Boardwalk trail at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, New Jersey
I’ve wanted to do this trip literally for years. In fact ever since it’s been possible to check air fares online (about ten years now), I’ve periodically checked what it would cost to fly out east and spend a relaxed week or so driving around upstate New York and the surrounding area. While it hadn’t gotten a whole lot cheaper in 2007, with prices for everything skyrocketing (even though the government says we have no inflation), this seemed as if it might be the last chance I might have to do this kind of vacation. Shortly after Christmas I found an affordable airfare together with a reasonably priced car rental, and I booked it almost on the spot.
Since then the trip evolved quite a bit. I changed the itinerary somewhat, including or omitting a variety of different places and changing around the order in which I’d see things. I booked and re-booked various hotels, eventually changing every single lodging reservation I’d originally made. In fact I made one last hotel change the night before I left. The end result was a fascinating and most enjoyable week-long getaway.
* * * * *
I had an uneventful drive east on highway 18. While a bit of construction would be a sign of things to come, it really wasn’t all that bad.
I stopped for breakfast at the Country Kitchen in Mason City, where I had the “skillet scramble” (scrambled eggs, ham, and cheddar cheese sauce served over a bed of hash browns—definitely not health food, but tasty). The place was not terribly busy, and it was interesting to overhear conversations from some of the other diners. Most interesting was a pair of truck drivers seated in a booth by the parking lot. They were essentially sharing war stories, commiserating with each other about the trials and tribulations of the job. One had nearly gotten pinned under heavy objects he was trying to unload at a factory in Chicago, and the other was currently being sued for allegedly hitting a car in a McDonalds parking lot. He said the parking lot had completely separate truck parking, so he couldn’t possibly have been anywhere near the car in question.
As I left the restaurant I bought the Des Moines Register and the Mason City Globe-Gazette. By far the most important news today was the aftermath of Wednesday’s bridge collapse in Minneapolis. While of course I sympathize with those affected by all disasters, I must say this one quite literally hit home. I’ve driven on I-35W many times. It’s a horrible, obsolete interstate, but I never really thought of it as structurally unsafe. From today’s papers, though, it was becoming clear that the bridge was known to be unsafe for years before it collapsed, but the Minnesota Department of Transportation didn’t bother doing anything about it.
* * * * *
As I drove westward toward the Mason City airport, I had an eerie—though pleasant—experience. Every single one of the traffic lights I encountered in Mason City was green. That’s something that NEVER happens in Mason City, where traffic is busy and the lights are in no way synchronized. I hoped it might be a good omen for the trip—and after the fact I can say it certainly wasn’t a bad one.
(I got to) the one-gate terminal at MCW, Mason City Regional Airport at 10:50am, exactly an hour before my flight time. Since I had checked in online yesterday and was not checking luggage, there really wasn’t anything to do but wait for an hour. The airport also serves as the bus station for Mason City/Clear Lake, and one of the Jefferson Stages passengers provided a bit of entertainment. He was an unkempt twenty-something man who appeared to be either mentally disabled or under the influence of something—perhaps both. He had a CD/.mp3 player with cheap headphones, the sort of thing you might get for $10 at Dollar General Store. This imitation “walkman” was still in its plastic packaging, which seemed more than a bit odd. One by one the guy went up to everyone who was waiting and asked how much they would give him for it, suggesting $25 or $30 was a good price for the worthless bit of electronics. I’ve seen people do that sort of thing in the downtown area of major cities, but at a small-town airport it was certainly unexpected.
There are only three flights a day out of Mason City. (Technically there are six, since the flights from Minneapolis continue on to Fort Dodge—but no one in his right mind would fly from Mason City to Fort Dodge.) Because of this the main waiting area is before the security checkpoint. They open security only for a few minutes before each flight, and after going through you wait for final boarding in a tiny area right by the gate. At about 11:30 the woman in charge of security went through the “sterile” waiting area with a complicated mirror device, the sort of thing you see on America’s Most Wanted when the border patrol is searching for drugs hidden underneath cars. I have no idea what she expected she might find in an area that had been locked to the public ever since the 5am flight had taken off, but she spent a good five minutes doing her search. Convinced that there was nothing unsavory there, she opened up the checkpoint.
MCW is obviously used to having a lot of people who don’t fly often. While they enforce all the security rules strictly, they are very accommodating and forgiving about those who might not be familiar with the latest changes. The big change in 2007 is that liquids are severely limited in carry-on luggage. You’re only allowed liquids that come in three ounce or smaller containers (even some travel-sized toiletries are larger than that), and you have to put them in a clear zipper bag and send them through the X-ray separately from your other luggage. While I personally think it’s a stupid rule, anyone who has flown since last Christmas (or who has checked either the Transportation Security Administration’s website or any airline’s website) should know about it. A lot of the passengers in Mason City didn’t, though. Many had full-sized bottles of shampoo or mouthwash, or perhaps bottles of water or pop. What’s more, only a couple of people besides me had plastic bags to accommodate their liquids. One of the TSA employees was prepared and went around handing out plastic bags and explaining the rule to everyone. They let those with containers that were too large go up to the ticket counter and place the “contraband” in their checked bags. That is an advantage to a small airport. At a major airport it would be impossible to re-locate the checked bags, and all those oversized toiletries would likely just have to be dumped.
