Saturday, January 30, 2010

Coney Island Baby

2000 miles. The only thing standing between the show closing in Laredo, TX and 12 straight weeks without the inherit burden of packing up and driving the RV every Sunday after the last show. The drives throughout the course of those final Pre-Coney weeks had been sheer brutality. However, the pinpoint of light at the end of the 2000 mile long tunnel was slowly coming into view which was more than enough to focus on what was at that point Paradiso.

A quick one-day stopover in Pittsburgh was on the agenda en route to The Warriors' turf. We didn’t smash the drive as in past trips, but took a comfortable pace spending our nights outside of Waco, Memphis, and Louisville respectively with the last two nights at KOAs (screw 3 nights of Flying J’s and Wal-Marts).

My burgh visit was brief but nice. No trips into town to see any friends, just a relaxing fam day.

I met up with the Palkinator down the road a ways after our departure Thursday evening. After a second attempt to find ULSD on the lovely PA Turnpike we almost immediately entered a torrential downpour that showed no signs of letting up for hours. Very fitting weather for the last time we were going to be hauling our RVs for a while.

We had been strictly instructed to arrive in Coney Island between 12:01am and 3am Friday, June 12. The reason being was that we were to sit in a ‘holding lot’ as the powers that be figured out how to play Tetris with our RVs to squeeze them into the Clown Car-esqe parking area we had been allocated (envision 'Tron Guy' squeezing into that suit).

No between-town jump would be complete without some sort of confusing twist with regards to the prescribed route.  The easiest, quickest way to traverse the terrain at hand was to hop on the Belt Parkway after crossing the Verrazano Bridge from Staten Island. The catch for us was that no “trailers”, semis or otherwise are permitted on the Parkway. What this meant was that we had to detour into the heart of Brooklyn and snake our way around through multiple neighborhoods to avoid it.

We managed to navigate the streets without getting stuck and after watching the neighborhoods change from quaint and well-kept to run-down and shady, we eventually turned onto Surf Ave. The rain had finally let up and through the fine mist illuminated by soft lot lighting, a towering yellow and blue striped tent came into view.

As we turned into the lot, fully expecting a Fluster Cuck of trailers sprawled everywhere, everyone was already parked or had not yet arrived and we slipped right in with no problem. Playing by the 'rules' cost us an extra 3 days back home in Pittsburgh.

Throughout the entire tour, parking designation had been relatively painless; we always had adequate room on both either side and front to back of each RV. In Coney Island, we were stacked 4 deep bumper to bumper and had about a cozy 2ft between neighboring slide-outs. The show lot had been nicely paved to accommodate to the tent, but our entire parking area had been left as scattered gravel and dirt.

Soon after I hooked up my hose to the water tree (which was set up in the midst of old rusty razor wire (which was lacking from our fenced perimeter but fully present in the neighboring unused lot)), the soon to be infamous New York 2009 June Rains started to beat down.

'You can say these streets are rivers....you can call these rivers streets.'

Our parking lot quickly became a cesspool of multiple mini-lakes and mud. It was starting to look like a very daunting 12 weeks (notwithstanding the 12 show a week schedule). Luckily there were many new friends made, and experiences…umm well experienced along the way that overshadowed the dreary arrival and introduction to my new neighborhood.

Come out to pla-A-ay…….

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