Saturday, November 14, 2020

A Tale of Two Cities, Sort Of...

From the Henry Hudson Parkway to W. 42nd St. to 11th Ave. to the Lincoln Tunnel -
And points south...
(Source)

On the 12th of November, in the Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand and Twenty, I began my monthly trip to the land of the newest member of my tribe. What everyone else refers to as "Maryland."

This became a monthly trip when the wee lad came into this world, three months ago Friday as a matter of fact. Went down to meet him, went down to bring The Missus Herself back home in September, then brought Grandma back down in October. This trip is yet another "Grandma Retrieval" mission. While The Nuke would love to have her mother on staff full time, she has turned down the assignment because, as many of you know, raising kids is not easy. Not if you do it right that is.

It's not a bad trip, approximately 407 miles, depending on the route taken. Problem is, the route takes me through two cities, well, two metropolitan areas to be more precise. New York City and Baltimore, the former being the larger of the two. I guess technically the latter is part of the Baltimore - Washington DC metropolitan area. As I don't go deep enough into that area, I just refer to Baltimore. As the main highway skirts the city of Baltimore (goes under the harbor dontcha know?), it's not nearly as troublesome as the NYC Metropolitan Area. The most direct path runs straight through the middle of that one!

So Thursday I thought to avoid NYC completely by traveling up to the Tappan Zee then motoring on down the Palisades Parkway on the New Jersey side. If one takes the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, that whole NYC Metro Area becomes much easier to stomach. If one doesn't mind the roundabout path to avoid all that. Thursday I thought that that's what I'd do.

Got onto the Merritt Parkway (which is an extremely lovely road with numbers of cool overpasses and lots of trees) and asked Waze to lay in a course for the Tappan Zee. Waze let me know that I would arrive at the bridge over that wide part of the Hudson River at roughly 1230. Which put me off rather a lot. By my calculations, going over the George Washington Bridge would be far quicker, though traffic-wise it's often a complete pain in the nether regions.

As I have started to trust these navigation programs more and more (yes, grandfather I still know how to use a paper map, but it's not easy while driving) I decided to roll the dice and let Waze take me upon the faster route. After entering the environs of "the city" I started to sense a disturbance in the Force, after I looked aghast at my non-human navigator for taking me down the Henry Hudson Parkway to West 42nd Street, I decided to relax and enjoy the experience, fraught with nervousness though it was. (I am most emphatically NOT a fan of driving in major cities, never have been, probably never will be.)

Surprisingly traffic was light, maybe the rain and the fact that it was lunch time kept the local denizens in their boroughs (see what I did there) and left the roads open for Your Humble to break on through to the other side. (Said other side being the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, though I don't think that's what The Doors had in mind when they wrote that song.)

If you're familiar with New York, you might recognize that overhead from Google Maps at the top of this post. Yes boys and girls, your Old AF Sarge (ask me what the AF stands for some time, there are at least two interpretations of that, one is funny, one is correct, both are accurate) was forced into the bowels of Manhattan, onto West 42nd, then to 11th Avenue and then underneath the Hudson via the Lincoln Tunnel. Exciting it was.

Other than one idiot New York driver (sorry, but is there any other kind?) who wished to use a "Buses Only" lane to pass the line of more civilized drivers waiting to make the turn onto 11th Avenue, the trip was educational and interesting. Though the incident on 42nd and 11th might have ruined the entire trip for me, I didn't let it faze me.

Because I was in rather a jolly mood on Thursday (what with the rain and all, my joyful mood can only be attributed to my anticipation of seeing the new grandson) my reaction to this ee-jit driver can best be summarized by this scene from the film Coming to America and the joy Eddie Murphy's character (Prince Akeem Joffer, Prince of Zamunda) felt upon greeting the fair city of New York, once upon a time, as it were... (and here I insert the obligatory Caution, Language Alert)


Upon emerging from the confines of the tunnel into the light of New Jersey (that section of the state always reminds me of a set for some post-Apocalyptic Mel Gibson film) I opted to follow the biggest damn truck heading the same direction I was. Rather using the truck like a down field blocker to clear me a path to the end zone. Or the New Jersey Turnpike, whichever came first.

Saw some amazing things, like a broken double yellow line which had traffic going the same direction on either side. Which to my eye has always meant "two way traffic" but apparently in the Garden State means something else entirely.

I looked it up, just to make sure I wasn't imagining it...
(Source)

But as I was still following Monsieur le Très Gros Camion¹, I did as one should when in Rome (or New Jersey as the case may be), it weren't no trouble at all. I kept on behind the truck until I spotted the sign for the Turnpike, which he was bound for as well. So the plan worked. Would I have rather gone around NYC and not be plunged into its depths? Well sure, but it was interesting and now I can say that I've "been there, done that."

New York was the big adventure, Baltimore, while not quite as dramatic, was kinda up there in the "no fun" category, primarily because of the never ending construction in the area of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and the rain. Have I mentioned the rain?

