Our vacation started with a bang!

We’re currently in the midst of a two-week vacation road trip. We’re having a great time with my family out here in Ohio, getting to see my sister Kirsten, my brother-in-law Mark, and their new daughter, Gracie, as well as my parents and various other members of the in-law family. Everything is just hunky-dory right now, but our trip didn’t start out so smoothly at the beginning!

We started our trip by driving to the Finger Lakes region of New York and pitching our tent in a campsite at Watkins Glen State Park. By Sunday evening we were all settled in and had hot dogs and s’mores around the campfire. On Monday, we hiked the Gorge Trail at Watkins Glen in the morning, and in the late afternoon, we drove over to Ithaca to have dinner at the Moosewood Restaurant.

We had just spotted a great parallel parking space right in front of Moosewood, and we were preparing to back into it. We had pulled up to the side of the car in front of the space, when all of a sudden our car shook and we saw that a huge passenger bus had collided with us! Its right front corner had collided with our left front corner. After verifying that nobody in our car was hurt (Catherine said: “The car shook and it woke me up from my nap!”), I quickly got out and saw that our car wasn’t drivable – the front left tire and wheel had been totally crushed in, and what was left of our wheel was tilted at a funny angle. I called the police to the scene and we gave them our side of the story. In the meantime, one of the kind staff at Moosewood had seen the accident and had rushed out to see if we needed any help. He got us some drinks, too. I began making phone calls to our insurance company and a car rental company. Our car was towed to a local body shop, and in the meantime, we went into the Moosewood Restaurant, since we had intended on eating there anyway! They sat us down at a corner table and let us conduct our business, providing some assistance with recommendations on car rental and giving their opinions of the towing company and body shop. They even took the liberty of picking out some appetizers for us. In fact, we soon learned that our whole meal would be on the house… Moosewood‘s way of comforting us and helping us out after our accident. They really were the sweetest, kindest people. I can’t think of a better place to have gotten into an accident! The food was delicious (I ordered a Thai vegetable curry), the service was gracious, the atmosphere was wonderful. I hope that we can return under better circumstances (and actually pay for our meal!).

In any case, we wound up taking a taxi out to the Ithaca airport, where I then picked up a rental car, drove it to the body shop (which was way out in the middle of nowhere), transferred the considerable amount of luggage (and car seats) over from our car, drove back to the airport, picked the ladies up, and drove back to the campground for the night. Phew! It made for quite a long and stressful day.

We initially thought that we’d just stick around until they could fix our car, and perhaps extend our stay for a few extra nights. But we soon found out that extensive repairs were needed, and they probably wouldn’t be finished until the end of THIS week. If we waited around for THAT, our entire trip would be eaten  up. So, instead, we opted to extend our rental car and simply continue our trip as planned.

We left the Finger Lakes as intended on Wednesday, albeit a little bit later, and no longer driving our Subaru station wagon but a shiny new and huge Ford Explorer. I don’t particularly care for SUVs (and our insurance doesn’t fully cover something so expensive) – but this was the only car that was available that was also capable of carrying all of the luggage we had on our trip. If this had merely been a trip to the Finger Lakes, we may not have made the same decision – but the fact is that we still had a trip out to Ohio and back to come, and it was far more important to us to continue the trip and see our family than it was for us to be stingy. It doesn’t hurt that the Explorer was equipped with the surprisingly cool Microsoft Sync system, which easily hooked up to our iPods and allowed us to play any of our music using voice commands!

So anyway, we’re here in Ohio for a few more days, rental car and all. Then we’re headed out to Pennsylvania for a few days, then back up to New York to pick up our car which should hopefully be finished by the end of the week, then back home to Massachusetts. So far, with the exception of some unexpected expenses and a bit of stress, it’s been a great trip, and we’re looking forward to the remainder. I’m in the process of uploading photos from the trip so far; you can see them in our photo gallery, and check back frequently for new ones.

In closing, here’s the only photo I had the mind to shoot; a picture from my phone as our car was being towed away. You can’t see any of the damage, but there it is anyway.

Poor Subaru

Our Weekend Getaway

On Saturday, we dropped Catherine off with her Nonni and Grandpa, and headed down to Boston for a weekend excursion! We drove in and parked at the Boston Common parking garage ($22 for the weekend, not bad) and walked in the chilly weather down to our hotel.

We stayed in the Marriott at Copley Place, thanks to a gift card we got from Ken and Dianne last Christmas.

