PA, NY, VT Trip Report

I woke up at 5am on Wednesday morning for a trip northward.  My trip entailed visiting some slate quarries, a foundry, and a few of our dealers.  I dressed in a polo shirt instead of a button down because these places are not exactly fit for nicer clothing.  I stopped at a Wawa in Pottstown to get gas, a 2-$3 Sizzli deal, and a coffee.

I arrived in Slatington, PA at around 7:30 and visited my first stop. It was a quarry in PA that produces slate.  Pennsylvania slate has come on hard times and this is one of the few operating quarries.  I got the full tour and understood more about production issues.  I left and headed to a few local dealers who are in the slate trade.  After that I traveled north through Wilkes-Barre and onward to a cast iron foundry in Oneida, NY.  I’ll spare the details but I got a full tour of how a foundry operates and how castings are produced.  The day finished at around 4:30 and I was pretty tired.

I decided to drive east to get myself lined up with the quarries in Vermont.  I stayed in a city called Utica, NY which was unheard of to me.  I paid $67 dollars for a room at the Red Roof Inn, spent $8 dollars for some Taco Bell for dinner, and $3 dollars for 2 Glacier Ice Gatorade’s.  I also went for a run along the Erie canal which was nice but I fell off course at some point and ran through some dingy area that was unexpected.  I fell asleep at around 8:30 and woke up at 6am the next morning when disaster struck.

When trying to get my contact in the next morning I realized that one contact ripped.  I blame this shitty yellow contact case that was given to me by the optometrist.  Either way I only had sight in one eye and had many miles to drive.  I was pretty irritated at this point because I was unsafe on the road.  I started immediately by almost driving up a one way and then nearly hit someone merging off a ramp into a lane.  To make matters worse, the sun was rising directly in front of me and the fog was terrible.  I drove an hour to Schenectady, NY where a few customers were.

I entered a Walmart with a vision center and realized it didn’t open until 9am.  I had about an hour to kill so I made 2 business stops with one eye.  At 9am the Walmart opened and couldn’t help me out until I got a form faxed to them by my optometrist with the contact info.  My eye doctor didn’t open until 10 so I was stuck again.  I drove to Granville, NY which is a tiny little town in New York, and was able to get my info faxed to a kind old lady who hooked me up with a contact.  It was horrible to say the least getting around with one eye and ruined the morning.

I did my business in Vermont seeing the various quarries and left at about 3pm.  It’s about a 5 hour drive so I was pretty tired when I got back.  I put $22 dollars on the Falcons which hit (I also won the Eagles on Monday for $36) and that puts me at 5-11 for-$180 for the season.  I’ve got the half marathon on Sunday so I’m expecting a pretty boring weekend.  Non-drinking though will give me plenty of time to take on a few activities that I’ve been delaying ie) Photoshop, German, reading Moby Dick, and watching Dallas Buyer’s Club.