TBA
New York and Philadelphia
Departure: LAX-MKE-EWR
Super cheap fare deal courtesy of Midwest Airlines. I didn't realize they were still flying such old MD-80's, but not bad. Then the trademark really-bad-weather hit in New Jersey before we took off, so I had an additional 2.5 hour delay... which meant by the time I landed at EWR, the last trains for EWR to New York Penn Station were just leaving. Doh.
Day 1: therefore is off to a diasterous start. Joel and Jessica drive down to pick me up, paying-you-don't-want-to-know how much in tolls, and we arrive in Long Island about 5:30am. Ouch.
we sleep in, then spend it wandering Long Island, from Mineola to Long Beach, looking for apartments and beginning to fight Joel's trademark battle with Hofstra's Financial Aid department every semester. Some of the apartments are ghetto holes, some are nice-but-clearly-still-being-prepared holes, some actually aren't bad. Lunch is at the Colony Diner, a typical, trademark Long Island style diner-- very different than what we see on the West Coast. The french toast was actually pretty good. Dinner is at Papa Umberto's, where we have Boci Balls (quite good, not at all what I expected) and pizza. You can blame my low standards from the West Coast, but that was damn good pizza. All mixed in with the usual being dorks.
Day 2: ... well, Day 2 in New York. Technically day 3 of the trip, if you count the airport/airplane hell of day 1 of the trip. *sigh* Oh well. *grins*
After battling with Hofstra Financial Aid (and finally achieving temporary victory), lunch is at Jim's Deli-- a local hangout and the classic Long Island deli experience, down to the thick accents and awesome sandwiches. It's a very different experience than Bay Cities in Santa Monica or Antipasto's in San Jose, and just as good.
Checked out The Met in the 2 hours they were still open. I wish we had more time, but it didn't work out. Throughly explored the Arms and Armory gallery along with a bit of the Asian and Indian collections. Seriously need to make another trip to see the rest of the collection, at least the 1800s-to-early-1900s paintings, plus the photographs. Wandered Central Park on the way back down to midtown. The famed Central Park Reservoir is a bit more than I had expected. It's green and filled with algae, not as picturesque as one might imagine. It was reasonably pleasant weather-- unlike the coming Saturday-- so it's hard to complain too much.
Dinner was at Stout next to Penn Station, a nice, modern, very loud pub with the Ars NYC group. The noise made it a pain in the butt to hear people, but a decent sized group came out. The beer was great, the oysters were okay, the bratwurst burger was surprisingly good. Kind of hard to hear people even one seat away, though. Dr. Jay, papadage, and the other end of the table must have had a fascinating set of conversations, but I couldn't hear a word most of the time. About the only overly bizarre thing was someone whose name I've forgotten pulling out a half dozen or a dozen flashlights.
Joe and I planned to head out to the Gunks early the next morning, so we took off at a reasonable hour (as did Joel). That was the plan... til we found his wife and her friends at Playwright Irish Pub in the little tiny Koreatown nearby. They had beer to finish and songs to sing, and while we waited, everyone had to sing and have beer... there went that early morning of climbing, drowned out by my horrible singing. Yikes! =Þ
Day 3: Unlike the tiny decent-to-crappy places most of my friends can afford, Joe and Nikole's place is awesome. As a nice place in west LA, it'd probably be $2500/month. As a nice place in NYC... I don't want to know. Fortunately, Rockefeller University takes care of them. I wish UCLA liked me that much!
over two bridges, including the Queensboro Bridge, then a quick stop along the Hudson River for pictures, then up to New Platz to assault the Gunks. Stopped at Rock and Snow, the local climbing shop, to orient ourselves and stock up on chalk, then over to Peterskill to do some toproping. Most of the Gunks is trad climbing, which requires gear we didn't have, and while there is enough toproping to do, the recent rains meant most of the rock was still so damp it was weeping water. o_0 The main area is the Trapps, which is a long ridgeline with a ridiculous amount of climbing. Peterskill is a few miles further into the Gunks, is smaller, and is a bit more TR friendly. Still soaking wet, of course. I'm not quite sure what we setup, but it was a medium sized roof over a cave big enough to stand in, then up a good 40' (?) or so to the top above the roof. Maybe taller? The roof in the panoramic looks huge due the distortion; in reality it's maybe 4~5 feet or so high from the ground outside of it, not nearly as tall as it looks in the picture.
