Scenic Route

Friday night, I had trouble sleeping. It was mostly anticipation excitement over travel. I awoke at 3:30 and finally gave up and got out of bed at 4:30. I briefly considered walking over to the Public Market to get some fresh apples to take, but the cold and rain changed my mind. I was already packed so all I did was kill time before catching the bus at 6:50.

Depite all my preparation, habit kicked-in and I discovered I’d put my cigarette lighter in my pocket. Can’t fly with one any more, and I was afraid of missing the bus if I ran home to drop it off, so I left it on the bench at the bus stop for one of my neighbors to find. That was the worst of my travel experiences.

Check-in at the airport couldn’t be smoother with JetBlue’s self-check in kiosks. You just scan the receipt from the online ticketing and it spits out a boarding pass. The things are all over the place so there’s never a line—even coming back from JFK.

It was about a 15-minute wait at the security checkpoint, but when you consider that in Rochester we have one checkpoint for all gates and all airlines, and it seemed like the whole damned town was flying out Saturday morning, that’s pretty damned short.

In fact, I’m wondering what all the fuss is about with the TSA and everything these days. Granted, I was traveling as a single adult, over a holiday weekend, no checked bags, no laptop computer, and was using my passport for ID on an intrastate flight. But still, even when they wanted to ion-scan my backpack on the return flight, all it did was give me a nice place out of traffic to put on my boots.

Anyway, to give you an idea of how cloudy it is in Rochester when I say it’s cloudy, on the ground, it didn’t seem any worse than usual for this time of year. Dismal, gray, and gloomy.

With JetBlue’s little seatback TV and information service, (Motto: “Without you, we’d be flying TVs all around the county.”) I can report our airport’s elevation is 434 feet ASL, the cloud ceiling was 1,400 feet and we never broke through the clouds up to 24,000 feet. So Rochester must typically suffer under a four-mile thick blanket of clouds. No wonder I get depressed in the winter.

On the way back from JFK (elevation 4 feet ASL) the ceiling was about 1,500 feet, and the deck about 14,000 on Monday afternoon. I got to see the sun for 45 minutes before descending into Rochester, 4,500 feet deck, 1,500 feet ceiling for a “cloudy-bright” day.

Saturday morning, CBC was waiting for me in the “Designated Greeting Area” looking all cute and blonde and shit. I raced out and we embraced. Big ass bear hug is more like it. Then it was off through the teeming rain to find the Benz. CBC all but squealed with delight on finding the the parking lot exit gates use EasyPass. We just pulled right through and it zapped her account.

From the ground, my first impression of Long Island was familiarity. We were on one of the parkways, which were all designed by the same guy and built around the same time. So it looked just like the Lake Ontario State Parkway, only slicing through a built-up area instead of wetlands.

This impression changed once we got to Hicksville. Beautiful downtown Hicksville made me think of the pictures you see of California. Too many streets, all of them nonsensically wide and absolutely choked with traffic. Commercial buildings were just a jumble of architectual styles and periods.

I thought, Where are all the houses and the people? Answering my own question, They don’t need houses because they live in their cars stuck in traffic.

Had I driven, I’d never have found CBC’s street only because the visual cues I use when navigating just didn’t apply. She lives on a quiet, residential street that’s an alarming five lanes wide. No traffic, just really, really wide. I’d have mistaken it for yet another commercial avenue and just driven on by.

On reflection, I realize now that Hicksville is a transportation hub of Long Island. This tiny town is served by two north-south parkways, one east-west parkway and I-495, the east-west Long Island Expressway, plus a dozen surface-level state highways.

Add in that the north and south branches of the Long Island Railroad meet there, and there’s literally no room left for anything else. Except the mall. Huge fucking mall right in the middle of everything, fucking up traffic for blocks with too many entrances to too many streets leaving no room for cars to be when lights turn red.

And this was on a holiday weekend when everyone was away visiting their kids at collage for Parent’s Weekend.

The rest of area we visited was much different. I’ve been to the south shore and and I’ve been all the way out to Montauk. Those parts of Long Island are just what you’d expect of an overgrown barrier island. Flat and basically treeless. And lots of sand.

Long Island was formed at the southern end of the last glacier. It just bulldozed the rest of the continent into a pile in the ocean. The north shore reflects that. There are lots of hills and valleys. And unlike the ruler-straight south shore, it’s filled with lots of coves, bays and harbors. And trees! There were areas that, despite suburban encroachment, you could actually call forested.

No wonder people like to live on the north shore. It’s a very, very nice place. And the towns—centuries old—are built on a much more human scale. It was raining too hard on Saturday to walk around Oyster Bay, but I’d really like to go back. And maybe actually go out in the sailboat rather than just look at it bobbing in the bay.

Walking around Huntington on Sunday was a real treat. You could tell which businesses catered to old-time locals, which to upscale suburbanites and which to tourists. The Greek place where we had brunch was for the old-time locals. I tried to imagine myself living there, but it’s a little too upscale for my comfort.

Off-the-scale upscale is the only way to describe CBC’s parents’ neighborhood. Nestled in forested rolling hills accessed by twisting two-lanes, it’s home to the tennis court, swimming pool and stables set. Horse trailers are parked next to almost every garage. Except when they’re parked out behind the tennis courts instead.

Up the street from what I began calling CBC’s “ancestral estate” (much to her embarassment), turrets seem to be all the rage. Dr. An Wang’s old shack up the street seems to have started the craze with its single turret.

