Drive home from Richmond, VA
Well, hi! Here are a couple GPS routes from my recent drive home. Note that neither of these do much to describe how beautiful some interstate highways are (which is why I'd still like to do a Street View tour of some of the highlights), and neither communicate just how awesome I am at long-distance road-tripping: it was a 14-hour drive, and I think I finished in about an hour. That's right. You'll also see evidence below that I occasionally jump off the highway and move across America at near-light speed. This is also true, and isn't a symptom of a bad GPS receiver in the least.
Golden Horseshoe tour
Interesting (to me) sights around the GTA, with Wikipedia and Flickr cross-references whenever possible:
(okay... I'm having more fun photo-matching than I expected to, so I figure I'll do that in another thread. I'll keep adding "funny" or "interesting" finds to this entry.)
Past and future
I messed up a bit. So much time has passed since my New York trip that I feel odd finishing up my trip report, and now that I have another trip on the horizon I'm even less likely to finish the story. I'll try to anyway, of course. The trip was far too affecting and life-altering in all the best ways to not provide at least vague sketches of my days there, and now that I've uploaded most of my photos I'll just let the pictures guide the narrative which, for me, is a helpful crutch.
I'll also talk about trip #2 in the next post. Yes... when given another week off so soon after the previous one, I do choose to return to New York. I don't see a problem here. The difference, though, is I'm taking the scenic route, so to speak, and I'm driving myself.
More to come.
I suppose I should update… (day 4)
Hi there!
My name is Nick, and I've been spending some time in New York. This is what New York looks like:
Day 4 means I'm past the halfway point of my trip, which is a fact also evident in my daily itineraries as they evolve from "CLIMB TO THE TOP OF THIS" and "SEE AS MUCH AS I CAN OF THAT" to "FIND A HALF-DECENT LAUNDROMAT THAT'S ON THE WAY BACK FROM MY LOCAL RITE AID". I have no problem with this. I like wearing a city as much as I like exploring one.
I'm having a very, very fun trip. I've been blessed with excellent timing on all counts: the weather is perfect, Labor [sic] Day weekend meant that I had the city to myself all morning and had street party after street party to jump between all evening, and my days are becoming more mundane just as everyone else goes back to work. I couldn't possibly have asked for a better time to come.
I'm staying at the Jane Hotel and Ballroom in the West Village. It's a stately old building that overlooks the Hudson River, and it's still in mid-transition from a flophouse to an uber-hip destination, meaning there are as many long-term residents still as there are deal-seeking travellers in their twenties. Someone in marketing would refer to this as character. I refer to it as exactly what I was looking for. It's a charming, spotless, tiny, air-conditioned room that is perfect for me, but I'm not entirely sure how the couples that I've seen wandering about are faring. It's that small.
This is the Jane:
On the other hand, the survivors of the Titanic were offered refuge here in 1914, which is awesome. I can even see the pier where the Carpathia finally landed with everyone on board as I type this. I love that even fairly unremarkable buildings in this city have so much history.
Another thing: the hotel's bar, the Jane Ballroom, or just the Jane, as in -- "Hey, Ari! Where are you and Julia going for cocktails?" "Oh, we're heading to the Jane now!" -- is currently enjoying its 15 seconds of fame amongst the Manhattan hip set. I can't quite tell if this is part of the aforementioned good timing or not, but it's been enjoyable to sit amidst this unceasing maelstrom of cool with my scotch and my laptop and have a string of increasingly drunken ladies tell me their life stories. Really beautiful ballroom, though: very dark, and plush, and Victorian, though I still haven't seen Zach Braff.
Thus, my environs! I'll post more about my actual activities over the past few days, but for now it's back to finding that laundromat.
Landed! (day 1)
Well, here I am, safely ensconced in my West Village micro-hotel and all I can think about is sleep. Am I really capable of sleeping through a steamy, sultry, summery Saturday night in downtown Manhattan? In the timeless words of Canada's first Swedish President Peter Elliott Mansbridge: "Just watch me".
<-- very tired. just ignore him.
I must say, though, it was neat to fall asleep on the bus here:
...and then open my eyes what seemed like five minutes later to see this:
I tracked the whole bus route by GPS, but it seems the BlackBerry was taking occasional naps too and I don't feel like surfing through XML right now to fix it.
OKAY. Tomorrow morning is: picking up Tri-X film, finding a good bagel, and checking out the High Line. Until then, goodnight!
News from the heavenly loom (8 sleeps)
This morning, I found this:
CIRCULATORY SYSTEM: 09/09/09 @ le Poisson Rouge
Omgzz. One of my favourite groups of musicians ever are descending on the city, and it's taking place a five minute walk from where I'm staying (living!) for the week. I couldn't possibly be happier, and this one little show has made me, like, a thousand times more excited for this trip. TEE HEE.
Oh, and the Roots have a Tuesday night residency at the Highline Ballroom, too, so I'm officially no longer complaining about a lack of music on this trip.
This is good news
From Gothamist:
Today may be the last hot day of a summer with few hot days. A westerly breeze will push the afternoon high into the upper 80s. Tonight, a cold front will move south from Canada, bringing with it a slight chance of a shower or thunderstorm. More importantly, it appears that the front's passage will kill any chance of hot weather for the next couple of weeks.
The timing couldn't be better.