Friends

New Jersey wedding!

I am in the tiny seaside town of Ocean Grove, which appears to be one of the very few remaining "camp meeting" towns in the united states. Apparently this used to be a big thing in the 1800s? Also the town is chock full of queers, since there was some amount of depression throughout the 1970s-early 2000s and then all the fringe arty folks started moving in where the property was cheap.

It's a really charming place!

I'm here because Racheline has been coming here every summer since they were a child, since their grandparents live quite close, and it's where they and Patty decided to host their wedding. So yeah, driving down from Boston throughout the late morning and early afternoon and here in time to walk by the seaside and join in for the extremely charming ghost tour and do a bit of wandering in and out of queer little witchy shops. A great day, honestly!

The drive was _so_ needed. Like, traffic was worse than I'd hope (but way better than it could've been) and google desperately wanted me to go over the GWashington instead of the Tappen Zee (to the point where I have a stunning screencap in which I added "Tappen Zee" as a stop along my route...so google maps shows a route that goes over the bridge, then doubles back and south to cross the Hudson proper at the GWashington.) but other than that, it was a real nice reminder that I was raised on road trips and I still get a lot out of them. I stopped twice on the way down to stretch my legs and be not in car, and that was just about perfect. And I arrived only about half an hour after my original projected arrivial time, even with Merritt traffic and remapping shenanigans!

Also the car I'm borrowing has a CD player and like, I can't believe people make weird faces at me when I ask if their cars I'm gonna drive have such beasts, they're _just good_. Yes mostly because I can put in horrible mix tapes I made in 2003, but also it's just very soothing to have music that hums along with no interruptions or bad wifi connections and not having to give a stranger's car permission to talk to my phone. Some of the answer is eventually to create some more playlists on my laptop/phone, probably?

Anyways, I just checked and I'm realizing I made zero posts about the wedding last weekend, so, uh, that was also good? My life has been very very busy.

I hope you are well and having good adventures!

~Sor
MOOP!