Wednesday 25 September 2013

Oh, the Urbanity

After such a nice relaxing jaunt into Nature and Relaxation, it was time to head down the coast and make our way to New York. First though, a stop in Boston, which we foolishly attempted without map nor compass nor phone nor GPS. As modern luddites, sometimes it's nice to become frustrated and lost and resort to yelling requests out the car window to pedestrians who also have no idea where Mass Ave is.

Away, and across Massachusetts and Connecticut we ventured, and into the lovely scenic Shawgunk mountains.

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What the lovely cliffs were hiding behind their chalky facade was bumper-to-bumper traffic that started in a cornfield outside of New Paltz and stretched down the length of 87 all the way to the Tappan Zee Bridge. What would normally take an hour to drive suddenly takes closer to four.

See, being smarty mcsmartsalot and thinking that avoiding city traffic and renting a car up in Tarrytown would have saved us some major headaches, and just take the train in from there. How soon I forget...city traffic ofttimes starts hundreds of miles outside of the city. Why wouldn't it.

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Afternoon plans ruined, we finally got to Tarrytown and dropped the car off. A kindly cabdriver loaned me his phone on the way to the train station and I was able to make a "don't wait up for us" call, and all was well. We met a crazy old man while waiting for the train in Tarrtytown who talked passionately about all the military strategy he learned from war movies and board games while patting his empty gun holster, and got sang to by a broadway singer the moment we stepped into grand central station, and then got on a magic unexpected weekend express train that took us to Brooklyn without stoping. It was all that I loved and hated about New York, all rolled into one crazy afternoon. I hadn't really felt like I was "home" yet, but now I had arrived.

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I felt exhausted and I hadn't even begun my time there.

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