The Batmobile Heads North

First thing on Saturday morning, we set off in our rented vehicle, bound for Brooklyn. Much to our surprise, when Erick picked up the car the night before, he learned that we'd been "upgraded." It turns out that we're the privileged renters of...an SUV. That's right, we were upgraded to paying through the nose for gas. Said SUV, a Hyundai Santa Fe, is so sleek and black and huge that we have dubbed it "The Batmobile." As you can see in the photo above, The Batmobile is so large that it cannot even fit in a single camera frame. We included Fiona in the picture for scale.

The nice thing about a large SUV (besides satellite radio) is that we had no problem fitting all of Fiona's gear into it. Since we're on the road for 2 weeks and we don't want to spend time buying supplies en route, I overprepared and packed everything we could possibly need, including 52 jars of baby food, 100 diapers, 160 diaper wipes, etc. Of course, I neglected to pack an umbrella, so of course we've had to contend with torrential downpours for the past 2 days.

The drive from McLean to Brooklyn took longer than ever before, partly because we made two long stops to feed Fiona and give her a break from the carseat, and partly because we encountered 4 traffic accidents along the way. Fiona took the entire thing in stride, and was in great spirits for almost the entire trip. In the bottom photo (above), Fiona is probably the happiest person at a rest stop along the New Jersey Turnpike.