Thursday, July 26, 2012

"Super Six" Trip to North Carolina


One score and five years ago, I was in kindergarten and happened to meet a fellow named Christopher Portella.  Three years later, Richard Kupselaitis moved to Howell and joined us at the still charming, Ramtown elementary school.  Years later, we are now all married and have been in each other’s respective wedding party.  The three of us + our wives decided to meet up for the first time since my nuptials this month.  How’s that for summing up 25 years of a lifetime in one paragraph? 

Dorothy and I agreed to pick up the Portella’s at their house and head to Philly airport in one car.  The night prior we decided to try to jump on an earlier flight to get to NC before potential storms hit.  We were actually on time in leaving both our house and theirs to get to the airport.  This is an accomplishment in and of itself.  Bonus points for actually being able to get on the earlier flight as well.  However …

We booked our flights on United’s web site.  What United failed to tell us at ANY point was that they sold the seats to the flight, but it was on a US Airways plane.  Somehow, this makes sense to them.  (Can JetBlue and Virgin please start picking up more gates around the country?)  So we wound up parking in terminal 4 (United’s terminal), walking over to terminal 3 to check in, and then walking over to terminal 2 for our gate.  Have I mentioned how this makes absolutely no sense yet? 

The closest we got to JetBlue was the Jet Rock Bar & Grill in the terminal.  $200 later we were ready to board the plane – just assume this wasn’t all food.  Without a hitch, we landed in NC on time and were on our way to dinner at CafĂ© Caturra - http://www.cafecaturra.com/ .  Advice: try their pizzas.  Afterwards, it was back to the Kupselaitis house for a few adult beverages and a late night of BS’ing on the deck.  One quick note; on our way to the restaurant, we were told of a broken, upstairs bathroom that we would try to fix on Saturday (to no avail).  Well, if we weren’t close by now, this was going to be the weekend.

Our Saturday was full of food and alcohol – this was quite the trip that was needed.  We started with lunch at The Q Shack (http://www.theqshack.com/), based off of a recommendation from my employer.  The ladies failed to mention, actually hid, that they serve breakfast so we didn’t leave the house until the afternoon.  If you read the top of the Q Shack home page, you’ll find the story behind the local movement from the owner.  Good atmosphere and good food.  We were then off to the Cloer Family Vineyards (http://www.cloerfamilyvineyards.com/) for a wine tasting, where we wound up purchasing one bottle of red and another of white.  We sat outside, in the 100 degree heat, listened to some local music, and played cornhole.  However, at some point, the music stopped and it became a poetry reading for 15 minutes.  Let’s just move on. 

After a quick return home to freshen up, it was off to downtown Raleigh for the evening, which started with dinner at Beasley’s Chicken & Honey – apparently they don’t have a web page (?!) so here is a link to their foursquare page, https://foursquare.com/v/beasleys-chicken--honey/4e091acc1f6e21103396e069.  (I’m actually baffled by this.  Who doesn’t have a web page at this point?  If I can set up a blog for ridiculous write-ups on travel, a business should be able to handle this without a glitch.  (Steps off pedestal))    After dinner, which was good by the way, we bar hopped for a few hours before heading back to the house, stopping at Fox Liquor Bar and The Busy Bee,  Cabs are nowhere near as frequent in Raleigh, so we set up the ride to and from before leaving for dinner.  That wound up being a bit of a nuisance for the ride home given that we forgot to call ahead of time to check in (I think). 

Sunday rose but we really didn’t.  It was off to a late brunch at Rockwell’s American Grill (http://www.rockwellsamericangrill.com/).  The Sunday Brunch was phenomenal here and I’m glad I live nowhere near it because it would easily tack on another 15 pounds if I did.    Afterward, we decided to have a few hours of guys only time and girl only time – this only makes sense to you if you are married.  “Trust me”.  The girls chose to go to a spa (“The Spa at Mitchell’s”) and that’s where this part of the story ends.  The guys chose to go to Frankie’s Fun Park - http://www.frankiesfunpark.com/home.  As the scorecard in the picture below will prove to you, the round of mini golf in excessive heat was a dominant performance from yours truly.  I also took the crown in the batting cages, on Rollerball, and won 100+ tickets on a football throwing game in the arcade.  Rick took the crown in the basketball and baseball games in the arcade, and Chris … well; Chris had a few good second place finishes.  It also dawned on me for the 700th time that if I ever have a basement, a pinball machine is a ‘must own’. 

After sweating out a few pounds, it was back to the house to eat and shoot some cornhole in the backyard.  Rick made some pretty snazzy boards with Jets insignia all over them.  We wound up staying at the house for the evening to sit around and do some more BS’ing.  Then we opened up a game called “Telestrations” - http://www.telestrationseffect.com/#/home.  This is similar to the (very old) game of telephone, only combined with Draw Something (or Pictionary if you were born before 1975).  The absolute absurdity that comes out by the end of the round is/was hysterical.  Between some god-awful drawings and some off the wall (and sometimes dirty) guesses lead to pure entertainment.  I’ll keep it clean and leave the vocabulary out of this write-up. 

Before our flight home on Monday, we watched a few old school videos that Rick has managed to move over to DVD, at least somewhat successfully.  There are grade school and high school videos that you can’t put a price tag on. 

To quickly wrap up, here are two key phrases from the weekend that we all ‘went home with’: “Just the tip” and “No house parties”.  You’ll never know …

Until the next time the Super Six get together, which may be in Las Vegas and supported by a 25 year anniversary for Chris and I.  Pretend you didn’t just read that actually. 

Do you have any thoughts or recommendations for the Raleigh, NC area?



Saturday, July 14, 2012

Focusing on Travel - A quick update

Quick update: I've decided to clean up, separate, and focus my limited blogging efforts.  This page will now focus solely on travel.  I've moved the sports rant on the A's to a new page and will be updating that shortly with the state of affairs through the first half of the 2012 season: http://jflestaathletics.blogspot.com/

Any and all miscellaneous comments and thoughts moving forward are just going to be G+ entries/posts.

You can expect to see a new Travel entry later this month, as we'll be heading down to North Carolina for a mini Ramtown reunion.  Yes!