We ended up doing three climbs off of the same anchors. Start lower left, then traverse immediately to the middle of the bottom rock, then up the rope line to the top. Not that difficult on the bottom, felt like maybe a 5.9- or 5.9, then the top felt like a 5.10a/b or so. The top section had a neat, simple side pull about halfway up I found almost immediately, so I'd say probably only 5.10a at most, but Joe missed it the first time around, and as you get a few feet below the anchor, it did get a bit tricky as the holds go more to the traditional slopers rather than the cracks seen on this kind of rock.
Lower left all the way up the chimney to the top following the same line up the top was somewhat easier, but the reach around at the top of the chimney to transition to the ledge between the top and bottom sections was a bit tricky. Reach aaaarrrrroooouuuunnnndddd til you find the holds you need, maybe 5.9-. The chimney itself wasn't that hard, just different, as we usually climb face. Both Joe and I endedup turned backwards (facing left, instead of right, when we needed to go right) as we topped out the chimney. t'was fun and interesting to figure out how to twist around properly. The biggest challenge for me on this rock is that it's layered quartzite as opposed to the plain sandstone or granite I'm used to, so it's full of long horizontal cracks every 3 feet or so, with occasional vertical fractures through a layer. From the ground, the cracks look like awesome holds. On the rock itself, you find out many of the cracks are still tiny, not even enough to get a fingertip on. You have to probe and probe the narrower cracks for finger jams, and the hand-jams that seem to be everywhere really aren't. Once I locked down the first few finger james and hand jams it was much smoother sailing.
The last variation was up the far right flank of the lower half to the same top. Joe went up the left of it, then the center (I think?), figured it was a 5.9 or easy 5.10a or so, and that it was wide enough that the left and right routes were easier. The choices turned out to be bottom left or bottom right-- the right was easy, so I followed Joe up the left, which felt 5.9ish. Then you get halfway up... and the holds friggin vanish. Had I transitioned left it looked like a solid set of moves up the outside arete with a beautiful view, but I was too high into the difficult middle section to make the transition easily, plus we didn't have any beta (advice). I tried to go right, but ended up a bit too far right, and it was pretty easy, maybe 5.8 or so. Doing it again after topping out was tempting, but decided against it-- it was getting late, and going up the middle section of the route on the right flank, which is what I really wanted to do, would not have been a quick or easy thing.
Note: route ratings are what we think they should be, and may have no relation to the established recommendations. All the guidebooks we found focused on the Trapps and not the Peterskill area. I suspect we may have setup on the only 5.10- TR climb listed for Peterskill at the Gunks.com site, and that may be accurate, as the routes we did felt like a good challenge, but not one that was pushing the limit too hard.
Back to NYC afterwards, complete with a gas stop for cheap gas in New Jersey. Full-service stations are very amusing if you're from California, where they don't exist. =Þ A local farmers' store near New Platz had delicious smelling pie, too. Drove through Astoria into Woodside on the way back, and had dinner at a Chinese-Peruvian place not far from the LIRR station in Woodside. Tasty for Chinese fast food, the rotissere chicken was pretty good, and I had no idea enough Chinese-Peruvians were out there to make this kind of food possible.
Hopped on the LIRR back to Mineola where Joel and Jessica picked me up, then off to TGI Friday's (or was it Chili's?) for two-fer-one drinks. Cooled off with drinks and the A/C, then went off in search of ice cream, singing to bad 80's music while Jessica debated pretending if she didn't know us. hehe.
Day 4: the ONE truly full day that I spend wandering Manhattan... and Joel and I find out it's going to be 92F and 90% humidity. Ouch.
