Prologue: I have not been on a vacation for the longest time, I haven’t been on one since college started, probably since high school started, so let’s say around 5-6 years. The thing is that when you are a college student who commutes and works, most days you have work and school, not looking at other commitments, and even things like winter break don’t count as the retail seasons call for more hours than ever. Not trying to complain, but I was really looking forward to this journey. I tried contacting quite a few people about going along on this trip, one of my best friends, Kevin Dorcey, said yes right away. I did ask some people after as well, most of them kept pushing off, were unsure, or straight up lied to me. But alas, we move on to the journey. We were actually supposed to go to Niagara Falls, but it started snowing, who would've thought?

Ride to DC: first, I had to pick up Kevin from his work place in Wilmington, MA, already about an hour drive to Boston. Once I picked up Kevin, we were both eccentric about the trip and we started to count to see if we had everything we needed. Good to go, we jumped on the highway and quickly realized there was some serious traffic heading out of Boston, standstill. Man, I am telling you some straight realization came over us, we were in for the long haul, I even stared at the last exit for home, before we decided to keep trucking on.

We left Massachusetts pretty quickly and really started to get going through Connecticut as well, with some off-the-highway driving, cut down a lot of time. What was weird though was despite blazing through the highways, the estimated time kept going up. New jersey seemed the worst, so much smog, some nice cities, but so much smog, enough traffic that there were two highways on each side going the same way. The first way through the trip we played a lot of music, as with such a long drive there was not much else to do, of course with the occasional stops for food, and not much appetizing food, Kevin had a lot of McDonalds for dinner, and I decided to have a yogurt. We faced a ton of traffic and tolls in Delaware and when we got to Baltimore, it was all about getting to Kevin’s friend's house to stay. All in all, the six and a half hour trip that we had estimated, took over 9 hours and many angry drivers to deal with to get there.

The first night: We got to Kevin’s friend's house and promptly apologized for being so late, which was fine, but Kevin and I decided to get some early sleep. We had parked in visitors, this seems logical right? Well during the night when I could not get any sleep, I kept hearing a loud idling sound and out of a bad feeling got up and went to see what was happening. At first, a tow truck was sitting behind another car, but then it crept up to mine and stopped. Me not thinking properly bolted out of that third-floor apartment, with no shirt, to run towards my car. I went up to the tow guy and asked why I was being towed, he said I was on personal property, me huffing and puffing out of breath pointed to the visitors sign. What he then explained to me was that visitors spots were special for that building, there were many nice buildings in that park, and that parking anywhere else, not in that parking lot, would have been fine.

So I stopped complaining and asked how much I needed to pay, he said “$125 to drop it here, $250 at the pound”, man you should have seen the look on my face. I didn’t have cash, I was planning on putting it on my card, so I ran back, now past 1:00 am to Kevin to wake him up, but he didn’t have cash either, Kevin tried to reason with the man, but he was not budging. Kevin asked if he could run to the gas station to grab money, the tow man reluctantly obliged. During this time, I got to know the man a little and explain to him that we had driven more than 9 hours and were not from the area. He said he understood, I then told him I used to watch the tow men on Nat geo and understood why tow men are just doing their job, but I hoped he understood where we were coming from. He luckily did, as when Kevin came back he decided to only take $80 and make us not move, we took a hit but kept going.

The morning we decided to get to DC central around 9:30 am after we had slept in late and try to find parking, we were obviously agitated from the night before, and we did find parking the first place we went to and for only $12 the whole day! But still not off to a great start, until we found a Peets Coffee and that really did it for us. First, we hit the White House, honestly not as many people as one would think and grabbed a couple quick pics. Then we headed to the Washington moment, something that seems big in pictures was even bigger in person.

We then went to the reflecting pool, unfortunately, the sky was off and on with rain, which made for great pictures, but not any reflection.We then got to the Lincoln memorial and soon set off for the Vietnam veterans memorial.

This is when it started to absolutely pour rain and we got stuck under a hut, we decided we wanted to keep on moving and grabbed $3 ponchos and kept running through the streets. One thing we did not expect on the way to the memorial was the beautiful sidewalk along the water, past the FDR memorial, so elegant even when it had rained a lot.

The Jefferson memorial was cool but at this point, we were really hungry. We went to the Holocaust Museum, such a moving place, with harrowing stories and recollections from the past. We still at this point could not find food, we went to the “mall” but there was still no food, an unreal sight. We stumbled across a street where there was one food truck, I decided I had enough and decided to buy food from there, a grilled chicken shawarma plate beyond worth it, we found a place to sit and Kevin discovered a street where there were at least 20+ food trucks, I was not even mad though, the food was terrific. From there we stumbled into the American Indian museums, then to capitol hill and the supreme court, before we decided that was enough.

We took an Uber to the international spy museum, where the rude employee made me wonder if I even wanted to go in, I did not; forget them. Verizon center was right across and we decided to catch a game later, but first go home. During the home trip Kevin got a text saying he needed to come home, no hurry but he needed to be home. We were both very tired from driving down and walking around all day and our estimated arrival time was already 2:00 am.

The drive back was not that bad, we decided to fuel up, grab food and pick up a couple of movies for the drive back. We decided to salvage what was left of our trip and stop in Philly and Times Square before we got home, which would cost us an hour, but at this point who cares right? We stopped right in the heart of Philly and decided to grab some authentic Philly cheese steaks, best decision ever and my first time, and headed farther out, at this point we were really getting tired and decided to watch our first movie spy, with Melissa McCarthy, not my thing but hey we just needed to get to New York right. We did arrive in New York and oh man it was the highest tolls I had ever seen. Regardless we got to Times Square past midnight and I could have sworn there were enough people to fit Boston together walking around, the sights and sounds, the bright lights were unreal. We did not have enough time to stop and Kevin decided he was going to drive through Times Square while I was hanging out of the window to take pictures. Leaving New York is a nightmare, but when we did, I decided to take over and drive the rest the way home while Kevin played “Daddy’s Home”, pretty bad movie but hey, it was past 1:00 am it did not really matter. Once I got home though around 3:30 am, I knocked straight out.

At first, I was kind of unhappy we had to come back so early, but with as many commitments as I have, even that trip was so worth it. It hit me even harder that, it will probably be an even longer time before I get to do this again, but the trip was something I could always look back on. I had gotten to do so many things I wanted to do before, I had gotten even closer to my friend Kevin and went on a trip of a lifetime. So many ups and down, but I was never bored since there were so many things I had never seen before. It is something I will really never forget. Here is to many, more Kevin.