I was the first person through security, and I made it through without incident. Several people, however, set off the metal detector. It seems as if elderly people set things off especially frequently. I’d expect people with artificial joints or that sort of thing to have a problem, but it’s almost always something stupid like not removing coins from their pocket. The liquid rule is new, but metal detectors have been in airports pretty much my whole lifetime. You’d think people would know how to deal with them.
Everyone did eventually get past the detectors, and we soon boarded. I sat across the aisle from a pleasant couple who were visiting their grandchildren (who I think would be adults themselves) in Bismarck. We chatted a bit, though not nearly so much as most of the other people on board. Indeed, this was one of the most talkative flights I’ve ever been on. It’s only about half an hour from MCW to MSP, but I think I heard two dozen people’s life stories in that time.
The strangest thing about this flight was that we flew at an unusually low altitude. While you never get extremely high on the Mason City—Twin Cities flight, this time I felt like I was in a crop duster. We never did get past the barrier (10,000 feet I think) where electronic devices can be used. It was actually kind of fun to see the landscape so close, but I kept wondering why we didn’t get any higher.
I had a LONG layover (about five hours) in Minneapolis, which is the trade-off for flying out of a minor airport. I filled much of the time walking the concourses, going past every single gate in the enormous airport. I passed many twice, first walking the whole way under my own power and then going back via the moving walkways. I’ve been to MSP several times before (you pretty much have to go through there if you live in the upper Midwest and fly, since Northwest is the only airline that serves most of the region), and it was interesting to see that they’ve shuffled around the locations of many of the businesses in the airport. They seem to have pretty much the exact same stuff they’ve always had, but where things are at has changed.
* * * * *
I had lunch at a place called North Woods Fusion, which was basically a bar that also served eclectic food with a Minnesota theme. I ordered chicken and wild rice soup (overpriced, but excellent) and also what they called a “lefsadilla”. This was a variation on the classic Tex-Mex quesadilla made with the Scandinavian staple lefse (basically potato crepes) rather than a tortilla. It was unique, but really quite good.
I went to the airport Dairy Queen for dessert, where I exchanged a scrip gift certificate for a peanut buster parfait. I’m pretty sure the last time I had one of those was when I was a kid back in Mt. Pleasant (when it probably cost a fourth the current price). The mixture of soft-serve ice cream, peanuts, and tons of hot fudge sounded good, though—and it was.
While I was having lunch I’d noticed a sign near North Woods Fusion that said “Observation Deck” and had an arrow. Since I had tons of time, I figured I’d check out what it was. I’m not sure if the place was officially open or not, because they had a bank of temporary phones (the things they get out so people can re-book when a flight is cancelled) partially, but not completely, blocking the entrance. I snuck behind the phones and made my way up a tight little stairway to what is probably the most remote part of a very busy airport. Absolutely no one else was up there, and except for loud background music and announcements, it was very quiet. There’s also a pleasant view, and it was nice to be out of the hubbub for a while. I took advantage of the opportunity to give Margaret a quick call and let her know I’d made it safely thus far.
After a while I made my way back to the main part of the airport. I paused for a while to listen to a concert a man was giving on a grand piano set up right in the middle of one of the concourses. He was an excellent pianist, but at times it was hard to hear because of the continuous announcements in the background. While most are routine (making a gate change or giving last call for boarding), some are really quite silly. Frequently, for instance, a male voice reminded us that “due to heightened security the Transportation Safety Administration has limited what items may be taken beyond the security checkpoints”. Given that almost everyone hearing that announcement had long since passed through security, I had to wonder what the point of it was. Meanwhile a female voice kept alerting us the fact that “Minnesota is in the Central Time Zone”—something that could be determined from clocks that are absolutely everywhere in the airport. These and other pointless announcements reminded me of the comedy film Airplane, where detailed and pointless announcements are replayed endlessly.
I made my way to the departure gate (F-6) and then spent quite a while reading through the Star-Tribune and Pioneer Press, which were of course filled cover to cover with news about the bridge collapse. It fascinated me that the local press seemed more concerned about how the tragedy would impact area traffic than they were about the fact that dozens of people had been injured and many had lost their lives.
After reading all the engineering problems on the bridge, I couldn’t help but notice that the gate I was at, which was suspended over the tarmac, tended to vibrate almost constantly. Both the constant movement of people on the concourse and the noise of the aircraft outside made the structure move. I certainly hope it was designed to do that (though it’s hard to believe it was), and I must say the fact that this was one of the oldest parts of an airport run (like I-35W) by the Minnesota Department of Transportation made me even more concerned.
The fact that I’m writing this should be your clue that I didn’t perish in some freak collapse of the airport structure. I did endure even more shaking, though, from a couple of bratty kids who kept running around the gate area. While their mother seemed to find their antics cute, I just glared at them.