We hit McSorly's for lunch, hoping to find a Civil-War-era Irish pub with great beer and Irish food. We get half that-- Irish food is for dinner only, but the burgers are decent, and the beer-- light or dark-- is good. The dusty wishbones hanging from the ceiling date back to the Civil War, left behind by soldiers who didn't return. Very cool place. Waterfalling beer for lunch? It's barely noon! Oh sure what the hell.
Found more ice cream on our way up to Broadway, where we ended up seeing Spamalot. A combination of beer-before-we-started-eating and the heat/humidity meant I missed about 1/3rd of the musicial, which was unfortunate. Once you figured out that Spamalot isn't just an existing Monty Python story being done as a musical, but rather Monty Python making fun of Monty Python mixed into the works, it's pretty funny. Not nearly as good as Avenue Q or Wicked, but fun nonetheless!
Found a (horrible) black and white (shortbread cookie) on the way to the Staten Island Ferry, where we spent something like 5 minutes total on Staten Island. Got some nice shots of the Statue of Liberty, which was the whole point of the ferry ride... plus exposure to the Staten Island accent and mannerism, which was... well, what you hear on the movies is real. Quite amazing, given the huge mix of tourists and everyone else that sort of blends together-- except for the constant stream of invective from the distinct Staten Island accents!
Dinner at Curry In a Hurry, which looks like a typical cheap corner cafe until you go upstairs, where they evidently offer rather nice seating. Joel and I ordered downstairs and carried it up ourselves, but we saw a few groups of people being served by waiters and ordering from the menu upstairs. Not at all what I expected given my impression of the downstairs area, but tasty, good, and cheap!
Met up with Jessica on the way to Kay and Dominque's place, where we went to a pseudo-Irish pub on the Upper East Side and drank and chatted. Kay and Dominque have a neat little studio-- not nearly as palatial as Joe and Nikole's 1bd place, but still very nice and well done-- but the price was still almost $2k a month. Ow. (or was it more?) Los Angeles is looking more and more affordable all the time!
Day 5: Joel had to help Jessica move in the morning, combined with the late night and consistent lack of sleep... I actually slept in til about 11 or noon while Joel spent 3 hours moving.
Had lunch, then off to the Cradle of Aviation Museum that was practically next door at the former Roosevelt Field, almost immediately adjacent to Hofstra University. It's a very comprehensive museum on the history of flight, and is one of the better ones around. The focus on airplanes and their significance to Long Island means the World War 2 collection is very impressive. They've got LM-13 (the planned Apollo 18 lander) on loan from the Smithsonian, which is the highlight of their more modest space collection. Great place for a bunch of airplane nerds, not quite as good if you're a space nerd.
Wandered around for another hour or two, then off to Minado, one of the few Japanese buffets (heck, Asian food aside from bad Chinese take-out places are very rare in this area of Long Island) in the area. Going from crowds of less than 10% asian in the rest of LI to 75% asian inside Minado was a bit of a shock-- even almost all of the staff was Japanese. It was very, very surprising. Pricing for the buffet was about $25, not great, and given the dearth of even decent-quality Asian food on Long Island, this wasn't bad. But it definitely wasn't very good either.
It's not like I was in Long Island for the Japanese food, though, so that was okay. (to be perfectly clear: the "giant surf clam" that tasted like cardboard or plastic was not okay. The unusually attentive waitress was a pleasant surprise. Add in that neither one of us died afterwards, and that was a major plus.)
Day 6: off decently early to breakfast (more Long Island diner food, mmm), then into the city so Joel and Jessica could start the first day of fall semester. Wandered over to the Guggenheim, which has an excellent collection of modern art. The permanent collection is mostly 1920-1970, but it's the exhibits (main of which are contemporary, present-day) in the spiralling hallway up to the top floor that were the most interesting. A pair of video artwork, a few focused on sound as art (not music...), and a few more conventional pieces including a photography exhibit on the dredging in the Netherlands being used as "the moon" in the photo shoot.
