Just Flew In From Washington DC

Terminal C at DullesAnd boy are my arms tired. Bada-boom.

Good to be home. On the 60 mile drive home from the airport this evening we saw maybe a couple dozen cars, in the northeast if you go 6 miles you see a couple thousand cars.

Just realized that last Sunday I forgot to change the the top count, I didn’t leave the top down all week while the car was at the airport, it actually went up before last Sunday’s drive to Columbia. Tonight when we landed back in South Carolina it was just about as cold as it was when we left Jersey this morning, so although we wanted to ride home with the top down, we didn’t want to that bad. It stayed up.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 117

Good Morning Sunshine

SunriseThis is the sun coming up over Manhattan as seen from the 8th floor of the Newark Airport Marriot was pretty much the bright spot of the day (if you don’t count the fact that the guest laundry is free.)

The church service for Donna’s Aunt Mary was today, but the interment had to be canceled. Cousin Laurie (the one in SC that we visit) was bringing the ashes, but her husband had some medical issues and had to be rushed to the hospital in Harrisburg, PA. The repast still went on, just with two empty chairs.

I would love to write some more, but this internet connection keeps dropping and it is very frustrating. The only way to restart it is to crawl under the desk and “reboot” the modem/router by unplugging it, counting backwards from 100 by sixteens and replugging it back in.

Wired-for-Business

Why is it that you can stay at the $75 a night Quality Inn off the interstate and you get free wireless high speed internet, but spend the night in the $250 a night Newark Airport Marriott and it costs you $9.95 (plus applicable taxes) a day?

The previous two nights were spent in a New Britain, CT extended stay hotel that caters to business folks and it cost me $4.95 a day for high speed web access. Yet the local Motel 8 was giving it away.

Not only is is fast and free at the national chain places, I have never had an issue hooking up. Tonight at the Marriott I successfully managed to log in, agree to the conditions, check yes to the fee and get to view one page of the Weather Channel web site for losing connectivity. I rebooted, I swapped out for my cat5 cable and rebooted again with no luck. I ended up having to call the 1-800 number to get a help desk person. A five minute wait and we did a couple of things, including disabling the wireless (remind me to turn that back on later huh) and disabling the wired NIC and re-enabling it so I could get back on line.

That time I managed to stay connected for about 2 minutes before being dumped off. Back to the 1-800 number. This time we ran over a few other things and the CSR tried a couple of resets on her end. I am automatically getting an IP address, but I’m not getting a DNS address. The CSR said she would report this up the food chain and see if they could figure out what the problem is, but for now we left it alone as I’m back online. I just don’t have a high confidence that I’ll stay connected.

Egg Wiggle

Table Full of CousinsIt is great when families get together to talk and compare notes from the past. We gathered around the kitchen table at Donna’s cousin Mary’s (3rd from the left.) Her other cousin Susie, is 2nd from the left. Susan’s husband Alex is, well, the only guy in the photo. Mary’s daughter is next to her, stage right and the other three girls belong to Susie and Alex. Mary’s husband Jim is off stage left and their son was on the couch in the background just a second ago. Donna is under the camera and I’m behind it to complete the cast.

One thing that surfaced was a strange food concoction called Egg Wiggle from the cousins’ past. An internet search was of no help, but the best I could gather from them was that it was sliced hard boiled eggs and canned peas in a cream sauce served over toast. I wonder if Rachel Ray would have a recipe?

Donna and I are staying at the Newark Airport Marriott courtesy of her brother’s reward points. Thanks Jimmy! Jim is coming in for the service as well, and Donna bartered the room stay for the Deluxe Bogardus Limo Service. He is coming in from California on the red-eye and will catch a few hours of snoozing before we chauffeur him to the memorial service for Aunt Mary in Rutherford. After the service we will then hightail it south to the grave site in New Brunswick. After that ceremony there it is a dinner planned about half way back up in the town of Summit. After dinner we will return to the Marriott where we spend a second night. Sunday Jim flies back to California and Donna & I drive to DC to fly back to SC.

Brrrrrrr!

Ice PossibleEven though it was supposed to be cold, rainy, and maybe sleety (if that is a word), Donna and I decided to get out and see the sights. I Googled for “Central CT Attractions” and the 6th link on the 2nd linked page was a list of covered bridges. Connecticut has a whopping 5 of them and there were three that were located no too far from each other in the northwest corner of the state. A plan was hatched. We stopped in and asked my mom if she wanted to go, fully expecting her to say no, but she was up for the ride, so the three of us piled in the rental car.

Today’s high was a low 40s, but that was this morning before the precipitation started, and it went downhill all day. Our helpful little Pontiac G6 reminded us, every time I started it up, that the road might be icy. There were several times that the thermometer read 32 degrees, but it was always rain coming down. Maybe it was sleet those couple of times that the sound of what splattered on the windshield deepened or maybe not, but we did see a thin coating of ice on some of the trees at the higher elevations.

