Franklinsanity

9:30 am, outside Monroe Township, NJ:  Well, it took about 10 days and several thousand miles, but Awesome Wife and I finally had enough of a blowout that both kids – and probably the dogs, too, in their doggy way – asked us to stop fighting.

Every epic journey has its moments.

Ours came even though we were in our designated roles of Driver (Kelly) and Navigator (JF).  The trigger?  An excellent stew of Venus-Mars/Type-A/tech-vs.-real-world elements.

Or to put it another way:  experience vs. real-time, crowd-sourced, satellite imagery. Or still another, Devers Tradition vs. Waze.

Devers lore, built up over decades of travel between Philly and CT, dictates you never, ever, ever take the George Washington Bridge.  And, in fairness, Franklin lore – even though we never actually owned a car – pretty much says the same thing.

Of course, lore and East Coast driving experience in general suggests that at the wrong time, there’s no really good way to get across the Hudson River in a car.

JF faith in geospatial synchronization, however, including real-time views of traffic, suggested that the best way to get Awesome Wife, kids and dogs to Ultima Thile, aka Hard Hittin’ New Britain, aka Ga and Pap’s house, was in fact the GW Bridge.

We’ll be taking the Tappan Zee, folks.