From our room on the 21st floor, we had a terrific view of the southwest part of the city, including the South End.

A good portion of our time was spent lounging in the hotel room, vegging out, watching TV, and relaxing.

We had lunch at b. good, a favorite stop of ours.

We had a *very* nice dinner at Stephanie’s on Newbury, courtesy of a gift card I won at work last year. We brought our desserts back to the room and watched Wall-E on pay-per-view on the room’s huge TV.

We also enjoyed the nighttime views from our hotel room.

Did I mention the views from our hotel room?

Overall it was a very enjoyable weekend. Our main goal was just to veg out and enjoy good food, quiet rest, pleasant company, and comfortable accommodations. We were pretty pleased with the view from our hotel room, if you couldn’t tell. If we stretched, we could see the Charles River on the far right of our window, and the Southeast Expressway on the far right. This will probably be the last chance we have to take a weekend away with just the two of us for quite some time, what with baby #2 due to arrive in eight weeks or so. It was definitely worth it.

You can see all of the photos from our Boston Weekend.

It sounds like Catherine had a good time while we were away, too, thanks to Nonni and Grandpa!

We’ve arrived in Ohio!

On Thursday, we left the North Shore to drive out to Mount Vernon, Ohio for a visit with my parents! We stayed overnight in East Syracuse, NY, and then quickly headed out to Mount Vernon! We arrived last night, and had a great time getting settled in. My Dad and I both have birthdays in October, so we had a birthday cake.

We’re looking forward to a week of relaxing and visiting with my parents, as well as some side trips to see friends in the Central Ohio area! We’ll be posting photos in our SmugMug photo gallery, so you can follow along there. Thus far, we’ve got photos from the drive, a collection of Photos Catherine has taken, and photos from our first evening in Mount Vernon.

You can also follow my periodic updates on Twitter.

Retreated

This past weekend, Rebecca, Catherine and I traveled down to Cape Cod to attend our church‘s retreat at the Craigville Conference Center. We had a great time hanging out with and getting to know the folks from our church. The three of us had a nice little private apartment in the bottom of a large four story cottage that housed a number of other families from the church. We had some workshops on the spiritual disciplines, ate all of our meals together, and had plenty of free time for playing games and chatting. The weather wasn’t the nicest, but we still enjoyed it.

You can see the photos from the retreat in our gallery.

On The Vineyard, Social Network Style

We’re spending the week on Martha’s Vineyard at Rebecca’s parents’ cottage in Oak Bluffs. For frequent updates, you can check out my Facebook profile, follow me on Twitter, or view my Flickr photostream. You can also look at photos in our own, slightly less social, Gallery here at prwdot.org.

Father’s Day Weekend, 2008

This past weekend, Rebecca, Catherine and I traveled up to Quechee, Vermont to see the Quechee Hot Air Balloon Festival. We camped out at Ascutney State Park, as the Quechee campground was full, but most of our time was spent in and around Quechee and Woodstock. It proved to be a very enjoyable weekend for all of us! Read on for more details and photos!

Continue reading…

Florida 2008

Our trip to Florida was filled with sun, sand, ocean, games, food, rest, and relaxation. We spent a week in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, at a beach house rented from the family of a friend of my sister. There was no real agenda, although we did do a dolphin cruise one day. The best part, though, was getting to see my family:

For all of the photos from the trip, check out the Florida 2008 photo gallery.

Next week’s forecast: relaxing!

I’m liking this forecast for next week:

We’ll be heading down to Florida on Saturday for a week with my parents, sister and brother-in-law. Sun, sand, warm weather, a house on the beach, nothing to do but relax. (Kudos to Tripit for the extremely usable, well-designed, and feature-packed website which produced the above forecast, among other things. Just forward an email confirmation to plans@tripit.com for airline tickets, car rental, hotel reservation, etc, and Tripit will automatically build an itinerary with all sorts of useful info.)

In the meantime, I just have a few days of work to wrap up, some packing to do for the trip, and an Apple Store opening to attend tomorrow night.

Finally, if you haven’t already, please stop by Peter R. Wood Photography for some new photos, journal entries, and general photography information. I’d appreciate any comments or suggestions you have for things you’d like to see on that site!

Since she returned

I’m glad that Catherine and Rebecca made it home safely from their trip to Ohio. The house was pretty lonely without them. In celebration, I’ve put up a gallery of some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken of my favorite photographic subject since her return. Enjoy!