I mentioned all the older homes are purchased as tear-downs, and nice as it is, CBC’s parents’ home falls into this category. This is simply because it’s more than ten-years old, is less than 30,000 square feet and hasn’t a single turret.

Three doors down, which translates to over a quarter-mile, a new place is going up on the site of a tear-down. It appears to be bigger than the 21-unit apartment building I live in, and it has four turrets.

“I went down there the other night with a flashlight, you know, just to look around,” said CBC’s mom. “Did you know they have an elevator in that place? Who needs an elevator in a two-storey house?”

“Maybe it’s so they don’t break a sweat on the way to the in-home gym,” I suggested.

CBC’s mom, by the way, is a real hoot. I can see where she’d be a challenge to live with, but to visit, she was a lot of fun. She’s one of those people who, with a carefully placed word or two, you can send off into long and entertaining soliloquies.

We arrived shortly after a minor kitchen disaster. The lazy-susan in a corner cabinet broke. After poking my head in to retrieve a bottle of teriaki sauce and inspect the damage I told her, “There’s just no other way. It’s time for a new kitchen. After all, it’s about time anyway. Your countertops are Corian, for heaven’s sake. You need granite. And stainless steel appliances.”

This sent her into about a half-hour about the other homes in the neighborhood, including the aforementioned four-turret, single-elevator pile of sticks up the street. “This used to be such a nice neighborhood, you know?” she concluded. “Now, everything’s just crazy.”

You’d think crack dealers had just moved-in.

Later, when CBC’s step-dad arrived home, since it had been so entertaining before, I repeated the new kitchen/granite countertops thing. Step-dad groaned and furrowed his brow. “What?” I asked. “You don’t think she’d look marvelous sipping her morning coffee reflected in granite countertops?”

Tanks and tonks

CBC’s place is much more modest. It’s a two-bedroom half-a-house—the down part of an up-and-down. The whole thing would fit in her parents’ living room. (That said, my whole place would fit in their foyer.) One bedroom is given over almost completely to computers. Nine of the things in a commercial rack. There’s CBC’s desk, her roomie’s desk and a 30-gallon freshwater tank with goldfish.

Another computer is on the kitchen table and a 55-gallon freshwater tank sits by the window. It’s filled with the usual assortment of tropical fish, and the largest plecostomus I ever did see. And even this whopper can’t keep up with the algae from being in front of the window. Monday morning we ran CBC’s separate diatom/activated charcoal filter to “polish” the water.

In the living room there’s a 75-gallon saltwater reef tank, and a second 180-gallon monster that has yet to be filled. The 75-gallon one is the “starter tank” for the 180. Reef tanks are sort of tricky to set up and run because you’re essentially creating an ecosystem from scratch. So CBC decided to start small. Maybe no-one told her that 75 gallons is 2½ times the size of the average domestic hot water heater. I’m sorry, but that’s a lot of fucking water.

Just the amount she’s spent on “live rock” is staggering. Then there’s the corals, plants, salt, chemicals, test kits and other stuff, before you even get to the fish. Oh, and the lights simulate dawn, daylight, dusk and moonlight—including phases of the moon. Yikes!

In the corner of the living room is the six-foot cat gym that came with Ivan and Jake. CBC adopted them last month. They also came with an automatic litterbox that sounds like a miniature garbage truck when it rakes the litter and disposes of the nasty stuff.

Ivan and Jake are purebred Tonkinese cats. I am not a pet person, let alone a cat person. But Ivan and Jake changed my mind to the point I was seriously considering a kitty offered for adoption in a flyer dropped into the bookdrop last night. The fact that I’m only marginally responsible for myself (if that), and the memories of CBC cleaning up kitty puke, brought me back to my senses.

Still, as kitties go, Ivan and Jake are tops in my book. Even if they did wake me in the middle of the night running across the guest bed. And Monday morning Jake sneezed in my face my to get me up. And true to reports, they really do bring their toys over to you when they want to play. Ivan was enthralled when I dragged the stick-yarn-bell thingie under a pillow. He had apparently never experienced it disappearing under something and reappearing on the other side.

The guest bed was one of those electrically-inflated air mattress things that’s the size and height of a regular queen-sized bed, (how appropriate). Once we figured out that it really needs a blanket under the fitted sheet so you can make a warm spot, it was quite comfy. I slept like a rock. Or so I thought. Jake gave up on sleeping with me apparently because, even when sleeping like a rock, I thrash about too much. Maybe I slept like a thrash rock band. I dunno.

In any event, it convinced me that I really need to do something about my sleeping gear here at home.

Anyway, on Sunday, we ran the diatom/activated charcoal filter (removes particles down to one-micron and all chemical impurities) on the 75 gallon tank before adding some zooplankton to feed the reef. Who knew you could buy zooplankton at a pet store? The coral seem to like it a lot, being filter-feeders and all.

During my tour of Long Island fish and aquarium stores on Saturday, we even got to see the basement of a store where they “make” the water and have tanks where they turn “dead” rock into “live” rock. Fascinating.

Although not quite as fascinating as the twinkie at another store (where we bought the zooplankton) who, in demonstrating how to feed the plankton to the tank, put his delectable crotch just inches from my nose. I didn’t hear a word he said after that. I’d have let him feed me zooplankton if I could demonstrate I have a “longjaw” technique similar to that of some sort of longjaw fish I’d seen in a nearby tank.

Ahem.

More later…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 11:02 pm EDT and is filed under Generic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.