I still had over an hour to kill at the gate. I spent most of the time reading a book called 2 Do Before I Die (it surprised me the middle of the title wasn’t “B-4” with the misuse of “2” at the beginning). I’d picked this book up for a dollar on a clearance table at Barnes and Noble years ago and never really looked at it. I gather the author of the book was spooked by his grandfather’s passing. He decided at the funeral to make a list of 100 things he wanted to do before his own death, and his book combines that list with a plea for others to make similar lists and complete them before it’s too late. While it was somewhat amusing to see the things the author found important, I’m glad the book only cost a buck. I probably won’t be going back to it again—though it did fill the time adequately at the airport.
They started boarding a little bit early, and the flight departed right on time. I sat next to a woman who said no more than three words throughout the entire flight. Her boarding passes indicated that she was headed for France, and I do hope she had a nice trip. The flight from Minneapolis to Detroit takes an hour and fourteen minutes of flying time. They have almost two full hours allotted in the schedule, though, and there’s a reason. We spent nearly forty minutes taxiing on the ground in Detroit before we pulled up to a gate. When we finally were in the gate area, we had to wait another five minutes for another plane to push back at the gate we were scheduled to arrive at. Never mind that there were dozens of empty gates, all of them available to Northwest. Only this one was allowed for us, and we couldn’t use it until the other plane left.
I had another layover in Detroit—not quite so lengthy as the one in Minneapolis, but more than long enough. DTW is a very dull airport. It consists of two enormous concourses (the “A” concourse is literally a mile long), each lined with absolutely identical gates. They have some business, but none of it is very interesting (generic newsstands and gift shops), and the exact same businesses keep repeating every few gates. Again I walked past every single gate in the airport, but I must say it was much more boring to do that here than in Minneapolis.
I got to my assigned gate around 8:30pm, about an hour before our departure time. The same gate was actually handling two flights—one to Allentown, Pennsylvania and the other to Birmingham, Alabama—and it was interesting to look over the people there and try to figure out which place was each person’s destination. I think my guesses were 100% correct. I also read through the Detroit newspapers (which were mostly full of Minneapolis news), and eventually it was time to board.
The most noteworthy thing on a rather dull flight was that the stewardess (a young blonde ditz who was part of “your Minneapolis-based crew”) had rather obviously never flown this route before. The first indication of that was that she didn’t know how to pronounce the name of our destination. Repeatedly she said we were flying to “Allen-ton”, with the ending said similarly to Appleton, Wisconsin or Littleton, Colorado. You may recall from the old Bruce Springsteen song, though, that “we’re living here in Allentown” rhymes with “they’re closing all the factories down”. Most of the passengers were from Allentown, and they just sort of looked at each other and rolled their eyes each time she’d say the name wrong.
Also noteworthy on this short (about an hour) late night flight was that numerous people had brought along computers on which they watched movies they’d downloaded to their hard drives. If downloading music is illegal, I can’t imagine it’s correct to download a full-length feature film—I didn’t even know it was possible. Lots of people obviously do it, though. What seemed really odd to me was that none of them actually watched a movie through in its entirety. They’d watch a couple of minutes and then switch to a different film.
There was a couple across the aisle from me who were among the movie watchers. They also stood out, though, because they were just about the only people besides me who were not from eastern Pennsylvania. The man had taken his wife with him on a business trip, and it was clear neither of them was looking forward to this particular destination. The wife commented that they’d gotten a very good price on their rental car, and then added “well I suppose we should when we’re way out in the sticks like this”.
If these people think Allentown is way out in the sticks, I’d love to send them on a trip to North Dakota. When I originally booked this trip, I’d looked at the airfares for just about every combination of airports in the Midwest and East. The combination of Mason City—Allentown was one of two (the other being Des Moines—Cleveland) that came up dramatically cheaper than all the others. Allentown won out over Cleveland precisely because it did have cheaper car rental. Believe me, though, it’s definitely not out in the sticks. Lehigh Valley International Airport (“international” because they have three flights a day to Toronto) is in the jargon of the airlines called a “reliever airport”, that is one that takes pressure off overcrowded hub airports in the major cities. ABE (the initials stand for Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton) is about 40 miles from the Philadelphia airport and 50 from Newark. In addition to “relieving” those airports, it serves the third largest metro area in Pennsylvania (after Philly and Pittsburgh), and it borders two of the largest metro areas in the country. In good traffic it’s not much over an hour to New York City, and Baltimore, Annapolis, Washington, Wilmington, Hartford, New Haven, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Reading, Harrisburg, Lancaster, and Atlantic City are all just a couple hours away. Rather than the sticks, I’d describe the place as right in the heart of the East Coast megalopolis.
When we got to Allentown the stewardess again betrayed her rookie status. We were flying on a Canadair regional jet, a 50-seat vehicle manufactured by the Bombardier company in Quebec precisely for the purpose of serving smaller airports like this. Canadair jets have minimal overhead storage (and saying “minimal” is being generous—the prop plane that serves Mason City has more overhead space). Because of this you have to “courtesy check” most carry-on items. They put a tag on it when you board the plane, place it in a section of the cargo hold separate from the main baggage, and then you re-claim it before you enter the terminal at your destination. When we landed, the stewardess said we could claim our bags “on the left side of the jetway”. It turns out that while ABE does have some jetways (those bridges that connect planes directly to the terminal), the gate Northwest uses there doesn’t have one. Instead we went down steps to the tarmac, and courtesy checked bags could be claimed on a little trailer beside the steps.