Loading up for the trip it was overcast, though warmish for November, in the 60s. Wasn't raining, just drizzle, drizzle is a state of precipitation which drove me nuts in Big Girl, she only had one intermittent setting on the windshield wipers which was completely inadequate for drizzle. Blue, on the other hand, has about 85 different intermittent speeds on the wipers, so she handles drizzle with great aplomb. But I still dinnae like it.

It rained/drizzled/down-poured nearly the entire trip, but around Baltimore and well into Maryland the rain was nearly of Biblical proportions. Hitting the pavement and misting up into the air so visibility was sheer crap. Oh, did I mention it was foggy as well?

Made for a need to really, really concentrate, and coming at the end of a 400 mile drive, I could have done without it. But hey, I survived, everyone else survived, and, of course, the rain quit shortly after I arrived at the palace in the woods. (Which is what I call The Nuke and Tuttle's maison, it is seriously lovely down there.




The tale of WWII will be delayed until my return to Little Rhody, which should be Sunday, short turn around on this trip.

Until then mes chers amis², be well!

Stay frosty.








With apologies to Charles Dickens, of course.
¹ Mister Very Big Truck
² My dear friends

36 comments:

  1. Glad the retrieval mission ended successfully. Nice to see some space 'tween homes there Sarge, elbow room makes for better neighbors IMHO. Here we've had 17 inches this season.

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    1. Rain is one of those things which I have grown to tolerate. I know it's needed and seldom falls to purposely inconvenience me. But, sigh, it often does.

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    2. My mistake, that 17 inches is snow.......

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  2. I joke about having a u-turn button on my dash. I have seen a lot of rural Texas, and at times, I pull a Bugs Bunny and have to boomerang to the proper heading...

    I'm a small town guy, though. I HATE big cities and traffic. I don't know how you deal with the mess up that way. Maybe a visit to the woods is a good reward for the trip through Mordor.

    My buddy's daughter popped out into the sunshine on the 12th. He's floating on cloud nine. But she was a day early, yesterday has always been my lucky day.

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    1. I'm with you STxAR, I will go to great lengths to avoid much over 50K population. It's a good thing Lowe's is on my side of Kerrville or I wouldn't be going there much. Austin? Not if I can help it. Houston? Only because I love my daughter and my time off is more flexible than her. Haven't been to San Antonio but 1 time (needed a new ID card) in many years. Con't remember the last time I was in DFW (other than the airport). El Paso, no, the gravitational pull from Big Bend is to strong to escape. Haven't been to Lubbock in double digit years. Don't think I've ever been to Amarillo. And there's not much pull I can think of to go to the valley. Sorry.

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    2. Ain't nothing wrong with avoiding major population centers. For any number of reasons!

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  3. Glad your trip went well. Worst traffic I've seen? Atlanta, Friday 5 pm.

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  4. If you have to drive in downtown New Yawck, it's good to be driving a large US Navy 6 pack pickup truck. ('76-'78)
    My can was at a pier adjacent to the SUNY Maritime Collge at Ft. Schuyler in the Bronx and once in a while we had to drive to get something, or visit the personal support center.

    If we are visiting the New England states, then we do the wide loop via the Tappan Zee Bridge.

    Never ending construction indeed.

    The GPS has taken us on some interesting detours once in a while.

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  5. a buddy of mine who's been writing the great American novel since 1959 (sporadically, whenever his muse kicks him in the slats) likes to use homonyms as puns whenever he can find a good one. So, I found myself looking for another reason for you to use the word "phase", as opposed to faze, but I couldn't find one.
    BTW, I found myself ajiggin'n'ajaggin' thru the streets of Manhattan at the end of the '60s into the early '70s after I left the AF to get more schoolin'. It weren't so bad as everyone said: just had to know where you were going (being of a suicidal frame of mind didn't hurt neither).

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    1. D'oh, picked the wrong word, dang homonyms!

      All cities have their nuances, takes time to get used to them I suppose.

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  6. Hey Old AFSarge;

    I swear by Waze, it is the only app on my phone that I actually use regularly, especially in Atlanta traffic*Blech*. When I finished AIT in Fort Devens Mass and I had to drive down to Georgia and this was back in 1986, i was driving my 1986 Mustang GT :) I remembered following the signs from city to city moving south, going through Delaware and taking the Tunnel and passing into Virginia and stopping for 4 hours to get some sleep. It took me about 20 hours. I do recall going through New Jersey on the turnpike and they were calling it the "Garden State" and all I saw was concrete...Was glad to get home. Then stayed on leave, then shipped the car to Germany and that is where I and the Mustang stayed for 5 years.

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    1. I was stunned to hear that Google bought Waze. Google maps cannot plot a course to where my daughter lives, yet Waze can. Is Google going to ruin Waze, or replace Google Maps with Waze? Google Maps has some features I really like which I wish Waze would incorporate. But I'm nervous about letting Google's programmers anywhere near Waze. For various reasons.

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    2. If I may edit your reply for clarity and precision, My Friend, it would read "But I'm nervous about letting Google's programmers . For for a metric crap ton of reasons."

