The All-New Bunrab

Watch the gap! is the LIRR's motto, apparently, and they repeat it more frequently than almost anything else. For that matter, Amtrak says it a lot too, although they are more polite and less New York about it: "Please be aware of the gap between the train and the station platform." I've just been in New York again for a few days, visiting my friend Sally-the-hoarder and helping her throw out some more stuff. We got a lot done. The upstairs of the house is *almost* empty, so that it can be recarpeted and repainted and rented out, which will help a great deal in supplying money for doing long-delayed maintenance and renovation to the rest of the house. We put a whole bunch of small furniture items out at the curb, and, since it's the weekend lots of college students are settling in, almost all of it disappeared within minutes. Except for a sofa in really bad condition, cat-pee-wise. Which is too bad, because other than that, it was in excellent condition. Oh well, it will keep the town sanitation department bulk pickup guys employed. And lots more papers went to recycling, and lots more stuff that she's keeping went into clear plastic bins where it can be stacked neatly and she can see what's in them, instead of losing track and buying duplicates. Progress! Next: convincing her to get rid of some of the downstairs stuff, where she has her grandmother's stuff, including furniture, and ALL her parents' furniture, as well as everything that she has purchased over the years. And she claims to love it all, including the 50-year-old lamps with brittle cords and shades that are in shreds. Sigh. Oh well. A little bit at a time.

I got back Saturday. Coming back on the LIRR to get to Penn, there were many, many college students, and many, many open cans and bottles of beer, and much shrieking. Which made the conductor change the announcements a bit: "Watch the gap. And take your crap with you. This means you. Take your beer bottles and crap off the train with you." The Amtrak regional back to here was quieter. Train really is a very comfortable and easy way to travel. And do it late enough at night, and the fares are less than half what they are at peak times.

Today we went to the State Fair, as this is the last weekend of it. I looked at all the "home arts" - needlework and cooking, mainly, and I was interested mostly in the needlework - and we went to the Sheep and Goats pavilion and the Swine Judging pavilion and the Cow Palace - skipped the horse barns, since there were signs saying no strollers allowed past this point, and I assumed that applied to my scooter, too. Yes, same scooter that I took to Europe. It makes wandering around several crowded blocks' worth of fairground doable. Let's see, then a tiny chickens-and-rabbits building, then the Exhibition Hall, with vendors of all sorts of stuff Ginsu knives!, waterless cookware!, handwriting analysis!, Jews for Jesus!, Electrostatic brooms! (we bought one of those); candy apples (I bought a couple of those...), cinnamon pecans, Jack Daniels mustard and barbecue sauce! For those of you not familiar with State Fairs in the USA, this is a pretty typical vendor selection. All sorts of crap, mixed with some good stuff, mixed with booths from the political parties and several government agencies and a few more charities and a lot more crap for sale. Then through the 4-H petting area, which included a very attractive llama and a snooty alpaca. Walked through the Midway a bit, and the food pavilion featuring locally made/grown foods - everything from corn-on-the-cob to lamb sandwiches to pit beef, not just junk food but some halfway real food - to get to the last hall, the Agriculture Hall, which featured lots more state agencies' booths, and a John Deere tractor, plus all the prize-winning individual pumpkins and apples and corn and flowers... chatted with the people from the Maryland Insurance Admin for a while, wherein we shared a few laughs about Inland Marine insurance. I don't often get to talk to other people who think Inland Marine is as funny as I do. Outside that pavilion were the armed forces recruiting trailers, and the Motor Vehicle Admin's trailer (guess how many people wanted to visit that) and the county fire department's safety training trailer. And then a last glance toward the Midway, and we were done. We would have spent longer, but they don't have as much of a rabbit show here as they have at the Texas state fair or the Massachusetts state fair, nor nearly as many hysterical-looking chickens. No emus. No pig races. And we skipped the learn-to-milk-a-cow parlor.

So, now that I'm back from being sick (previous post) and going to NY and going to the fair, I have about two weeks worth of y'all's posts to catch up on, ha ha. If there's something I absolutely need to know, give me a comment here so I can go check it out, 'cause otherwise I am going to just read the last couple days' worth.

So, going up to NY (it's up from Baltimore, although where I was going was Long Island, not upstate - which, if one grows up on LI, means anything north of Westchester...) I took the bus, good old Greyhound. Here's how I make such travel decisions:
Normally Amtrak, Penn to Penn, costs $86. But for some reason, all the fares for Friday afternoon were around $114, except for the Acela, which was even worse. So I went looking at bus fares, and the normal fare to NY-Port Authority is $32, and they were having a sale where if one pays for one's ticket online and prints out one's own copy, it was only $20. Plus the $2 subway fare to get from Port Authority to Penn Station to catch the LIRR, which I wouldn't have needed to take the subway if I had used Amtrak. So, $22 vs $114, for a 4.5 hour bus ride vs. a 2.5 hour train trip. $92 difference, 2 hours, that's $46 per hour. Now, the most I have ever earned in my working life is about $26 per hour. So, I count my time as being worth that. If I can save more than $26 by using up an hour of my time, it's worth it; if I can't save that much, then I'll pay money instead of spending time. This kind of calculation, incidentally, works for all sorts of things: deciding whether to pay for a hotel at a conference vs. stay at a relative's or friend's nearby; is it worth spending an hour searching the basement for something I can't find instead of just buying a replacement... If you ever have trouble deciding whether to spend money on having someone do something for you instead of doing it yourself, this is one possible tool. (Pay someone to clean the carpets, vs. renting a steamer from the store and do it yourself? Drive across country, vs. fly?)