The artwork in the Guggenheim boils down as being a bit too new for me; some was easy to appreciate, the truly contemporary stuff was a bit weird, it just doesn't appeal to me as art that's slightly earlier (mid-1800s). It is a very good collection that's significantly better than the one at MOCA in Los Angeles. I think next time I'll go back to The Met and to MOCA in New York, though. Maybe the Natural History Museum, too. (and the Frick?)
The leisurely stroll down to Penn Station was via the eastern edge of Central Park into the Financial District. Walked past the Met, which is closed on Mondays (oops), walked right past the Frick and didn't see it (tard), and considered going to MOCA but didn't really have the time for long enough visit. Plus I was starving by the time I had walked the 36 blocks... Lunch at a tasty, well-known Halal cart at the corner of Avenue of the Americas (6th Ave) and 53rd (?), then off to Penn Station by way of Times Square.
Lunch was a pleasant experience-- never quite had it served like that before, absolutely covered in red and white sauces-- then the walk to Times Square found it filled with a display by NYPD, with easily a hundred police cars parked in Times Square and the block south of it for some unknown reason. It was kind of cool, although the tourist mob was getting pretty large at this point. They all started leaving as I walked south, which meant the blaring sirens and everything else further excited all the tourists. Being a tourist, it was cool, but I never did figure out why they did it?
Into Penn Station to hop on an Amtrak train to Philadelphia, for part two of the trip. Aside from a minor fiasco finding the gate to my train-- they only put a sign on one side of the stairway/escalator to the gate that I missed the first three times around, ack!-- it was an uneventful ride. Pricey, rough, and slow, as Amtrak's service and tracks clearly do not compare to even the average trains in Europe or China-- but it was convenient enough. Compared to the first-class KTT from Guangzhou to Hong Kong it cost 4x as much, was maybe half as nice, and was a third slower.
Day 6, continued: into Philadelphia's 30th St. station. Think of it as a minature version of Grand Central-- the same era of architectural style, only it's so small it's almost impossible to get lost. Visiting Aunt Pattey, Matthew, and Chuck was nice and quiet, plus I got to see Aunt Pattey's new house.
Day 7: rafting the Bradywine River with one of Auntie Pattey's friends, then a relatively quiet rest of the day. The Brandywine River is more like a big creek, shallow enough that my heavy round self bottomed out at least a half-dozen more times than compared to my little cousins. heh. It was a pretty nice, leisurely day in very pleasant weather, plus both of my cousins are now old enough that they can kayak fully under their own power. We had some fun with that, organizing multiple-kayak tows and other fun stuff. =D
Unfortunately there are no pictures, as electronics and creeks don't mix. Lunch afterwards was an unassuming pub nearby that surprised us with a very fancy quesadilla, light but crunch calamari, and other items. Their beer was nice, but not quite what they had promised-- the food out did it. o_0 (now that I think about it, that was definitely unexpected!)
Philadelphia 30th St |
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Near the Brandywine |
Chuckie |
Matthew |
American-style hefe |
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salomon burger |
quesadilla |
ice cream! |
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Return: PHL-MKE-LAX
Day 8: consisted of getting up absurdly early to go to the airport and fly back to Los Angeles. Devoured a pair of bagels at the airport. I'm not yet sure what the difference is between Philadelphia bagels and New York bagels, but comparing JFK and PHL airport food, both tasted pretty good. Especially at 5:30am in the morning with no other food available. ;-)
Morning weather is clearly a better time to travel-- no delays in MKE this time, and the return flight to LAX was uneventful. In-between naps, a few photos were taken looking outside. Pretty boring, really-- finding the right FlyAway bus once arriving at LAX was far more challenging.
Last few shots are from Westwood, inside a restaurant known as For Tuna. I'd never been there, and while it was decent, Tomadachi and Isshin are definitely better.
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Inside PHL |
At MKE |
Over Arizona |
San Bernadino Airport? |
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110/105 interchange (?) |
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PHL |