We arrived at ABE about fifteen minutes early, around 10:50pm. It took just a couple minutes to do the paperwork to get my rental car, and the clerk directed me right out the door to the rental lot. My car for the next week was silver Pontiac G-5. (I had a G-6 when I was in Alaska a year ago, and this seemed almost identical to that; I have no idea what the difference is.) For the most part I liked the car. Its major problem was that a spoiler above the trunk blocked the view in the rear view mirror. It got around 32 mpg, though, which is about the best you can do with a rental car. It also had good acceleration, and its air conditioning worked well.
A problem the rental car shared with far too many modern cars was that virtually everything was electronic. In addition to having to press a button just to unlock the door (what carmakers have against keys I’ll never know), there was a very complicated digital dashboard display, and all the windows and the trunk lock operated electronically. I never did figure out how turn on the radio—and I’d have liked to have because there were several places where I could have gotten information on traffic or construction via DOT broadcasts. I will say, though, that at least the ignition on this car operated with a traditional key. The person ahead of me in line had gotten a luxury model, and apparently it had no key whatsoever. The rental clerk had to go through a complicated set of instructions on just what he should do with the push button thing on the keychain to start the car. He obviously did something wrong. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I noticed that instead of starting the car he had set off its alarm.
I mentioned before that the Lehigh Valley is the third largest metro area in one of the largest states in America. That should have been my clue to be prepared for traffic. I wasn’t prepared, though, for the four-lane expressway by the airport ... to be absolutely packed at 11:00 at night. The night before I left I had changed from hotel that was about thirty miles from the airport to one that was only ten miles away. As I fought my way through the sea of traffic, I was very glad I’d made that switch.
ABE is right on the border between Allentown and Bethlehem. I drove past the four Bethlehem exits and made my way on to Easton, which lies right on the Delaware River on the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Easton is best known as the home of Crayola, the company that made its fortune on colored wax. The second exit in Easton was for 25th Street and Nazareth Road (amusing to have Nazareth so close to Bethlehem). I followed a bizarre ramp (all exits in the East are bizarre) and eventually came out at a dumpy little shopping center at the intersection of those streets. My hotel was nowhere in sight, but somehow I managed to spot a “Comfort Inn” sign with an arrow. I drove all the way through the shopping center’s parking lot and then on a strange back alley before eventually coming out at the hotel. I’m still not really sure what I did, but at least I got there.
This hotel was a compromise between cost and location. I had priced hotels in Allentown and Bethlehem, and they were universally unaffordable. When all those factories Bruce Springsteen sang of closed down, the Lehigh Valley reinvented itself as a resort area. There are lots of hotels there, but on summer weekends they all fill up with people from the Philly and New York suburbs who want to get away to the mountains. There was a Microtel (normally a cheap chain) less than a mile from the airport, but on Friday night they wanted $189 for a single room. Not wanting to pay that much, I had originally opted for an office park in New Jersey. The pricing there was the exact opposite of how it worked in Allentown. On business days the rates were astronomical, but on the weekend things were cheap. At the last minute I’d decided I didn’t really want to drive a long distance and arrive at the hotel at (or after) midnight, so I instead opted for Easton. At $98 (including tax), this was easily the most expensive place I stayed on this trip—and it most decidedly wasn’t worth it. There wasn’t anything wrong with the place (besides a broken elevator, requiring me to use the stairs to reach my sixth floor room), but it was basically just a standard chain hotel that had seen its better days.
I checked in quickly and made my way up the stairs to a room that reeked of smoke. I didn’t even turn on the TV, but quickly collapsed in bed.
I’d purchased a pedometer not long before this trip and had calibrated it so that it was accurate when I walked around Algona. When I saw the amount today (and even more what I’d walk the next couple days) I wondered if it was counting the steps accurately on this trip. Today it showed 12.4 miles. Given all the walking I’d done killing time at the airports, that figure may actually have been correct. No wonder my legs were tired and it didn’t take long to get to sleep.
While the Comfort Inn wasn’t an “hourly rate” establishment, I figured in my head that I ended up paying about $15 an hour for the time I used their facilities. I barely turned over in the sheets and was up again at 5:30am. That was actually intentional, as I wanted to get an early start on a busy day. I’m not sure I’d have slept much longer anyway, though, as the bed really wasn’t very comfortable.
I had a leisurely shower and then made my way downstairs for the continental breakfast that started at 6am. The spread wasn’t anything special, but I found frozen French toast that was intended to be warmed up in a toaster. I’d never seen such a thing before, and it was surprisingly good. They even had packages of syrup that boasted “CONTAINS 10% REAL MAPLE SYRUP” that made it tastier.
Getting to the motel had been weird, but leaving it was even stranger. I re-traced my steps back through the shopping center, but somehow the exit led a different direction than the entrance. I did manage to get back on US 22, though, and before long I was on a rickety old bridge across the Delaware River. The bridge was toll, but strangely they only collect toll westbound. Since I was headed east, I entered New Jersey for free.
