Travel; US Autumn 2004: November 2004 Archives

No run today – a well-deserved day off for me!

Lots of fantastic food c/o Molly and Judy. Breakfast casserole for breakfast (a sort of egg, bacon, sausage and cheese flan) along with fruit and coffee cake.

Then for lunch turkey, pecan covered sweet potato pie, broccoli casserole, eggs, beans and pumpkin pie. All washed down with cinnamon sweet tea. Not something I normally like, but this was amazing! Hell, it even looks good, and most pictures of food look terrible or else have to be terribly doctored (Burger King over here have admitted to using glue for mayo in their commercials for example,) but this is the real thing!

We interspersed the day with some quality, and not so quality TV watching – Macy’s day parade in the morning, a predictable, but still reasonably funny, High School film called Saved! (set in an evangelical church school and suitably disingenuous, it provoked outcry here when released,) and Touching the Void.

Victoria and I watched that TTV the other week when Channel Four showed it, and the film – which tells the story of two mountaineers and they’re battle to survive when a climb goes wrong, is even better the second time around. I still cried.... ...discreetly of course! Joe Simpson’s incredible desire to live is simply astonishing and his mental capacity and physical capacity to overcome everything that was thrown at him is the purest and simplest triumph of the human spirit. It simply takes my breath away just thinking about it. If you haven't seen it - then do! I can't recommend it highly enough.

Gender stereotypes to the fore today – Molly and Judy cooked, I went for another run (three days running – literally!) and then us boys went out and went drinking at a number of different emporiums in town.

Mark Cary

Several of the places we’ve been to – restaurants, bars etc. – have the latest thing in ‘drying your hands’ technology a motion sensitive paper dispenser – thought I might share those with you – they are rather ingenious aren’t they? Whatever next?

Then in the evening, after another suitably low-key day we went to see Christmas with the Kranks – a holiday movie starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. For a comedy it was surprisingly short of laughs (probably a Raio Times two-starrer when it is eventually shown on UKTV Crimble 2009,) but with it’s cheesy Christmas naffness it did declare the festive season officially open.

It was all too much, I had to go to bed after that…

Mark & I wandered downtown to see this place – located in the old railway station for the city. Like many train stations from a certain period here in the US – Grand Central, Union etc. it’s very spectacular with marble floorings and walls, and you can still see the walkways to the different platforms and the signs for newspapers and such like – which gives the place a very distinctive feel.

There’s lots of interactive stuff to see and do, which we duly did, including having a change to sit in the ‘return to earth’ capsule from one of the early space missions. It’s incredibly tight and claustrophobic, feels a little bit like being buried alive. Managed to just about extricate myself with some dignity still in tact, but not much.

After that we watched a highly forgettable multimedia presentation in the IMAX Centre and Planetarium, before heading back home to meet up with Molly's parents - Judy and Cary - who had travelled up from Tennessee that day for Thanksgiving. Oh and I went for a 30 minute run outside - just going round the block half a dozen times, before we settled back and watched Location Location Location and Changing Rooms on BBC America - all slightly surreal...!!!

We went for a 45 min run in the park.

Then to Downtown Richmond past lots of old colonial style buildings.

Then a long walk around Belle Isle - an island in the middle of the River James, which runs through Richmond - a former POW camp in the civil war.

Then a spot of lunch, and er, not much else!

Oh yes, a tiny but of shopping and a bit of TV - Fear Factor Thanksgiving special!

A very leisurely day today, got up late, then went shopping, before heading for a walk in the park over the road from Mark & Molly’s and then some trashy TV – I can’t believe that Desperate Housewives is so popular!!! Mind you, I never thought you could buy cheese in a can either.

I clearly have a lot to learn :-)

A few pics from the day (in miniature) below. Will post them – full size – later.

Mark & Me

Didn't do much today - we went out to a Mexican for lunch, crashed out afterwards following eating to much Mexican, chopped and stacked some logs, and saw After the Sunset at the cinema.

ATS is an okay film, harmless, but it can't quite work out what it wants to be. One minute it's a comedy, the next it's a heist film. Unfortunately it does neither of these well enough to be a shining example of each genre, and it makes for an uncomfortable mix - the editing in particular being would be very different if it just settled in one camp, not the other.

References to Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief also highlight the fact that whilst this is an amiable way to pass a couple of hours, this isn't a classic and never will be.

That said, it's harmless enough, and I'm now totally in love with Salma Hayek, or rather her amazing figure anyway! Shallow moi?

... my trip to DC has had to be cancelled as Rain is totally snowed with work :-(
Oh well, she's not been here a month yet and I was lucky to see lots of her before she left, so it's not the end of the world. These things happen - gives me an excuse to come back here again some time soon :-)

Good luck in the footie game Rainbow!!!

Written yesterday before I came down with food poisoning... today I'm mostly resting and generally trying not to barf. Nice!

