“I will NEVER travel to Baltimore again!” exclaimed my boyfriend/now husband B.  I cringed and agreed.  We just spent a lackluster weekend driving in and around the city of Baltimore, bored, disgusted but laughing at our comical misadventures.

After eight months of long-distance dating, this was the first vacation that B and I took together.  We’d become accustomed to the arduous, New Jersey-wide drives  and the lurking parents, but this time we wanted privacy, so we planned a quick jaunt.  This trip could either make or break our relationship.

Friday evening, I drove 2 ½ hours straight from a company picnic in New York to his parents’ house in South Jersey.  The next morning we drove to Baltimore where we stayed at an economy, express motel in the outskirts of the city.

We drove toward the city that evening, and I pointed out a woman walking in the dark highway, wondering what the hell she was doing.  “Well, MB,” B dryly remarked, “those ladies aren’t waiting for a bus; they’re waiting for a ‘john’.” [Read more...]