In Pennsylvania U.S. 22 is a very bad old expressway. It has four lanes with a cement wall for the median and essentially no shoulder. ... At the New Jersey border the road changes a lot. US 22 is no longer limited access, but in many ways it’s more of an expressway. Phillipsburg, New Jersey is essentially a “twin city” of Easton. Phillipsburg, though, comes across as suburban while Easton is very urban. The highway through Phillipsburg is Called Memorial Avenue, and it’s a very strange six-lane business strip. While it’s a business strip, there are remarkably few traffic lights. Instead some of the businesses have exits exclusively serving them. (I remember seeing the same set-up on I-80 when I was in New Jersey with my father decades ago.) It appears to be illegal to turn left anywhere along Memorial Drive. Instead they have a variety of U-turn set-ups, so if you want to go to a business on the opposite side you go past it, make a U-turn, and then approach it from the other way.
I made it through Phillipsburg quickly and then joined ... I-78. While this area is quite heavily settled (it’s considered part of metro New York), except for the fact that the interstate is six lanes instead of four you really wouldn’t notice that from the highway. All I saw as I drove along was mountains and forest. It was very pretty and with light traffic the drive was most pleasant.
I noticed something interesting while driving in New Jersey. Along the state’s interstates, almost every overpass (whether a crossroad, a railroad, or a pedestrian overpass) has an enormous American flag draped on the bridge. That really stood out, because New Jersey is a place I think of as among the most liberal states, and public displays of patriotism are not normally regarded as a “blue state” trait. However, New Jersey is also where about half the people who died in the World Trade Center attack actually lived. Driving past overpass after overpass bedecked in the stars and stripes, I came to rather like the symbolism of conspicuous patriotism in a heavily Democratic state. I couldn’t help but think of Barack Obama’s speech to the Democratic convention in 2004, where he said:
… The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
There are things I like and dislike about Senator Obama, but I definitely agree with that paragraph. The red/blue distinction is far too simplistic and divisive, and it’s time for the media to realize that every state is really mostly purple.
Before long I made it to I-287, the New York City beltway. At this point the beltway is mostly eight lanes wide, and while the immediate surrounding area is still forest it’s not hard to tell that the whole area is suburban. I exited at the suburb of Basking Ridge, which is home to numerous chemical companies and the place formerly known as Bell Labs. That the street I was on was called “Verizon Drive” tells which of the companies that used to be AT&T this one became. Like much of New Jersey, Basking Ridge is full of true industrial parks. The factories are architecturally interesting buildings on nicely landscaped lots surrounded by forest.
Mixed in with the industrial parks are old farmhouses that today are essentially suburban mansions. Homes that would cost next to nothing in rural Iowa sell for close to a million dollars in Basking Ridge. Most come with an acre or two of property, but they’re close enough together that the feeling is definitely suburban rather than rural.
There’s a fairly large area near here that really is rural, though. In fact, it would probably best be described as wilderness. Just east of Basking Ridge is the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, which just happened to be my first destination of the day. Much of New Jersey is native swamp (the “meadowlands” to which local place names refer). The vast majority, though, has been drained as the most densely populated state in America has become home to ever-increasing millions of people. The land that is now preserved as the wildlife refuge was in the 1950s slated to become New Jersey’s principal airport. A combination of airport opponents and environmentalists were able to purchase the land, which they donated to the federal government for use as a wildlife refuge.
While the Great Swamp touts itself as a prime bird watching area, I was here mostly to hike. There is a lovely network of boardwalk trails leading throughout the swampland, and the cool of the early morning made for wonderful hiking. I spent about forty-five minutes walking along the trails, and I while I didn’t see much of any wildlife I still thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Just north of Basking Ridge I-287 passes by Jockey Hollow Encampment, part of the Morristown National Historic Site. General Washington spent a far more severe winter at Morristown than the more famous one he spent at Valley Forge (which, by the way, is only about fifty miles away). However there were better housing and provisions at Jockey Hollow, so almost none of the troops here died. I’d been to Morristown twenty-four years ago. My brother Paul attended a national convention of the National Education Association that summer, and my father and I accompanied him out to Philadelphia. While Paul went to meetings, Daddy and I made day trips all over the area, one of which took us up to Morristown and on to Thomas Edison’s workshop in West Orange. That was the last time I spent any significant amount of time with my father before he died, and I couldn’t help but think of him as I drove through the area this morning.
My destination this morning was Morristown, but I really had little interest in the historic significance of this colonial town that long ago morphed into a suburb. Less than half a mile from I-287 and within easy walking distance of Washington’s headquarters is the old depot that serves as the Morristown NJ Transit station, which was the reason I was coming here this morning. On a weekday this station would probably not be a good choice for a tourist. Most of the parking near the station is leased on a monthly or annual basis, and those spots that aren’t almost certainly fill with commuters by 7am. On a weekend, though, Morristown was an ideal station to use for a day trip into the city.
