Category: Travel

Carry

I’m kind of interested in this “new trend” in bags. The idea is that whatever the bag, whether it’s a messenger or a backpack or a satchel or a duffel, it must have space alloted for a laptop/iPad and a DSLR camera. It’s as if these are the only things anyone actually carries, and nothing else is worth mentioning.

I don’t own either, so a lot of this kind of thing is lost on me.

Here are some of my criteria. Can I put my lunch in it? When I get where I’m going, will I still be able to eat my lunch? Is it waterproof? How waterproof? Does it have stupid straps that will blow around in the wind and get caught in the spokes of my bike, or hit me in the eye while I’m standing on a cliff?

Can I put a book in it? I am currently reading Neal Stephenson’s The System of the World, which clocks* in around 900 pages. This sort of thing is not uncommon for me. If I put a book in it, will there be room for anything else? Like a thermos?

So, yeah, that classy little rucksack with the clever pockets looks nice. But to me? Useless.**

* Clocks. Get it? Ha ha.

** This is not entirely true. If I had to, I could fill it with clothes, or newspaper, or leaves, and use it as a pillow. I suppose I could fill it with rocks and fend off at least one zombie. But as far as it’s intended purpose? Useless.

Reminiscing About Hotels

Tonight I re-read Caitlín R. Kiernan’s Faces in Revolving Souls and it got me thinking about hotels I have stayed in. Seems like I like hotels, even if I don’t always remember much about them.

Work put us up in an amazing place on Times Square one year. It had a patio that looked right out over all the lights. The next year we were in Boston, on the waterfront. I remember these being the kinds of places I could not afford to stay in on my own.

In Cleveland we stayed in a small hotel that used to be a bank. At the time I thought that was cool, but since then I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels that were once banks. It’s still cool, though. I remember carrying a lot of stuff through a narrow marble hallway to get to our massive room with a hot tub. (That may have been our room in Chicago. I can’t remember now.)

In Oregon we stayed in a hotel with a view of the beach. That was spectacular.

In western Maryland we stayed in a sort of luxury suite right on a lake, during the off season. We bought a bottle of wine at the market, got back to the room and realized we didn’t have a corkscrew, and found one in the kitchenette.

My favorite hotel, so far, has been the place we stayed in New Orleans. It was within walking distance of the French Quarter and the river. There was a mosaic in the elevator. The shower in the bathroom was huge and all glass. At night they played really good music. I remember walking through the lobby to Amon Tobin and feeling impossibly cool.

Not So Great Escapes

Last weekend we met my parents for the weekend at the Great Escape Lodge and Water Park south of Lake George. My parents are wonderful about treating us to little vacations, and since we’d never been to there we agreed to go.

I packed Thursday night. I like to think that I’m getting better at packing. I’m certainly more realistic about where I’m going, what I’ll be doing, and what I need to bring. For example, we’re not going hiking so I’m not bringing my beat up muddy sneakers. I made the assumption that since we’re staying in a hotel and going to a water park, I wouldn’t need to bring my own towel. I brought a lot of reading material that I never got to, but that was probably the worst of my offenses.

Friday we left pretty late. I think it was 8pm by the time we were on the road. It’s only an hour drive up 87 to get there. My mother called as we were pulling into the parking lot. They don’t have a cellphone so I had no way to tell them that we’d left later than expected. Coordinating trips with them is … well. So it was 9pm on Friday, and we got settled into our room and “caught up.” The suite was really nice. Spacious kitchenette, plastic flatware, three beds, two bathrooms. Everything very big. It was probably bigger than our apartment. Our view was of the parking lot, with some hills in the distance.

Saturday we had breakfast at the Tall Tales Tavern, right in the lodge. Nobody liked it. I suppose if you were 6 you might like it. And it was ridiculously expensive, too. We could’ve gone to a grocery store and bought microwavable food and served up pretty much the same breakfast for far less money. I had to break my “I’m not eating fake maple syrup” rule yet again. Life is too short to eat bad breakfast.

