On to NJ

(Above is a photo of a lock house on the Delaware & Raritan Canal, my favorite running place in NJ. The towpath afforded miles of a running trail that abutted scenic river views and bucolic sites.)

Reminiscing about my dogs has brought back some happy memories, but this blog is at a stage where the stories of my “pre NJ” days are over and a new segment will be entered in the next entry. Leaving NC made me very sad, and just thinking about that day still makes me sad. The next couple of dozen entries or so will be stories of when I was living in NJ but down in NC visiting my family. My move to NJ made me sad, and thinking about it still makes me sad. I had to leave Abby behind and wasn’t sure how she would react to my absence. My mom repeatedly assured me that Abby would be fine here and that labs are not ‘1 person’ dogs such as a Western Highland Terrier or a Chihuahua.

My time in NJ would not be as miserable as I thought. One thing I noticed when people would describe NJ is that they would say “It’s not so bad.” On the other hand when a Northerner would be down in the Triangle area, they would often describe the place as being “normal.” NJ wasn’t that bad, and it could have been better for me had I taken the opportunities given to me at my old company which I didn’t take. Career-wise, I did much better at my NJ company than at GSK. Who knows, had I went through the doors opened for me at Aventis I not only may still be in chemistry but I may very well have finished out my career in NJ. Oh well, it’s water over the dam and I have to look in a forward direction.

When I was in NJ, I would come home almost every month. An overwhelming majority of the time I would drive down there. I found that if one lives within a 500 mile radius of where one is going, driving to ones destination is almost as fast if not faster than flying to it. There have been a couple of times when a flight from Newark Intl. to RDU , door-to-door, took well over 9 hours or more. My average driving time from central NJ to Raleigh was around 8 hours with my best time being 7 hours. People at work would often ask me if driving that far that much wore me out. Thinking it was none of their business, I would simply say ‘no’ and leave it at that. In reality, the drive did tire me out. With that much driving on a weekend with no days off, it was if I didn’t have a weekend at all on the trips to NC and back. I do have some regrets doing this since the time spent driving back and forth to NC and the subsequent recuperation time meant that I didn’t have much time to see NYC as often as I would have liked. I went there a few times, but not as much as I should have.

I would accumulate many memories of my time with the babies which I will share in the following entries. So, this ends the pre-NJ days and the NJ era will start in the next entry.