As I pulled into the NJ Transit parking lot, I had to skirt my way around an oversized white van that said “State of New Jersey Prisoner Transport” that was surrounded by numerous young men in brightly colored jumpsuits being supervised by a couple of harried-looking guards. This was basically the modern equivalent of an old chain gang. The prisoners had apparently been contracted to do construction and maintenance work for NJ Transit. Today they’d be shoveling gravel along the rail bed near Morristown. I’d be back tomorrow and see the same crew painting stripes in the station parking lot. I used the term “chain gang”, but they weren’t actually in chains and were almost certainly from a minimum security facility. While I’m sure the construction union is probably screaming bloody murder, this project struck me as a good use of both the inmates’ time and the state’s money.
You get an idea of both how geographically small and how heavily populated New Jersey is from the fact that public transportation here is primarily operated at the state level. NJ Transit runs trains and buses all over New Jersey, as well as in nearby parts of New York and Pennsylvania. While they operate all types of transit, the core of their system is a variety of commuter rail lines that fan out from New York City to the most distant suburbs. If it were a weekday, I could have boarded a NJ Transit train at White House, New Jersey—less than ten miles from the hotel I stayed at in Pennsylvania last night. That particular line doesn’t operate on weekends, and the combination of that and wanting to go hiking at the Great Swamp made Morristown an ideal choice.
The commuter trains I’ve taken more often than any others are the Metra trains in Chicagoland. Metra has a special weekend ticket where for $5 you can get unlimited rides anywhere in the system—a great value for tourists who don’t want to drive into the city. Unfortunately there’s no such deal on NJ Transit (and judging by the heavy ridership, they don’t need any discounts to promote business). The best deal I could get was an “ORT” (off-peak round trip ticket), which cost $17.25 to go to New York and back. (If I were really stingy, I could have saved a couple more bucks by buying a ticket to Hoboken and then taking the PATH subway on into New York. That service is much less frequent, though, and it also involves an awkward transfer.
I was expecting to buy my ticket from a machine, so it took me by surprise to see a long line of people queued at a ticket window. There are no machines at Morristown, so I had to join the line. It moved fairly quickly, but its length meant that it was almost exactly departure time when I finally got to the front. Fortunately that track construction the prisoners were doing had made the train late, so I didn’t miss it.
In fact my train was the second one to show up at the station. With the construction trains in both directions were running on the same track, and it confused almost everyone on the platform when the first train that arrived was actually headed for Dover, a suburb just off I-80 west of Morristown.
I’d ridden NJ Transit once before, when I took students out east for quiz bowl back in the ‘90s. On that trip we stayed in New Brunswick, New Jersey and took the Northeast Corridor line of NJ Transit into the city. That route was frankly ugly, running mostly along the back side of old factories and ending up in bad inner city neighborhoods in Elizabeth and Newark. The Morris & Essex line (named for the counties it serves) made for a much more pleasant ride. For the first half of the route the immediate right-of-way was forested, with office parks and pleasant residential neighborhood farther back. Almost every station in this area has a big park-and-ride facility. These were fairly empty on the weekend, but I’d imagine they are overflowing on business days. Things start looking more urban at “the Oranges”, a series of stations that serves an area that was suburban in Victorian days, became very seedy in the late 20th Century, and is now being rapidly gentrified. Through the Oranges the route parallels I-280, the route I drove along when my father and I visited Edison’s lab all those years ago. When we reached Newark I expected the same bleak urban landscape we’d seen on the Northeast Corridor train. The route we followed today was much nicer. It wasn’t exactly beautiful (I think you’d be hard-pressed to say anything in Newark was “beautiful”), but it wasn’t the sort of thing that made me ill either.
The train was about half full when we left Morristown. People got on and off all along the route, but a lot more boarded than departed. It was standing room only by the time we reached Secaucus, the last station before we tunneled under the Hudson to New York. They run trains hourly on weekends (and every 15 to 30 minutes weekdays), and I gather from comments people made that with gas prices what they are these days all the trains are now running full.
The construction had made us ten minutes late departing Morristown, and we also arrived at Penn Station precisely ten minutes late. The trip takes just over an hour by train. In weekend traffic you could probably drive it in half an hour, but it would likely take you another half hour just to find a place to park (and at least the cost of the round-trip train ticket to pay for that parking). I gather at rush hour the same trip would take over two hours by car.
I followed signs through the underground maze that is Penn Station and eventually made my way to the subway concourse beneath 7th Avenue and 34th Street. To continue I needed to buy an MTA metrocard, the flimsy plastic card with a magnetic strip that replaced tokens for admission to the subway. There are two kinds of metrocards. You can either buy one worth a specific amount of money and have $2 deducted each time you take a ride or you can pay a flat fee and have unlimited rides for a set period of time. In most cases the unlimited ride card would be a better deal for a tourist, but today I knew I wouldn’t be taking a lot of subway rides and I would be riding PATH (a different subway not run by MTA, which accepts pay-per-ride but not unlimited ride metrocards as payment). That meant that today buying the pay-per-ride card was better value. I put $10 in the machine and got a card with $12 in value. I later added 50¢ more, which covered all my rides for the day. Tomorrow I’d buy an unlimited one-day pass for $7—which when all the rides were on MTA subways was a better deal.
