Curse you New Jersey! with your glittery turnpikes and parkways, your magnificent roadside attractions (IKEA! Newark! Airplanes!) that always, and I mean always, distract and force me to miss my exit. Oh New Jersey, you are a cruel, unforgiving bitch. I miss my exit by three miles and somehow get home nine hours later. How? What secrets are you hiding from me? Where do your powers lie? Why won't you let me turn around? Where do you sell maps? At that gas station? The one that I can see, yet cannot possibly drive to? New Jersey is filled with gas stations that cannot be approached by car. They sit there like glittering oasises, bastions of sanity in an insane world, waiting to pump your gas for you (O NJ--why can't I pump my own gas?), teasing you and daring you--Come to me. I have coffee. I have pastry. I have hot dogs. I have a road map that will tell you where you are. But you cannot get there. These gas stations may as well not even exist.
I will never drive hung over in the Northeast again.
