Catching up on what happened in December before the holidays...I have a sorta-annual tradition of going away for a long weekend in mid December, to celebrate my boyfriend's birthday. This year we picked the Roxbury Motel in the Catskills for its pomo decorated rooms and hot tub onsite.
In the wintertime, for those who don't like skiing, there isn't much to do but sleep in, relax in the hot tub, drive around, drink, have dinner early, and watch TV. Not so bad. But I did get kind of bored after three days of that pattern.
It really felt like the middle of nowhere because we had to do so much driving to get places. I was relieved when we parked the car in Brooklyn and could walk to the grocery store again. I'm a very nervous driver/passenger generally, but I'm even more nervous in cars in the winter because of black ice fears and an incident in which I once had to abandon a car on the side of the road in a snowstorm when it was too slippery to drive. While my inner monologue constantly debates whether I would rather live in the city or the country, this trip helped me realize that if I move to the country, I must live within walking or biking distance of a happening town like New Paltz.
Also, we had a typical city slicker moment on the ride there. We went a back way, after picking up a car from my parents' house on route from the city. Thanks to a mislabeled road on google maps and a dearth of street signs, we found ourselves driving miles out of the way on one way roads with no cellphone service. I started panicking and worrying that we would keep turning around and trying different roads and run out of gas before we got anywhere. Luckily, the old-fashioned method of asking directions from the rare passing cars, plus some good intuition, put us where we needed to be. Sometimes our reliance on cell/iphones turns out to be not so helpful...
And what did the birthday boy get? Dinner at Peekamoose (Which I became obsessed with as soon as we walked in. A homey log cabin with twinkly christmas lights? An indoor swinging lounge chair? Antlers galore? Vintage salt and pepper shakers? Edible Hudson Valley to read while I sip my local beer? Grass-fed short rib sandwich? Yes please.) And a harpoon. Yes, a real harpoon that once killed whales was found in an antique store in Andes, prized for its craftsmanship, and is now standing in the kitchen.
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