Before making this trip I checked the MTA website several times. The site has numerous features, including “podcasts” (downloadable audio programs) that describe the many deviations from standard patterns that the different subway lines have. Most of those begin with the following statement:
Because of ongoing construction and renovation work, navigating the subway on the weekend can be tricky. Sometimes you may have to go backwards to go forwards or change your traveling pattern all together.
Those lines went through my mind as I entered the subway this morning , where I immediately encountered a change of traveling patterns. Most of the subways in New York operate on a twin system, with different lines providing local and express service on the same route. On 7th Avenue (what any other city would call the “red line”), the 1-train normally runs local, while the 2 and 3 are express trains. Local trains run on the outside tracks in New York, while express trains run on the inside. Pretty much everybody in the station was confused to see 1-trains running on the inside tracks and 2’s and 3’s on the outside, exactly the reverse of what they should be doing. It turns out they’re doing major construction at the south end of Manhattan, forcing the 1-train to end before its normal terminal. There’s no place to turn around on the local tracks, though, so it had to be diverted to the express tracks to stop short of the end of the line. The 2 and 3 are able to run on the local tracks and then turn off toward Brooklyn, which is where it would run to normally. When you hear the explanation, it makes sense, but it was goofed up almost everyone on the busy platforms at 34th Street.
Fortunately this particular diversion didn’t really affect me at all. I was taking this line exactly one stop northward, and any train on either platform would do just fine for that purpose—no matter which tracks it ran on. I was expecting a 1, but the 3 got me to 42nd Street without a hitch. I then transferred to the S-train, a shuttle that does nothing but run back and forth under 42nd Street between Times Square (where I got on) and Grand Central (where I got off). It takes exactly one minute to make the trip on the S, while it would be at least ten minutes walking.
Since I was there, I decided to go upstairs and actually see Grand Central Station, which I’d heard was a glorious relic from the era when trains were trains. While its basement is one of the ugliest parts of the New York subway system, upstairs Grand Central is spectacular. The grand hall is all marble with gilded highlights, and with people scurrying all over the place it really does look like those Norman Rockwell paintings from World War II—at least until you realize most of the people in the station are Asian or Hispanic rather than lily white.
* * * * *
I walked east to 1st Avenue and the northward to about 45th Street. The area along the East River where the streets are in the mid 40s is called United Nations Plaza and is officially considered international territory rather than land that is in the United States. In my apartment I have an art print of the United Nations that my mother used to display in our home when I was growing up. I must say the artwork looks much better than the real thing. Up close the U.N. complex is frankly rather ugly. The Secretariat building is a big slab of black glass. It was one of the earliest examples of minimalist modern skyscrapers, and its successors definitely have more character. That building, though, is definitely nicer than the actual U.N. headquarters, which is a low round concrete building that has aged about as well as a public housing complex. The plaza is also not much to look at, mostly bare cement with a few sculptures and decorative trees here and there. There are flag poles outlining the plaza where they fly the flags of all the nations of the world on days when the U.N. is in session. On a weekend, though, the empty poles just made the plaza look more barren.
I’d visited the U.N. on that same trip I made with my father in ’83. While I had vague positive memories of the tour, the main thing I remember was actually driving in Manhattan. That was surprisingly easy to do since it was the 4th of July when we came. We parked on a side street just off of 42nd Street right in the heart of midtown (something that’s supposed to be impossible to do), wandered around on foot for about five hours and returned to find we’d left the headlights on in the car. (We’d turned them on because we came through the Brooklyn—Battery Tunnel to get into Manhattan.) Fortunately the battery was good and the car started up without a problem. I don’t know what we’d have done if it hadn’t.
Since I really didn’t remember any specifics of my trip to the United Nations, I figured it would be good to see the place as a real adult. I made my way to the north end of the plaza and prepared to go inside.
As you might expect, security is tight at the United Nations these days. I recall when I came here with Daddy that we just went inside the building, bought a ticket (or perhaps it may have been free), and joined a tour. They may have had a metal detector, but it certainly didn’t stand out. Today they have an enormous tent set up at the north end of the plaza, with a huge tape maze leading up to security. The uniformed officers have all the charm of a Soviet customs inspectors (or American ones, for that matter), and they certainly don’t make this seem like a place that would be a center of world peace. They seem extremely preoccupied with petty rules in the security area, much more so than at airports. There are signs everywhere advising that photography is strictly forbidden, as are food, drink, audio recording, and having cell phones turned on. I was scolded for not placing my items in the X-ray tub in the preferred manner and scolded again for taking too long in re-claiming my stuff. I expected there would be serious security in what amounts to a government building, but I hadn’t expected such rudeness.
Once through security, I exited the tent, made my way across the plaza, and then entered the ugly concrete building. They charge $13 for tours—definitely on the pricey side, but I was willing to do it. English tours leave about every 10 minutes, and that was about how long I waited for mine. They also give scheduled tours in French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian, and there are occasional tours for people who don’t speak any of the official U.N. languages. Today, for instance, a Swedish tour would be starting at 11:30, and there was a Korean tour in the afternoon.