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  7. Back in the day when we were traveling distances, I was a big fan of either AAA flip maps or doing the same thing on Mapquest. We tried a civvy version of GPS in the late '90s and found it lacking severely in capability, so went back to hard-copy. If it was a repeat trip, we'd mark up the paper copy as we drove and then printed out a new version and marked it with last year's info. Things like "DON'T STOP HERE" and "GAS UP HERE" and "COPS HIDING HERE" and such and so forth. Put it all in a folder, with a copy of the whole route page on the visor, and said folder in the hands of the navigator.

    Made for good times. She handled the maps (except when sleeping) and the I-pod for the music. Since we were either limited by gas (big white Ford serial killer/sex offender van had 2.5 hours of travel time) or by bladder (big white guy had/has 3.5 hours of bladder time) or by caffeinated liquids existence (somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 hours of drinking time) the resulting stop would be a review of what's upcoming, changing out the maps, marking and so forth if navigator was asleep during the previous portion.

    Miss long distance traveling. But she canna make it no more without a day of rest after driving (meaning a day, in a hotel/motel, without family or other stress) and preferably 2 days. Sigh. Eh. She's alive. That's what matters.

    Though I do miss going to fighting events. Still dream about those.

    As to Google buying Waze? Why stunned? Google buys everything as it wants to be a virtual monopoly on internet services. I'm surprised they don't actually own internet providers (though I bet they have a stake in many of the big ones.)

    And the answer whether Google will ruin Waze is "Yes." They (Google) will 'Improe' the living copulation out of it to the point it is useless or boggded up into uselessness. It's what they do.

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  8. Good to hear you arrived safely. I'm small town like STxAR. My memory of that area was flying in Newark, at night, in the rain. Took me an hour to navigate my rental car out of the airport (at night, in the rain), then missed my turn and ended up lost in Elizabeth, NJ, for another hour. Finally found my hotel hours after the others arrived and spent a few minutes explaining to the Commanding General why I was hours late. He wanted me to drive him to Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island to visit the 8th Medical Brigade the next morning so, needless to say, I was not enthralled with finding the approach to the bridge, then driving thru a horde of crazy drivers, and "Thank God" I didn't miss my turn to Fort Wadsworth. Otherwise I would have ended up on the Verrazzano Bridge and in Brooklyn. Give me country roads anytime...Safe journeys to ya. - Barry

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  9. Avoid NYC at all costs.
    Never get any closer than the Tappen Zee bridge, and preferably enjoy the more sedate and bucolic route with the Newburgh Bridge instead. I gladly add 50-100 miles to do that, and avoid the stink of the big city. But, this usually involves stops in upper New England, not Little Rhody, so this may not work for Sarge.

    Also, if you carry a legal self defense weapon, or even any gun in the vehicle at all, it may be not be so legal in New Joisy, so another reason to take more westerly routes.
    JB

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  10. Try driving in Europe. The A7 (Autoroute du Soleil) is 'interesting' around peak holiday times in France. I've done it a few times and it's either 50 miles of jams or driving nose to tail at 80mph. For added fun go round the 'Boulevard Peripherique' in Paris. Near why I live we have the delights of the M25 London orbital motorway and the added fun of 'Smart Motorways'. In all seriousness at times any journey of under 5 miles would be quicker on a bicycle. I used to live in London and in all seriousness if I lived there now I wouldn't own a car.
    Retired

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    1. Been through France by bus, watching Paris traffic from a bus made me resolve to never drive in Paris.

      Spent a lovely week in London, buses worked very well as did the Tube.

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  11. Born and raised in Baltimore. Now live in rural Pennsylvania. The Harbor Tunnel was completed in 1962. Pushing 60 years old it's gonna need some maintenance.

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  12. (Don McCollor)...Attended a meeting in Denver once. Shuttle bus took me to my hotel. Took a cab back to the airport - about 120 bucks (besides a more than generous tip). Best money I ever spent...

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  13. I use either G-Maps or Waze daily. Not because I don't know my way home of course, but to get the real-time traffic updates. I have several routes home that I can take and like how the apps show the time for each. However, after choosing one I sometimes decide to veer off that route to a completely different tack, yet the the ETA sometimes shrinks to something even faster than the original ones offered. It would be nice to have a little bit of AI built in so it could learn from that, but I guess that's too much to ask.

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    1. The traffic updates are really why I use those apps.

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  14. I went to San Antonio for a weekend shindig with Soldier's Angels, years ago. I took a cab everywhere that I couldn't walk. I hate cities, big and small.

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  15. I''m a waze fan. Jut returned from a trip to LA from Sandy Eggo. Hit 2 spots in Korea Town, Wilshire Blvd area, then Chinatown, then back to Koreatown to drop herself off with her girlfriends, then the lad and I to home. Not bad at all, LA on a Covid weekend day is fairly calm. Waze is great for the fastest trip, although does through in some surprise routings now and then. Plus, me and the lad himself were able to identify some of the R.King rioting Rooftop Koreans locales. A smiling Korean with a rifle is not something your basic lawless type wants to see. glad your trip was successful, Yeah, NYC is a treat. I'm a fan of the Cross-Bronx expressway, but will go Tappen Zee on occasion, particurlary if I have time and want to travel near west point, not so out of the way, as I was usually traveling MD to Maine.

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    1. I'm becoming very familiar with the trip to MD and back.

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