I’m writing this on the 93 Amtrak train which I picked up two and hour hours ago at Newark Airport, and which in another three hours or so will safely deposit me in Richmond Virginia. We’ve just gone through one of the few North East cities that I’ve yet to visit, and would still like to see. Baltimore. The sun is setting and the sky has that wonderful Turkish delight pink to it, with the result that even the clouds look like fluffy meringues that you could just eat.

In front of me, on a foldaway shelf/ledge (what should I call it?) that’s slightly too far away from me, sits my trust old, and slightly battered, laptop. When I say that this is slightly old, I do of course mean in ‘laptop years’for it’s only three years old, but that makes it good enough for a museum compared to the machines being used by my fellow travellers. And when I say that it’s slightly battered, I do mean that the screen and cover is dirty, scratched and looking well worn (if it were a face, it would be WH Auden’s) and not that it’s covered in the crispy gold artery thickening substance which fish and chip shops across the UK seem to liberally apply to anything, and everything, that can be eaten. Battered cauliflower cheese anyone?

On account of being positively ancient, my lead plated laptop has no battery life to it. None at all. It crashes the moment the power is cut, which can be very tedious indeed and means that the whole portability concept – fairly central to the laptop philosophy – is null and void. It is however more convenient that carting a normal fully towered PC around with you, but only just.

As a result, I had reconciled myself to a five and hour train journey involving a welcome combination of sleep, reading and staring out the window – not necessarily in that order – until that is, I chanced upon where I am now.

Quite simply, I must have the biggest most fantastic seat on the train. And as a result, quite simply, there must have been some mistake allowing me to sit in it. More to the point, as I’ve only just discovered it - having just discovered that the portion of the train that I was in was terminating at New Carrolton – why isn’t anybody else sitting here? I’ll put it down to luck, and accept the fact that right now I feel like James T Kirk at the helm of the Starship Enterprise.

If my camera battery hadn’t also died, I would have taken a photograph of my luxurious living quarters, lest you not believe me otherwise. The legroom is such that unless I slump in my chair I can’t touch the seat in front of me. The seat, is so wide I could probably sublet it, and has enough padding to make me feel like I’m sitting on Roseanne Barr. Although it is a little quieter and altogether less mouthy.

Best of all, there’s also a power point for my complex power adaptor collection to hook into, which allows me to work and toil away with the written word. Perfect! I say complex power adaptor collection, for it is indeed that. Confusion yesterday abounded when I tried to get a UK to US power adaptor. Sadly, that wasn’t possible, and the man in the shop did not believe me when I told him that in the UK we had three pin plugs, not the two pins that both continental Europe and the US have (although the distance between the pins for each is quite different).

‘Here Bert’ he said calling over his assistant, ‘you’ll never believe this…’ and indeed Bert, (why are they always called Bert,) did not. Finally in a bid to prove my sanity I produced my laptop power capable from my rucksack. The pair of them recoiled in horror, as if the power cable were a venomous snake rather than a simple (or so I thought,) conduit for electricity.

In the end I left with my continental Europe power adaptor and two salesman who were still shaking their heads in a state of perpetual perplexment.

As a result, my power needs are now met by a nice three plus for the price of one combo as my UK 3 pin socket goes into a continental Europe 2 pin, which in turn fits neatly into a US 2 pin. Remarkably it works, but it does look somewhat ridiculous.

Not that that normally stops me from doing anything….

Yesterday I spent a very pleasant and rather wonderful four and a half hours with Dina up in Morristown. Originally the first half of my trip was to be spent with her, either up by the Lake or enjoying the snow in Vermont, but sadly circumstances decreed that this wasn’t possible.

Still, an afternoon with Miss Ely was better than none at all, and so yesterday I dutifully spent three and half hours getting to her, and another three hours trundling back to my hotel in Newark. Considering that I thought it would take about half an hour each way I felt somewhat short changed – all the result of my train being on the wrong side of the tracks apparently, with the result that I had to head south into Manhattan before heading back north again.

It was a little frustrating as my time with Dina was always going to be limited, and it did feel odd going to Penn Station but not getting out and actually seeing anything of the city, a city which I love, but I’m on holiday, and could do nothing about it, so just tried to relax and go with the flow…

So all in all, seven and a half hours of travel for four and half hours of the young lady’s company. Was she worth it? Of course! But I wish the ratios had been the other way round!

Morristown always comes up high on those lists of ‘nice places to live’ and on a day like yesterday you could see why. Clear blue sky, autumn coloured leaves just about hanging onto the trees for dear life – although some had succumbed and were swept into big piles on the roadside and sidewalks, and the town itself just quietly going about its business.

I like Morristown a lot. It’s not very big, or very exciting, but it’s relaxed and chilled, and this being my second visit there in three months it felt familiar, welcoming and a little like home really. I can’t remember many places in London I visit so regularly, so it’s no wonder it provoked such a nice feeling of ease and contentment within me.

Of course part of that might be the company I kept, Ms Ely always being good entertainment, thoughtful, insightful and sweet natured. Hmm, that makes her sound like a character from a Jane Austin novel, which she is not, but anyone who has come across her will know what I mean.