They recruit college kids from all over the world to be U.N. tour guides. It’s apparently a major competition, with language ability being the primary skill that determines who is selected. The guides are required to be fluent in at least two of the official U.N. languages, and it is preferred that they speak another language as well. Our guide was a young man from Israel who spoke English, French, Russian, Arabic, and Hebrew. The Spanish-language tour just before ours was being led by an American woman who also spoke English, French, and German. The tours are intended to be given in the indicated language, but the guides will occasionally answer a brief question posed to them in another language. Ours, for instance, answered one quick question in Arabic from a Middle Easterner on the tour and another in French that was posed by a Canadian. I actually understood the French question and answer (clarifying what he had said about some artwork), but I have no idea what the Arabic might have been.
The tour basically takes you to the main meeting rooms inside the U.N. building. In each the guide briefly described the nature of the body that met there and its duties and then went on at length about the design and decoration of the room. I personally would have preferred to hear more about the United Nations and less about the art, but it wasn’t a bad tour. Since they did focus on the décor, it intrigued me just how dated the meeting rooms looked. The place was built in the ‘50s, and both the architectural details and the furnishings (light wood with curved corners and blue-painted metal) make it look rather like a high school from that era. Unlike the outside, the interior has been meticulously kept up. What was ultra-modern after World War II looks strangely old fashioned today, though.
Between one meeting room and the next, we saw a variety of exhibits in the various lobbies. One was about the U.N. peacekeeping forces. The local National Guard from Algona is now part of the U.N. forces in Kosovo, so I paid particular attention to that exhibit. It intrigued me that U.N. troops always wear blue hats or helmets regardless of the nations they come from. Canada and France have supplied more U.N. forces than any other countries on earth, but every member country has supplied some troops. Most U.N. troops are unarmed, and those that do carry weapons are only authorized to use them for self-defense.
One person on the tour looked at a map showing all the places where U.N. troops have been in the past sixty years and asked why Iraq wasn’t included. The guide explained to her that there is no U.N. peacekeeping force in Iraq. American forces may be part of a “coalition” that includes a minimal European presence. Calling the war “peacekeeping” would be a stretch, though, and the United Nations has nothing to do with the conflict.
Another exhibit told about the U.N. budget, which is largely allocated to member countries on an ability to pay basis. The U.S. has frequently complained that our assessment is by far the largest of any country’s (something it might be reasonable to re-assess as places like China and India see their economies explode). There have been many occasions when the U.S. has been late on its payments as a sign of protest, but we are currently paid in full.
In addition to where it comes from, they explained where the U.N. budget goes. The guide used this as an opportunity to explain all the little things in everyday life we take for granted that have come about because of the United Nations—things like making it an international standard that traffic lights use the colors red, yellow, and green; requiring that all air traffic communications be done in English, regardless of the native language of the pilot or controller; or establishing global standards for drugs and medical devices. Press coverage tends to focus on the actions of the Security Council, but an awful lot of the body’s business has been simplifying international trade and commerce.
As with virtually all tours, this one ended in a gift shop. They have an eclectic combination of junk, scholarly books, and “objects d’art” filling the cavernous store. They really push philately. Since it’s technically not part of the United States, the United Nations issues its own stamps—worth 41¢ but for sale and usable only at the U.N. There was a long line at the postal counter, so I didn’t get any of those. I did, however, pick up a few souvenirs. My favorite is probably a United Nations computer mouse pad. The pad is completely round, which actually is a better design than most mouse pads (where the corners are almost never used), and it features the design of the U.N. flag—a polar projection of the world map with olive branches at the bottom.
I walked from the United Nations through the posh East Side district. My main knowledge of this area was that it was where “Auntie Mame” lived in the play and movie of that name and where George and Weezy Jefferson went “movin’ on up” to on TV. It combines high rise condos, rowhouses (“brownstones” in local parlance), and small apartment buildings with businesses on their lower floors. This part of New York feels a lot like a European city. It’s not a beautiful neighborhood, but it pleasant and lively and made for a fun place to have a walk.
I made my way north and west to the corner of 51st Street and Lexington Avenue, where I went back down to the subway. My next priority was to get a new camera. The camera I had was one my brother Steve gave me years ago. I’ve always liked it because it’s a cheap, simple camera. It’s not something I ever worried about losing or having stolen, and it turned out some pretty good pictures. Unfortunately it was on its last legs. The rewind mechanism had been slowly dying, and when I finished up a roll of film at the U.N. I found out it wouldn’t work at all. It’s hard to buy cheap cameras these days; everybody’s pushing digital instead of film, and most of the cameras have lots of fancy features I really don’t want. So I took the train to the one place I knew of in New York where I was reasonably certain I could find what I wanted. That place was the K-Mart at Astor Place. This was the third time I’d been to the former Wannemaker’s Department Store in as many trips to the city. The multi-story discount emporium has a direct entrance to the 6-line subway station at Astor Place. Inside it’s vertical rather than horizontal, but otherwise it’s like any other K-Mart in the country. I quickly found exactly what I was looking for, basically a newer but more poorly made version of the camera I was replacing. I got out a scrip card I’d intended to use at the Algona K-Mart. It worked fine in Manhattan, though, and in just a few minutes I walked out of the store with my new camera.
(c) 2008 davidmburrow@yahoo.com
The background music on this page is the Beatles' classic "All You Need Is Love", which seems appropriate for the United Nations.