Today is the day my family is in a New York State of Mind, which is sort of unfair because I am so not thinking of Albany, or Brooklyn for that matter but of my #1 island destination, Manhattan.
Sigrid, Michelle and I (Pat is working; someone has to) are taking/have taken (depends on when you're reading this; you snooze, you lose) a Metro North train from New Haven to Grand Central and will wend our way (we are wascally wabbits) from the Freedom Tower to Macy's, to Rockefeller Center, to Central Park and other points, hither, thither and yon (those, I believe, were the names of the Lennon Sisters. Yanni was their brother).
The weather promises to be 'seasonably cold' (whatever that means) and clear though if it were 200 below (Celsius) with the skies darkened by clouds of flying frogs chasing swarming locusts, that would be fine with me as I'm a huge fan of Manhattan and incidental distractions are just that, incidental.
Speaking of which what is there about the 21st century the railroad folks don't get? I spent an hour plus thinking it had to be me but nope, I don't think so. Follow along and marvel. I am able to look at Metro North schedules on line, and actually order and pay for my train tickets in the ether (they are actually cheaper on line than at the station, an incentive, I would think, to order and pay for them electronically) but I can't print the tickets out and have them.
Instead the railroad mails them to me (for an extra charge I can get them via express mail), but only in specified quantities per order (and they'll break up the ticket order to make that happen). Seriously? The days of America's railroads rolling in the dough are distant memories, they are actually historical footnotes.
That they would subsidize, indirectly, another fossil, the USPS, should not, I suppose, surprise me as much as it disappoints me. Welcome to the time-honored tradition of featherbedding, 2012 Edition, brought to me by the Whale Oil Industry (Anachronisms can be fun, I suppose, as I put on my high-button shoes).
That's why the first order of business today in New Haven is to purchase train tickets at the window in the station instead of heading for the platform. But you know what? I am so looking forward to today that nothing, absolutely nothing, to include Metro North, Michael Bloomberg or Mothra (sorry-I got into an "M" thing there and had to follow through), will dim or darken my enjoyment.
In the days to come, I fully expect to post pictures, as awful as many of them will be (I am taking them after all) of anything that crosses my camera lens. Except train tickets-because I have a digital camera and pictures of train tickets must be taken with film and then delivered to the drug store, preferably by horse and carriage, to see what develops. There's a Russian Army dressed in pastel shades-suspect that, too, shall pass.
-bill kenny
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