We spent most of the morning and early afternoon in the water park. The lazy river was anything but. It’s probably nice when there aren’t so many people in it. We did the four person raft tube, squeezing in. The guy at the top was really cool, and used the raft to block water, which built up water pressure behind the raft. When he let go we went screaming down the tube. 20 seconds later we splashed down in the pool at the bottom. Kathleen and I did the individual tubes, which were, again, a lot of waiting in line for a 15 second ride that is probably a lot more fun if you’re 6 or have had 6 drinks. I didn’t even bother with the giant thing in the center. It’s meant for kids and I’m too tall to even think about any of that.

Eventually the line at the body boarding thing was short enough, so I went and tried that. It was probably the best part of the water park. That first jump onto the wave is the scariest thing. At worst, you get washed up the slope and dumped at the top, and even that is more fun that the tube rides. I was never able to get up onto my knees, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. My father has video of one of my runs, and if he can ever figure out how to get it off of his camera we may all get to see that.

In the middle of the afternoon we headed up Route 9 to get pizza. It was astounding. Grilled peppers and onions on a Sicilian crust. So good. We did some shopping. I bought some nice things in Banana Republic and Kathleen went bonkers. My father bought new dress shoes. My mother got some things, too, but I can’t remember what.

Things became fuzzy after that. I remember having a late dinner at Johnny Rockets. Kathleen and I were late to that, but I can’t remember why. I think we had gone back to the water park. She had lost a cover up. Anyway, Johnny Rockets, you know, really good milkshakes that you eat with a spoon and burgers. We went to the Arcade. I hit the jackpot on one of the machines and won 174 tickets, and then kept doing really well on that machine for a while. We ended up with over 300 points, but you can’t actually get anything for 300 points. I spent about $20 on tokens so that we could give some kid trying to feed half of a ticket into the redemption machine all of our points. Ugh.

Sunday we checked out and Kathleen spent half an hour trying to reclaim her lost cover up. Apparently there are two different “lost and founds.” One of them I got to dig through on my own. Which was gross. Kathleen had to convince the housekeeping staff to actually look for her lost article of clothing, but once they did they found it right away. Then we went to East Cove Inn & Restaurant (or something like that) for brunch. (The drive there was right through “the strip” and it was pretty dismal.) They had a buffet thing, where you could get corned beef and cabbage and scrambled eggs and sausage. They had really good French toast; some kind of cinnamon roll, sliced, in a very eggy batter. The ladies were given mimosas. The carrot cake was also delicious.

After that we split up. Kathleen wanted to do more shopping so I spent two hours sitting outside of outlet stores reading a magazine. She has decided the selection is better at the outlets in Lake George than in the malls in Albany.

Taking the Train to Winter

Saturday morning we got up at 5:30am. We were in the car at 5:59am and we hit up Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee. I was astounded and confused by the number of cars on the highway at that ungodly hour of the morning.

We made it to the Saratoga Train Station with plenty of time to spare. Or so I thought. If the train leaves at 7am and you get there at 6:46am they are already boarding. We added the “tubing package” at the last minute, and were the last people to board the Dome car.

We got breakfast, which was very nice. Kathleen had biscuits and gravy, and more coffee, and I had tea and an omelette. Prices were reasonable and the service was good. Since the crowd in the Dome car was pretty small (and mostly older folks) things were pretty relaxed. The ride up was very nice. We followed the Hudson river, some of which was frozen in places, and saw a lot of forest and eventually snow.

We arrived in North Creek just after 9am. We decided to wander around town. Everything was closed except Café Sarah, so we got some more coffee. After chilling out / warming up there for a while, we took a free shuttle Gore Mountain. Which was nice, but it turned out that we wanted to be at the Ski Bowl. Our driver was nice enough to drop us off there. It was a little after 10am, and the tubing wasn’t open until 11am. We sat next to the fire and thought about taking a nap.

Tubing at Gore Mountain is a ton of fun. I’ve been snow tubing before and I didn’t like it at all. Hitting a kid at the bottom did not help any. They have a well designed ride at Gore. A tow line pulls you up the hill. Nice view from up there, too. There were four out of five lanes open. My favorite was the one all the way at the end- the lady gave you a good push. You sit down in the tube and they kick you down the hill. Lots and lots of fun. They have rubber mats at the bottom of the lanes to slow you down. Up and down took a bit more than 5 minutes. After an hour (and roughly 10 runs) the lanes had sped up and the mats weren’t slowing me down much, and I went way up the embankment at the bottom of the lanes. No complaints from me, though.

