Hudson and into CT.  After a while we stopped at Fudgy's Ice Cream in Amenia, NY where Tereza (ZZMini) was waiting for us.  More good ice cream!

Continuing on, I was driving at the rear of the pack with Ian F.  But we got separated from the rest of the pack.  I made the mistake of assuming that this late in the day, at nearly 6pm, that we would skip the last ice cream stop and go right to the hotel.  Oops,  Ian and I arrived at the hotel well ahead of the rest of the group - they stopped for one more ice cream stop at Westview Farms Creamery.  Which means I missed another ice cream stop today.  Damn,,,

After everyone got to the hotel, at the advice of one of the locals (TomThumb) we drove down to a local Italian restaurant/pizzeria.  After hanging out at the bar for a while (Good local beer!) they seated as many of us as possible - but a few had to stay at the bar.  (We were a VERY large group at that point!).  I had a dish of pasta, and my daughter ordered what was apparently the worlds largest calzone.  She was only able to get through about 1/4 of it.

After dinner we were supposed to go for one more evening ice cream stop, but it was late and we would be pushing their closing time - plus everyone was tired and completely FULL.  The Italian food was very good, but left no room for dessert.  So we returned to the hotel.  I popped by hood open to replace that burned out headlight, which kinda triggered a slight panic - the whole group came over to my car to see what was wrong.  Once I assured everyone it was nothing serious, I had about a dozen MINI owners hang out to watch me change the bulb.  Now we know how many MINI owners it takes to change a light bulb...  J (PS: Thanks to CooperSharon for holding the flashlight while I did this!)

As always - see my pictures link for the photos of the day...


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