Gym, Tan, Laundry

Moving right along with the storm behind us, we headed to the Jersey shore. We checked into the Pakistani run Knights Inn which was supposedly just 3 miles away from the exciting nightlife of AC. Kai went to work on perfecting his Jersey Shore hair and tan, while I searched for transportation options into the city. 

Fist pumpin like a champ

Turns out, the Knight's Inn is 3 miles as the crow flies, and about 5 away by car. There were no buses or metro or trains near us and no sidewalks to ride bikes and we didn't want to take the Truckster into the city. We called for a cab and for a steep $25 dollars one way fare, we headed to town. We quickly made friends with our driver, Sid, exchanged numbers and arranged a deal for a cheaper ride home at the end of the evening. That done, we were ready to gamble.

Just like the amusement park, we hit the casinos systematically from south to north. We walked into each hotel, immediately found the bar and inquired about drink specials of the evening, a little hard to come by as it was a Wednesday night in Atlantic City. Nearly everywhere we looked there was elderly folks at nickel slots, with bingo-ash cigarettes, and skank-shift cocktail waitresses. Where was Snookie, Paulie D., and the Situation? Probably rehab or the STD clinic....

I, being the cheapskate I was raised to be, decided to only risk $1.00 at each casino and then move on. It was my gambling husband who encouraged me to raise the stakes and handed me a $5.00 bill. While at the Trump Taj Mahal I found a simple slots game with a nice mermaid across the top where I could bet just 0.30 cents a pop. It wasn't long at all until this mermaid was just handing me cash and giving me free bonus rolls! I won $18.00 with Ariel before deciding to move on to the next game. I decided to only use machines that looked appealing to me, so I spent the next several minutes at the Dirty Dancing and Sex and the City video slots games. At the end of my Trump experience I was up $32.00 bucks!

We moved on, I lost 10 dollars, yaddy yaddy yadda. I was back to not really liking gambling any more. We called Sid and met him outside the alley of House of Blues. We rode home listening to Sid tell us about his night, about how he lost the screw out of the left side of his glasses and the lens was falling out, I asked if we were safe riding with him and suggested that he look into contact lenses.

That night back in the room, I prepared some potentially dangerous nachos with squeeky cheese purchased back in Wisconsin and homemade salsa from Alaska. I soon discovered our microwave was non-functioning and called the front desk to see if there was one in the lobby. He said, "Is it very important?" To which I replied, "Well, it isnt life or death but it's 3:30 am and we're drunk and could really use some nachos." Hassan, the young Pakistani front desk clerk, met me in another room to use a microwave. He looked puzzled at my 2 paper plates that stunk to high heaven. As I microwaved, we discussed what Hassan was doing in Atlantic City. Turns out, he's a finance major and he and his entire family had recently immigrated to New Jersey. Hassan had also never seen nachos before, I told him to not be dissuaded by these particular nachos as nachos are generally much better than these were. In retrospect, I should've offered him one, but in my drunken state I had forgotten my manners. 

The next morning we loaded the van in preparation for the stormy drive ahead of us. Humid and muggy inside the van, I slid open a side window to get a breeze in while I put away our clothes. I guess I don't know my own strength, because I slid the window open and it shattered into about 87,000 pieces. This was not good. While I got the breeze I was after, our home now had a windowless hole. We headed away from the Jersey shore and found a glass repair shop in Pleasantville, NJ. The nice gentlemen there were able to cut a piece of safety glass and silicone it into the hole. "Well, it aint gonna slide no more, but it wont shatter neither." Tropical Storm Lee caught up with us at this point and completely soaked the 2 guys working on the window. We stopped at a the local library while the silicone set up, and hoped that the ghetto fabulous job would stand up to the storm and the freeway. 

We eventually bid farewell to Jersey and headed down to Washington DC to meet Brandon and Lindsay who were arriving that night.