{"id":689,"date":"2010-08-15T09:38:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-15T14:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=689"},"modified":"2010-08-15T11:11:47","modified_gmt":"2010-08-15T16:11:47","slug":"m2nyi30es-the-next-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=689","title":{"rendered":"M2NYi30ES \u2013 The Next Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The next day we drove back to VA to retrieve the rest of our stuff and finish cleaning up the house. \u00a0The very next day. \u00a0After one of the worst days I\u2019ve ever spent I ended up having to endure one of the other worst days I\u2019ve ever spent. \u00a0We drove 350 miles to do a little more physical work. \u00a0Then, all in one day, we drove that same distance over those same roads back to NYC, to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Long_Island\">Long Island<\/a>, actually, to dump off the stuff at my wife\u2019s aunt\u2019s house. \u00a0This was 700 miles of driving and plenty of physical work, all in one long, fatigue-filled day.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"700 mi.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp-img\/memoir\/cvl2nyc1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"466\" height=\"376\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It was a lonely day for me, too. \u00a0My wife\u2019s pattern in the car is to fall asleep and stay that way for the entirety of the trip. \u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s what I always did when I was little,\u201d she says, by way of justification. \u00a0She must have been pretty well rested by the end of all this. \u00a0She racked up a lot of hours of sleep while I was driving those roads over and over again.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t remember much of it, really. \u00a0I was in endurance\/perseverance mode, which for me involves a loss of emotion, a loss of frivolous mental activity. \u00a0All I do when e\/p mode is called for is focus on the present moment, the task at hand, and how to get the task accomplished with the minimum of suffering.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I know we did accomplish it. \u00a0I have evidence that we did. \u00a0I just don\u2019t really know how. \u00a0I have a set of vague recollections: a pile of trash and castoff articles sitting by the curb in Charlottesville, going through the house and making that one last check before we left it forever. \u00a0I remember it was kind of late, actually, when we finally took off for the trip back to New York. \u00a0I know we ended the day out on Long Island. \u00a0We then continued out to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Montauk,_New_York\">Montauk<\/a> the next day to visit my wife\u2019s great-aunt. \u00a0There was a heat wave in the city, but we felt relieved as we drove through cool fog on our way out to the end of the island. \u00a0I remember we were very glad to be out there where we could relax and get our minds right before returning to a chaos of the boxes in our apartment with all the little paths between them.<\/p>\n<p>We must have been recovering somewhat by that time because I remember Montauk fairly well. \u00a0Montauk, at the extreme east end of Long Island, is near <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Hamptons\">The Hamptons<\/a>, but it is not \u201cthe Hamptons,\u201d per se. \u00a0The <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=q&amp;source=s_q&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=FbgbbgId_XGX-ymbHlgWk1jCiTE2wudQlQI48w%3BFZ8ocgIdrQ-2-yn3DvpQUqvoiTFPYb_BYrcuAQ&amp;q=from:+10021+to:+montauk,+ny&amp;sll=40.88055,-72.9634&amp;sspn=1.760966,2.367554&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;z=9&amp;saddr=10021&amp;daddr=montauk,+ny\">three-hour drive out there<\/a> passes through the Hamptons, so the contrast is clear. \u00a0I mean you see some big houses and expensive properties in Montauk, but it just feels more like someone\u2019s home town. \u00a0It seems like people actually live there and that their families have lived there for some time. \u00a0I never got that feeling in the Hamptons. \u00a0And every Friday in the summer, from our balcony overlooking the Queensboro Bridge, we would see the traffic lining up for the trip out there. \u00a0More correctly, we would see and HEAR the traffic. \u00a0The horns chorused for hours on those Friday evenings, so much so that we sometimes fled to some other part of the city to avoid dealing with the noise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The next day we drove back to VA to retrieve the rest of our stuff and finish cleaning up the house. \u00a0The very next day. \u00a0After one of the worst days I\u2019ve ever spent I ended up having to endure one of the other worst days I\u2019ve ever spent. \u00a0We drove 350 miles to do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs","tag-past"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}