Grinders

Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 5:33 PM

Subject: Grinders

Radio Free Sojourner.....Broadcasting from N 40deg 13.331', W 79deg 39.656' with Sonny Rollins playing background....with updates covering the period July 7-9 2001...Our adventurer was last seen sleeping in a Wal-Mart parking lot somewhere in Central Connecticut.....

Got up fairly early Saturday morning for what should have been about a 1 hour drive to New London. The directions I got from the computer were a little cryptic where a highway split off, so I turned it into over a 2 hour drive, including a longer than necessary cruise on the hated Interstate 95. Forget drilling in Alaska, national defense, balancing the budget, the US government should drop everything and repave the entirety of I95 from Maine to Florida as a 20 lane highway with Bulldozers every mile to push wrecks off the road, and a 30 foot divider between each direction so nobody has to slow down to see the wreck on the other side. OK, rant over. Got to New London around lunchtime to meet up with my friends Mike and Terri from Richmond. They were headed up to Hartford (the only city in Connecticut that does not start with the word "new") to go to a cookout with some old friends and were bringing me along. On the way is a place that makes the world's best Grinders (pronounced: grihn-duz), and Mike and Terri had to stop to get some. As Mike was driving, and Terri keeping busy with their 1 year old Joey, I had the responsibility of calling ahead to place the order. Which almost got me killed. So I call, and a lady picks up the phone....

Glenn: Yeah, I'd uh, like to order uh, some sandwiches

Mike: [yelling, while trying to open door and shove me out of moving car] SANDWICHES!!!!, They're GRINDERS YOU IDIOT!!!

Glenn: [hanging on to seatbelt for dear life] um, I mean I'd like to order some Grinders

well, once that crisis was resolved, we got to the world famous Franklin's...

Here is a cloudy and overcast picture of the store, and if you look real hard, you can see Terri, Mike, and Joey

After the trauma of ordering, I was conditioned to have a fear of these, um, handheld food things, and settled for a slice of pizza (I know, I should have had the grinder).

From there we spent the afternoon at a cookout drinking beer and hanging out, and when we got back to New London that evening, they gave me the tour of the city. Driving along the sound, the moon was just coming up and looked really cool....

My next destination was New York City. The plan was to take the Long Island Ferry from New London across the sound, and then drive in from there. Sunday morning had breakfast with Mike and Terri, and then Mike showed me the way to the Ferry. As he drove away, he gave me this last piece of advice "don't pay the ferryman until he gets you to the other side". Apparently this operation didn't work that way and I had to pay them before they would let me on the ship.

Once across, I had a nice drive through the Eastern part of Long Island. I had read a lot about it, and it was very scenic and rustic. Of course once you get on the Long Island Expressway that all changes. I was headed to the parents house of my good college friend Debbie (who I stayed with in Detroit several emails ago). They were going to put me up for the night, and let me park my van at their house so I could take the train into the city. Tommye and Sandy have always been good to me and make sure that I am well fed whenever I visit. They are kind of like my second pair of parents, except that with them I get in trouble when I try to be too polite. Monday morning Tommye gave me a ride to the Long Island Rail Road so I could head into the city.....