Travelin' solo

     I haven't made very many solo trips in my life.

Not because I don't like being alone-I do,  but almost always someone will come along and we'll have a good time on the road

It didn't work out for anyone to travel with me this time, as I was going to Westerville, Ohio to pick up Cherie's anniversary present.

In the era of Louis DeJoy and his one-man demolition of the USPS and resulting terrible delivery time, I decided to drive out and pick it up myself for the above reason.

I'll be writing more on the gift in a future post, where you'll see why the importance of picking it up safely and without worry.

I only drove out for the night and then the afternoon before picking up the item and driving home.

Since the consistently rising cost of taking the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which is now up to a staggering eighty dollars round trip (33 from Breezewood to the Ohio line and 46 from the Ohio line to Breezewood, figure that out!!), has become so prohibitive, I've started to become more familiar with another way that is very similar in mileage but takes thirty minutes longer in time to make the trip.

It was an uneventful trip with a stop in St.Clairsville, Ohio for lunch, just a quick bite at Love's while getting gas to keep going.

Once I hit the hotel, I called my favorite Aunt Becky and she stopped by to see me at the hotel with my Uncle Terry stopping by after work to see me for a bit.

I ordered some pizza and we ate dinner, they left for home and I slept at the end of a long day.

Thanks to my buddy Derreck for comping the room for me and making the trip much cheaper.

It really was an uneventful trip with the time filled by trips to the standards for food to be brought home for the family and me, but the day before I left Maryland I decided that I wanted to go someplace to look for collectibles for myself and my collector friends, namely Ryan and Mike Oravec.

As is the case with many specialty shops, they keep odd hours and days and I found stores closed Monday and open Tuesday, and vice versa but I found one place that looked very interesting.

The problem was that it was in Canal Fulton, Ohio, about 45 minutes in the opposite direction of Columbus.

Now under ordinary conditions, I would drive to my usual vintage toy spot in the area, Toy Hunters in Mansfield, but area construction seemed to make this very difficult to reach and return from and even though I was alone and under no real-time constraints, that seemed like a real pain.

And again under usual conditions, I would have never driven an extra almost 100 miles round trip to make the person with me go through extra travel and I wouldn't have done that in my vehicle.

BUT, there wasn't another person to bore and it wasn't my vehicle, so off I went in search of "Toys that Time Forgot".

It was fairly easy to find and I was a few minutes early, but on a nice weather day, it was pleasant enough to wait for the store to open and the owner's son came by and spoke to me about the store opening soon.

The store isn't tiny, but with the amount of inventory, the aisles are compact to the point of having to stop and use other directions to avoid running into an item.

There were tons of vintage toys and memorabilia available, but for me, they were either more than I was willing to pay (Mego Teen Titans Speedy and 60s Star Trek and Batman lunchboxes) or didn't quite have what I needed (lots of western television series lunchboxes, but not Wild Wild West) so I came up empty.

However, when I asked about Hasbro WWF wrestlers for Ryan, there were none on the shelves.

But the manager said they recently bought some and hadn't priced them yet.

I called Ryan, who needed Sgt. Slaughter and Sid Justice (Usually known as Sid Vicious) for his collection and the price for them was reasonable enough.

Ryan was especially pleased about Sid, who he has been a fan of since childhood for reasons that I've never able to figure out.

However, the real treat for Ryan was yet to come as I walked and saw a literal wall of vintage board games and saw one of interest for him.

Vince Lombardi's Football, which looked to have been released in either 1968 when Lombardi was out of coaching or 1969 when Lombardi accepted the coaching job for the then-Washington Redskins, appeared to be a simulation game of the time and looked somewhat similar to APBA or Strat O Matic.

I figured Ryan might be interested in it as a Lombardi collectible and when I checked the game out it was missing the AFL league rosters, which is clearly stated that the AFL was included on the box.

The manager gave me ten bucks off and Ryan took it, which for a Lombardi collector made the deal even better.

There is a July sale at the store, so if I am able to return then, I could purchase one of the more pricey items for myself and I had a great time looking at the items that I wasn't interested in buying, but still were nostalgic to me.

I jumped in the car and drove to Westerville, roughly two hours away to pick up Cherie's present and I'll write about that soon.

Everything that I write here is taking much more time than it did before and there are different reasons for that, but I'm going to try to work on that before the weekend and with luck- finish it.