Day 15: Sunday, June 29, 2003

Morning was a bit rough. Bob and I woke up a little after 9 AM with only about 5-1/2 hours sleep. But we survived.

We went back up the road to the family diner for breakfast. Bob threw an offhand comment to the waitress about fighting hangovers. I said, "What?" I actually felt pretty good.

Off on the road again about noon, I meandered over side roads in a general southeasterly direction across northern New Jersey. I had never seen this part of New Jersey before. I'm more familiar with the urban areas around Newark and central New Jersey in the area around Freehold where I made many trips in the late 1970s after Millipore Corporation assigned me to manage marketing for research products from their recently acquired subsidiary at that time, Worthington Biochemical Corporation. North Jersey is different. Very green, rural, and quite beautiful.

I eventually reached the Delaware River and crossed over into Pennsylvania at Columbia. From there, I followed Pennsylvania Route 611 south to Easton and then on to Phlladelphia. In the area north and south of Easton, 611 runs along the west bank of the Delaware River. This part of the drive was pretty. Lush vegetation and lots of stone walls and old stone and brick houses.

I stopped in Doylestown, north of Philadelphia, at a large Starbucks for coffee and checked emails. Then, once I reached the Philadelphia area I spent an hour or so wandering looking for Oreland, the northern suburb where my brother Mark lives with his family. I thought I knew the way, but as usual I got lost for a while. In case you haven't noticed, this is kind of a pattern with me. Eventually, after getting too far south into the closer suburbs of Philadelphia, I managed to work my way north to Oreland. Then, miraculously, as I rode along reading street signs, I saw my brother's street and recognized the area. I was just two blocks from his house. The last time I was there to visit was seven years earlier, during my coast-to-coast trip on the Harley in 1996.

I spent the evening talking with Mark, his wife Shelley, and son Alex. We had a lot to talk about. It was good to see them after seven years. Alex especially was surprising. He has grown from a boy of 10 to a young man of 17. Such changes are so much more dramatic when you're not there to see the day-to-day progress.

I spent the night in my sleeping bag on the couch in Mark's family room. In the morning, the family pet, Travis, a West Highland Terrier, pushed open the door and snuggled up next to me. I took some pictures of Travis, but realized I hadn't snapped any good pictures of the rest of my brother's family the evening before. It was too late. By the time I arose the Monday morning family routines were well under way. Mark had already left for work. My brother is an architect with a firm in central Philadelphia. Shelley had gone out to drive Alex to some sort of activity. I showered and packed. About that time Shelley returned, and we chatted for a while over breakfast. Then I was off on the road again, headed south toward Baltimore and Washington, DC.