Road Trip

And here we get to the slightly vaguer entries, because these are being done entirely from memory rather than from notes made. The reason for this is that I didn't get as far as making any notes before we came home.

With today came new things. We had to move on from Manhattan, finally. Over breakfast we noted that the temperature readout on the side of the bank across the road said -16°C. The TV in the breakfast bar was showing coverage and analysis of the peace protests that had taken place around the world. Three pundits argued over the validity of the protests and the viability of a war against Iraq. Then after that was a phone-in for people to speak to the channel's TV doctor. The subject of the phone-in was coping with the stress of living with terrorism and war. This once again smacked of over-emphasising the whole subject, and of media sensationalism. As someone who grew up on the edge of London through several IRA bombing campaigns, it struck me as the sort of effort that would worsen the hysteria rather than lessen it. Given that said bombing campaigns were largely financed by donations from American citizens, I find the whole American righteous War On Terror(TM) thing pretty offensive and hypocritical in the first place. But enough with my subjective soapbox, I'm really not one for looking to get into political arguments, especially not at the moment.

We caught our first and only New York cab to the car hire place to pick up our transportation to Ithaca. It was a Chevrolet Cavalier. A nice red one. The lady in the car hire office asked us if it was okay us having such a small car and if we wanted to pay for an upgrade to a bigger one. LOL. The Cavalier was the largest car I've ever driven. You could compare it to a typical British saloon car.

I'd never driven on the right-hand side before. I'd never driven a left-hand drive car before. I'd never driven an automatic before. This all changed. And it was easy. It took me about ten minutes to get used to driving the car. Despite all the comments about how I must've been crazy to want to drive around Manhattan, it was actually a pretty good decision. Firstly, it was Sunday morning and the roads were not packed with traffic. Secondly, most of the roads in Manhattan are one-way, allowing me to adjust to one thing at a time and not have to worry too much about the side of the road thing to begin with.

Alison had a visit to make to a YCMA to talk about accomodation possibilities, and after that we drove round to see the UN. We didn't stop, just drove past it. Bit of a shame really, because I really did want to have a proper look, but that was as close as I got.

We'd made the decision to leave via Brooklyn Bridge, on the East Side of Downtown Manhattan. With the UN being at more of a Midtown level, this meant we needed to head downtown. So guess which road I decided I wanted to head downtown along? Yup. Broadway. Once again, it's the sort of thing that sounds mad but really isn't that much of an issue.

It took some time to get out of New York City. Our choice of route out had complicated matters. In addition to crossing the Brooklyn Bridge we also had to cross the Triboro Bridge and the George Washington Bridge. Traffic wasn't too busy, but I don't think you could exactly call it light either. And although we did use a fair bit of Interstate, the majority of our journey was on, erm, State Highway?

There are a number of amusing things we saw on our way down. A town called "Deposit". Various "interesting" approaches to driving. The funniest of all I think was some company premises that said "Dykes" on a sign in big letters. This was particularly funny because it was, according to the smaller writing on the sign, a lumber company. Given certain stereotypes that exist, regardless of their accuracy, I'm sure you can see the amusement. And we had lunch at an American Pizza Hut. Not much different from the UK variety, although not surprisingly they had a slightly different idea of what constituted a medium pizza.

We reached Ithaca late afternoon. Navigation of the downtown area was interesting, especially seeing as we didn't have any directions to our motel, only a note telling us what road it was on. This was of course a road that went through Ithaca, and being in the centre of the town we had to choose whether to go North or South along it. South was what we went with, and 100 metres or so later, South turned out to be correct.

Alison had contacts in Ithaca. One of her contacts in Italy grew up in Ithaca, and her mother was to be our guide to the town. Since I don't tend to like naming people who aren't aware of this diary, we'll call her Mom L. Mom L had drafted in one of her friends, who I'll call Friend P following the same naming scheme, even though it sounds really crap. Mom L had invited us to join her and her family for Sunday dinner, and we accepted, since Alison wanted to talk to her as much as possible about Ithaca. So we had dinner with Mom L, Friend P, Sister K, Sister C, and Santa Claus ;-)

And then after dinner while Mom L, Friend P and Alison discussed what there was that we needed to see and do while we were in Ithaca, I sat down with Sister K, Sister C and Santa to watch the 300th episode of The Simpsons. And then after that, the 301st episode. Both were cool, with the 300th being especially good. Santa made cookies. Fresh choc-chip cookies. Yum.

Friend P gave us a lift back to our motel, during which we had an interesting discussion about the whole political situation at the moment in the US. I had been very wary of the subject, knowing that my views on the whole thing were probably unpalatable to most Americans, so it was both strange and refreshing to meet people who more or less thought the same way.

I realise this entry has ended up a little more subjective than the others, but as I write it I'm in a subjective kinda mood. You can like that, or you can lump it. It's your choice.