Actually, the language was mostly fine. The voyaging's the fun part.

[captainsblog]

::rubs eyes again::

::scratches sunburn with the watch tanline::

A remarkable one-seventh of a fortnight has ended just now. It lasted just over 2½ days, covered not quite 900 miles (more like 1,000 counting the one train trip) and a lot of fun times with friends old and newer.

Being blogless for that long causes withdrawal symptoms, so I carry my trusty Reporters Notebook to try to remember as many of the moments as I can. That and the really bad pictures I take with my cell camera.

This one, for instance. Taken at my first stop along the way meeting my sister in Binghamton, it references a rather unfortunately-named golf tournament sponsored there recently by a regional sporting goods chain:




No it's not! I just checked!



We had food and dog-petting and just enough humidity to acclimate my system to the following day in Manhattan.

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Heading down Route 17 between Bingo and NYC is always a headful of reminiscence. So much along that road has changed - and yet hasn't- since my earliest days plying it in the back seat in the 60s and as the driver in my own 20s. The Roscoe Diner remains the unofficial halfway point, but the billboards for it now advertise paninis and wraps. That's just wrong. It should be nothing but greasy fries and the Sorority Special. I wonder if they even still serve Tab.

For the first day's excursion, I parked north of the city and took the train in, a beautiful route right along the east shore of the Hudson planting you right in midtown for the cost of parking your car there for about half an hour. I checked with some Friends and found that Union Square would be the best rendezvous point, and got to explore that in the early afternoon.

Love them or hate them, that city's recent mayors have done a damn good job of making the place seem about 110 percent less dangerous. Union Square Park (and later, Bryant and even Washington Square Park) were no longer the broad-daylight drug supermarkets I remember them being in the 80s. Not that they lack local color, mind: Union Square Park was a combination farmers' and artists' market with all kinds of goodies of all imaginable legal kinds; the closest to illegal was the guy with the sign saying "Give me $2 so I can get drunk and go home to two women who are going to molest the daylights out of me." He even had a website. No, I did not write it down.

You also know that Obama has arrived in popular culture when you see at least a half-dozen stands selling his picture and campaign slogan on merchandise practically guaranteed NOT to have come from, or to go to the benefit of, his campaign.

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Then Indian on 13th Street, with not one but two of my two favorite people in the whole LJverse.

thunderemerald is as lovely, and funny, and perfectly genuine as anyone I have ever met here. Especially that last part. What you read is what you get; her words, even her expressions, fit exactly with how she writes about the same things she speaks about. And if the men of this city keep her single another day, they are blithering idiots. (Either that or they can't deal with the complications of her secret and possibly illegal marriage to David Tennant.)

mayiwritedotcom's all that, too, except (a) I've come to expect it by now and (b) she doesn't have the Doctor problems;)

Thank you both again for the finest hour of a journey not dependent on 25 overpaid guys winning or losing.

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Fortunately, they did win. Both games, even. Spent both with one of my oldest friends in the world, the first of them with a couple of other Met bloggers, and the second with my friend's wife and daughter. More blathering about that when the other pictures get developed.

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Before the first run out to Shea, I did my cardio for the day, heading down to the Brooklyn Bridge just to see it in the summer sunshine and the thoroughly amazing passerby sights of Fifth and lower Broadway on the way there. One express train later, I was doing similar exploration around the Theater District; too late to sneak into any intermissions, but I just wandered around the venues.


Is there anything on Broadway that's opened in the past couple of years which isn't an adaptation of either an old movie or an old rock'n'roll band? Because if there is, I couldn't find it. Don't get me wrong; I'm partial to my Spamalot and even Legally Blonde, but did Young Frankenstein really have to be adapted? Billy Eliot? Mary Poppins?  I think we may have hit the Because We Can Event Horizon, and it might just take a really bad musical version of Bergmann or something to put it to a stop.

----

Missed the hourly northbound train by a measly 10 minutes. Rediscovered how dead Grand Central is at midnight. Got lost on the way back to my hotel. Slept 5 hours, drove in for the day game, left right after the Met win, got stuck in bigger traffic jams in Scranton than in the Bronx, and made it home to appreciative animals about a glass slipper past midnight.

So. With all THAT, what'd I miss?

Comments

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

(Either that or they can't deal with the complications of her secret and possibly illegal marriage to David Tennant.)

I'd think the danger would be more the raging fangirls and fanboys who'd attack in a jealous rage... ;P

So. With all THAT, what'd I miss?

The concert footage is up on youtube and I just gave an interview to Scotland on Sunday for an article on the conference. Beyond that... :P

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I saw:) Both, even!

You look lovely in all of them. The sound's been real low while we wait for Herself to arise (oops, there goes the door just now), so I'll have to hold the musical opinions, but y'all look real good:)

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

I look ridiculous-- I'm just hoping the sound will entice more people to the autumn concerts! :P

[mayiwrite.livejournal.com]

I had an absolute blast. It was great seeing you again, and yay for your team winning!

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

I remember going to NYC in 1986 and being scared to death walking to the Empire State building. I went again in 2005 and love or hate Rudy --as you say -- I felt very safe walking about Times Square at night, with nary a XXX sex shop in sight.

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

Good to meet you too! Also: heh heh heh. :)