We sat and drank coffee in the down square where we watched the squirrels, talked about all manner of things and admired Santa’s House which had recently arrived – off the back of the lorry – for a few months temporary residency. Soon, at some point after Thanksgiving, Santa will come and visit, parking his sleigh on top of the Century 21 discount department store, and – with the help of the local fire brigade – making his way down from the roof and onto the green to the delight of children and adults alike.

It all sounds very Hollywood. The kind of thing you’d expect to see in a gentle Bill Murray comedy or such like, I don’t think we do anything quite so dramatic in the UK, or indeed that Santa’s arrival is so public and therefore becomes, by default, a public event for the whole family to watch and partake in.

After an hour or so the sun moved round and it started to get cold, so we did a bit of window shopping, and a bit of ‘slap it on the plastic’ shopping too. Dina got a great hat in Gap – or the Gap as Americans call it (is there another?) – which I realised afterwards was the colour of Neapolitan ice cream. She might not need it yet, but with winter fast approaching she sure as hell will do soon!

I then managed to pick up 5 t-shirts for $20 in Foot Locker, and we both picked up a few cds in Sam’s Place, a local record store (am I making that name up Dina?) where I purchased the Scissor Sisters album (which I initially hated on first hearing it months ago, but which I now love,) and Rachael Yamagata's "Happenstance", which I have never heard of, but which Dina says I will love.

I’m expecting young Rachael to be a mellow songstress in the Damien Rice, David Grey, Tori Amos / Eva Cassidy ilk, but we shall see…

Dinner after that – Dina’s treat! - in a charming local Japanese which again gave us plenty of time to talk and plenty of sumptuous food to graze on.

Then, far too quickly it was time to head back over to the store where Dina’s Mum, Donna, was shutting up shop, (literally,) and it was time to head make the journey back home with a big smile on my face and recollections of a really lovely afternoon.

Dame Edna is on Regis and Kelly's show - didn't know he/she was big in the US...

I’ve never travelled on a sleeper train before, so I had no idea what to expect the other week when I rocked up at Paddington station to take the overnight down to Redruth in Cornwall the other week.

Stations at night, especially those so full of hustle and bustle during the day, are odd vacuous places at night. Paddington had literally half a dozen people milling around so that and it felt more like 3am than 11pm...

Because of the anti-social hour of departure, you’re allowed to board your train up to two hours beforehand – although I typically left it fairly last minute. On the platform edge were three official looking people with large clipboards. ‘Ah your with me’ one young woman told me after I’d given her my name. ‘Not literally I assume’ I commented in my best Roger Moore voice. Not even a wry smile back. Not a glimmer. This might be a long night.

I was shown to my sleeping berth, a miracle of minimalisation. In the space no bigger than that typically occupied by a double bed they designers and engineers have somehow managed to factor in two single bunk beds, somewhere for you to hand your clothes, a sink and two work surfaces. Impressive, most impressive.

They have also covered the space by the bed and the door in a variety of 60s space age knobs and dials which allow you to change the temperature, the lighting and even the brightness of your night light should you desire to use it. I didn’t, but it was a good device to have handy as the whole cabin was completely dark once the main lights were off. No light permeated a single chink in the curtain or the door. As a Londoner I’m used to constant light pollution, so getting used to the dark was odd. I waited for my night vision to kick in after I’d turned the lights off and after two hours gave up, it really was just completely dark.

The only things missing were a seatbelt to hold you in to your bed and company. Oh and maybe a kettle.

The bed was the smallest bed I think I’ve ever slept in, even smaller than the “celibacy beds” they gave us at college which were so small it was impossible for horny students to bunk up with someone and enjoy a good nights sleep thereafter. Every time we went round a corner I thought I was going to get thrown across the floor. I didn’t, but I was thankful that I wasn’t 4” taller or wider, else it might have been a close call on more than a few occasions.

One of the odd things about the space is that you can share the berth if you like – using the bunk beds, or you can simply pay an extra tenner to have it to yourself. I paid the extra tenner miserable party pooper that I am. Mind you, that said, the space was small enough without sharing it with a random stranger – which knowing my luck would probably be a pasty eating Cornishman who insisted staying up all night to talk to me about cod quotas. Not quite what I was looking for on that occasion.

Even if you manage to avoid the pasty man (or woman) you’d still have to factor in that the height of the cabin was so small that in the event of the top bunk being pulled out of the nasty blue upholstered wall (same material as the seats on those old SW Trains,) then the ‘upstairs’ bunk would almost hit your face if you were trying to sleep on the bottom bed. Waking up screaming because you think you’re being buried alive is probably not a good idea – certainly not the way you want to bond pasty eating roomie anyway.

So once I got used to the dark, the lack of space to roll around in, the sound of the train running along the tracks – complete with occasional sharp corner, it was fine. I’d do it again, but it wasn’t quite the romantic experience I thought it would be. Mind you, the “Cornish Riviera” is not quite the Orient Express, so I’ll keep an open mind in the interim…