We took the shuttle back and had lunch at Andie’s, and did some shopping around town. Lots of girly shops. We ended up back in Café Sarah for tea and cookies, and to sit down. We were exhausted.

Back on the train a little after 4pm. We skipped most of dinner. I don’t think we knew there would be dinner, or we wouldn’t have eaten so much in town. I tried the tomato bisque, which was very good, and Kathleen had more coffee. I napped, and we watched the lights go by.

It was definitely a good day. We talked to a lot of people in North Creek, and they all had high hopes for the train and tourism. Many of them apologized for the poor winter. We both liked taking the train. It felt like a little vacation, taking an unfamiliar mode of transportation to an unknown place.

More photos here. More information about the train here.

Christmas in Vermont

As a follow up to my previous post, more about my Christmas in Vermont.

Sunday morning Kathleen and I made our traditional Monte Cristo sandwiches for breakfast and opened presents. We were both on the road to our respective families a little after 10am. Traffic was pretty light and the weather was good. I saw only one police car, just north of Middlebury, with a minivan pulled over.

Arriving before 1pm, my family and I shuffled through our “stockings.” Among other goodies, I got rum and granola bars. Then we opened presents. Dry sacks, nice sweaters, bicycle magazines. Then I think we all took a nap. I certainly took a nap. Mom made Christmas dinner and there was a lot of food. We went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie.

Monday was Boxing Day. I went for a walk and took some pictures. There was new snow, and it was quiet. I hoped I might see some animals but all I saw were turkey tracks. It looks like the kids still party in the same place they used to years ago. There was a burned up mattress and a couch in the snow.

Later my brother suggested a long walk down Piney Woods Road, so I packed up some things and off we went. My parents live on a dirt road, and Barnum Town Road is also dirt, and so is Piney Woods Road. It was “posted” land, and there was a lot of discarded trash on the side of the road. In Albany we have broken glass, plastic bags, and fast food containers. In Vermont they have couches, old stereos, and beer cans. We got all the way to the end of Piney Woods, where more dirt roads spun off, and I began thinking about bringing a bike up there in warmer months and riding around.

We went out to dinner Monday night. Bristol has a brew pub. Bristol always surprises me by having civilized things like this. The brew pub was just about the only thing open, and despite reservations they sat us next to the door. I had a mediocre wheat beer, Ryan had a red ale he didn’t finish, and Dad had some kind of red wine. The food was pretty good. I really enjoyed my chevre and mushroom lasagna. It had a beet salad and some kind of red sauce that may have been roasted peppers.

Tuesday Dad had to work, so Mom, Ryan and I went hiking. An hour and a half of driving, and two wrong turns. I don’t know why but I am horrible with maps. But we found a snowbank to part next to and identified the Davis Neighborhood Trail. We opted not to use our snowshoes but we could’ve gone either way. There was a few inches of snow, and after a few hundred meters it started to climb. It took us just under an hour to cover a mile and a half to Corliss Camp. Corliss Camp is one of only four shelters on the Long Trail that Mom hadn’t photographed. It was a cute little cabin, and we were the first people to sign the register in 13 days. It only took us 40 minutes to get back down.

Wednesday Ryan had plans to meet friends. I drove Mom into Bristol to get coffee and tea. In the afternoon Ryan came back and it began to snow. He wanted to go to Jerusalem to pick up some maple syrup for his friends back in Washington, so we got in the car and drove up there. The roads got worse as we got closer. We couldn’t find the parking lot buried in six inches of snow. Ryan got about $100 worth of maple syrup and we headed back down the mountain. There were complete white outs, with snow coming off of the trees obscuring everything, even the hood of the car. At one point we had to stop while a giant State truck pulled a pickup out of the ditch. While we waited, snow blew off the trees and the headlights of the truck disappeared. I was worried we’d be rear-ended but no one came behind us. We made it home without incident, but news reports were full of accidents and roads being closed, and the weather people said it was going to get colder. I had planned to leave that night, but opted to stay until morning. Ryan borrowed a car and drove to visit more friends.

Thursday I was on the road a little after 9:30am. Despite all of the snow at my parent’s house, there was no snow 15 minutes south. There were police cars everywhere. I was back in Albany a little after noon. I had a bunch of unpacking to do, and some laundry.