Heart-Shaped Jacuzzi Tubs and Other Tales From the Road
For those who know me well, then you know that I love the water and especially boating on the water. You can find several items on my bucket list that involve the water. I love being on a boat so much, that you can often find me reciting the words to Lonely Island's I'm on a Boat, which by the way is not safe to view at work, but if your humor is anywhere in the ballpark of mine, then you'll nonetheless find the below video amusing, I hope. Contrast that with being on a bus, which I absolutely hate. Rewind to last Sunday, when I was talking to a friend and I was emphasizing how much I despised riding a bus. My words exactly: "I hate being on a bus and will do anything possible to avoid being on one". Yet, where was it that I found myself the next day? On a New Jersey Transit Bus heading to Cape May, New Jersey.
The trip to New Jersey was to visit a couple inns in the Cape May area. It was the beach, it's September and I had never been, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity of a short jaunt. The last half of the trip was to Wildwood, which is a little lesser known area of Jersey. It's not too hard to imagine the town though. Watch Back to the Future, the part where they go back to the 1950s and there you have Wildwood. The 50s swept through Wildwood and just decided to make camp. Cliche knick knack shops, soda shops, everyone riding bicycles and motels on every corner. The kind of motels where you can jump from the balcony into the pool.
The inn I stayed at was a quaint bed and breakfast a couple blocks off of Wildwood's renowned boardwalk, which included gift shops that sold 14k rings, buy one get one free fried chicken baskets and an electric chair. I actually heard the operator of the electric chair tell a little girl who was crying that if she didn't straighten up he was going to put her in it. True story.
Evidently, I got the honeymoon suite of the inn, which is located at the back of the property of the bed and breakfast. Why was it the honeymoon suite? Four words: Heart-Shaped Jacuzzi Tub. For those who know me well, love and relationships haven't really been my forte and so it's funny that I would be put into a room with a heart-shaped jacuzzi tub. Now I'm not really the bath or tubby type. I don't pour bubbles into a bathtub and soak in it while reading Plato's The Republic and sipping Chardonnay.
Despite all this, I decided to give the heart-shaped jacuzzi tub a whirl. Which was a feat in and of itself, because it takes so damn long for the abyss to fill up with water. In the meantime, I was thrilled that it was so strategically placed that I could put on Arrested Development on the TV and still see it from the tub. So I turned on the jets and noticed in the corner a little basket of what I would refer to as "aroma therapy". These little liquid packets were named things such as joy, comfort and the one I chose: romance. I proceeded to pour the "romance" aroma into the tub, soaked for a few minutes and waited...and waited...and watched Arrested Development...and waited some more...and yet felt nothing. No lovey doviness, no romance, nothing. I considered going to find the innkeeper to ask if I was doing something wrong that I wasn't feeling an ounce of romance, but that would have required me drying off, putting on a robe and walking through the property and it just seemed like a bit too much work.
Perhaps, for this "romantic" aroma liquid to work, it would require not one, but two people. I didn't stick around to find out, but instead begrudgingly hopped back on the bus to make the trip back to New York City, where I'll be for another week and a half. Maybe I didn't experience romance in the heart-shaped jacuzzi tub, but I did find lovely dollar beers to greet me upon my return to NYC.