Of the three bridges, two were built in the middle 1800s and still in operation, you could drive right over them. The third was built in the middle 1970s in Kent Falls State Park and was erected as a point of interest for the park. The falls looked interesting, but because of the weather we will save them for a different day.

We had pizza for lunch in the town of Kent at a place called Paisans, it was good, but I won’t recommend you go out of your way to eat there, unlike yesterday morning’s breakfast spot.

If you ever find yourself in Port Jervis, NY seek out Cafe Roxanna. We had breakfast, but from looking at the menu their lunch would be worth the stop as well. Eclectic food served on funky dinnerware, photographic art from locals hanging on the walls and laid back jazz on the sound system, the only thing missing was the word Moon in the restaurants name.

Tomorrow we shift the show to the Garden State…

Best Buy, Worst Service

Ice Scrapin' ManThe battery in my digicam is getting tired. After taking only a couple dozen exposures it is starting to shut down and it has always been doing 2-3 times better than that. Yesterday, somewhere in Maryland, after striking out in a Radio Shack and a camera store, we ended up at a Best Buy. They didn’t have a Kodak labeled battery, but they did have a generic. For $20.99 I was out the door.

When we stopped last night I opened, with great difficulty, the plastic oyster shell and put the battery in the camera. All three lights on top of the camera started blinking, meaning that the battery was fully discharged and would be a while before it would be ready for use. In the morning all three lights were still blinking. Bad news.

Today on arrival in New Britain, Donna wanted to got to Friendly’s and I wanted to go to Best Buy. My brother knew just where to go, a shopping center on the Berlin Turnpike. We started at Friendly’s where we were seated and promptly ignored. After waiting 5-6 minutes and no one even acknowledged our presence, we walked out.

In Best Buy I went over to the Service Desk and explained that I purchased this battery at a different store in a different state and that it wouldn’t charge. The CSR started entering stuff in a terminal from my receipt, mid type another employee walked up with a phone and handed it to my CSR saying, “This person wants to speak to someone in customer service.” The CSR stops what he’s doing and starts to talk on the phone. After a half minute or so when it is apparent he isn’t wrapping up the conversation, Donna looks at him and says, “We were here first.” He takes the hint and tells the person on the phone to hold on a second. More typing and then he hands me a paper voucher and says go to the cashier and they will give me my refund.

The cashier takes one look at the papers and says, “I’m not normally at a register, I don’t know how to do this.” She gets on her radio and asks for help. After some non essential chatter we finally see another CSR head our way. She tells our cashier this is how you handle a suspended transaction and proceeds to hit an 8 or 10 sequence of keys so fast I don’t know if anyone could follow. When she gets to the end, she goes, “Uh-oh. Did you buy this in another state?” “Yep,” I tell her. “Must be the tax messing it up.” Off she goes with our cashier in tow.

After another couple minutes the original CSR walks over and hands me $21. I guess the extra penny was because I had to wait so long.

Perfect Strangers

Get Off Your Duff Will Ya We started the day with a stop at the Great Falls National Park in Maryland and ended the day with a quick visit to the Grey Towers National Historic Site. There was a whole lot of driving in between.

We left our nation’s capital behind by driving out of town on the GW Parkway until we got to the Circle of Death (as Will calls the Capital Beltway I-495) where fortunately we only had to cross the Potomac River before exiting in Maryland for the drive to the Great Falls National Park. Most of the info we found on this park refers to the Virginia side, but the Maryland side has some great views of the Great Falls too. Along with another portion of the C & O Canal that we had visited on Sunday, this time around mile mark 15 at lock #17. They are refurbishing this section of the park and we had to dodge a crane putting in a temporary dock on the canal for our walk to the falls overlook. The dock is for an excursion boat that takes a little cruise up the canal, through a lock before turning around and coming back. It is seasonal and we were a couple weeks early for a boat ride, even if the dock was ready.

We then hit the road. After zigging and zagging a bit we found our way to MD27 and headed northeast. The rest of the day was spent on Interstates 83, 81 & 84.

When we ran out of driving steam it was in the small town of Milford, which is just about the last town in Pennsylvania on I-84. As we drove into to town looking for lodging and a meal we saw signs for the Grey Towers National Historic Site, so we followed the signs up a hill to a great stone house. It was closed for the season, so we couldn’t tour it, but did walk a bit about the grounds. It was the home of Gifford Pinchot who is the great grandfather of Bronson Pinchot who played Balki Bartokomous on the TV show Perfect Strangers. Just kidding, he was a conservationist, a Pennsylvania governor and America’s first chief Forester. It is built in the manor of a French chateau, but if I was casting a movie and needed a place to stand in for an insane asylum, this would be it.

Tomorrow we take I-84 all the way to my old home town of New Britain, CT. Wednesday isn’t supposed to be half bad weather-wise, but they are calling for snow/freezing rain on Thursday. OH, BOY! We are never coming up north again until it is at least mid May.

Sally took that picture of me as I tried, in vain, to get a different vantage point to capture the Lincoln Memorial.