So, Greyhound it was. The people on the bus were a couple blind people, some people who mumbled to themselves without a cell phone, and a bunch of college students. No one really obnoxious. The driver had another driver catching a ride with him, but despite their constant chatting, I was able to catch about an hour's nap in there, and spent the rest of the time crocheting. The bus seats are wider and recline more than an airplane seat, but less than the train, and the little light overhead is dimmer than either train or airline lights; I was able to read a magazine with glossy white paper, but I don't think I'd have been able to read a paperback book with smaller typeface and slightly yellowed paper. There was a lot of traffic in the last 10 miles of the trip - horrible backups at the toll booths, what a surprise. Lanes closed, sounds of jackhammers. Nonetheless, we got into Port Authority only a few minutes after scheduled time. Then it was downstairs to the downtown subway, buy a ticket from a vending machine - no more tokens! - and one stop down to Penn Station. The subways are cleaner than they were a decade ago, and this one wasn't crowded, but they are still as noisy as ever. Noise is one of the things I associate with NYC - the aforementioned jackhammers, the subways, the taxicab horns, the sirens, the sheer volume of that many people talking at once. Upstairs to the LIRR, buy a ticket out to Wantagh from the vending machine - I could have caught a 7:45 train out but would have had to pay peak fare, so I waited for the 8:06 and saved $4 or so. The LIRR is still the LIRR. No surprises there.

Coming back, I took the LIRR back to Penn Station, and by waiting for the 6:45 Amtrak back to Balto. instead of the 6:20, got the $86 fare instead of the $114 fare. It was worth paying the extra for train vs. bus for coming back, because I was paying not only for time saved, but for time to recover from exhaustion. The Amtrak seats are larger and recline more, and have seat-back trays, and the train station has decent food, so one can eat a small meal on the train and then recline and sleep quite comfortably, not the slightly neck-cricking nap I had on the bus. Got in at 9:15, where squirrel_magnet was waiting for me. (Cell phones make it SO much easier to take train trips!)

Overall, I think I would be willing to do the same again - take the bus and save money one way, take the train and save time the other. I wouldn't recommend it for the severely overweight nor for those who are especially spooked by mumbling schizophrenics. And at $20 each way, it would be worth going to NYC to a museum and coming back the same night, if I were with my sweetie and we could lean against each other to sleep on the way. Leave Balto. at 8 a.m. (and sleep on the bus), arrive in NYC a bit after noon, spend until 6 or 7 p.m. at a museum, catch a 7:30 or 8:00 bus back to Balto and be home around midnight. That would be tolerable.

Next up: what we did in our spare time on the weekend.

We picked up squirrel_magnet's new bike this afternoon. It was too dark already when we got home to take pictures; those'll have to wait. We shall say nothing about the Embarrassing Incident in the parking lot, since all's well that ends well, but really, John from Service had JUST finished warning me about center stands. One of the odder little falls I've ever taken. I still smell faintly of gasoline. (Blame as to exactly how it came about that the gas cover was not tightly closed has not yet been definitively assigned.) Oh well, they like us there, and they cleaned and detailed my bike. The new helmet box is nifty. (Speaking of nifty, I have been randomly re-reading old Sluggy Freelance, and so what I was singing at the top of my lungs on the way home was "Here he comes, Lord Grater, Lord Grater. He's smarter than a small po-tat-er.")

The new bike is, as I think I previously mentioned, a 1999 R1100RT. With fairing, windshield, and of all things a radio, which they even found a manual for. Not that S ever expects to use the radio. The fairing is handy in this weather. The high today was about 40°F, and it was dropping fast when we headed home. For me, one pair of cotton-nylon blend tights under my jeans works at 40°, but my knees start getting a bit chilly at 35°. (A pair of tights over a pair of pantyhose, and then jeans over them, will work nicely down to at least 20°F (-5°C), possibly even further but I've never tested them lower than that temperature.) I also bought a new windproof balaclava, to replace the one I bought last year and immediately lost. I'm sure that now that I've bought another one, last year's will show up in the next couple of days. Regular socks over the tights and under the boots kept my feet cozy right along.

It occurred to me that my bike is blue and I have a white helmet, and S's bike is green and he has a red helmet, and we wind up looking just a bit like the Chanukah-and-Christmas Bobbsey Twins.

Pictures next week, after I get back from my long weekend in NYC. Train fare seems to jump to $100 on weekends, at which point I decided to take the bus instead - they've got an eSaver fare of $20, and that difference makes it worth the extra 2 hours the bus takes. I'll then have to get from Port Authority to Penn Station, but no biggie, then the Long Island Snailroad out to Sally's, where the staying is cheap, which is how this trip still falls within my depleted budget. I thought about bringing the new horn with me, but no. Travel light. (I'm bringing the soprano recorder, though.) We'll mostly just be catching up on Sally's housework and paperwork. (There's stuff in that kitchen that her mother bought. Her mother passed away 4 years ago. There's 4 years worth of piled-up mail on the kitchen table. My strength is the speed at which I can chop that pile down to sacks full of recycling, and get them out the door, without the emotional turmoil it would cost her.)