Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged traffic
Two Days In Philly
Sep 28th 2009
I have returned from my weekend trip to Philadelphia. As mentioned earlier, my friends and I had been planning on heading south to see Porcupine Tree in concert at the Electric Factory in downtown Philadelphia.
Philadelpha
There was a slight hitch in plans though, as Jay who got hit with a stomach bug earlier in the week was still feeling horrible Saturday morning, so Wassy and I were on our own for the trip.
Things started off uneventfully. We decided not to take the Pennsylvania turnpike down because of the potential for horrible construction, but we hit our fair share on the way anyway. One section of road was closed for about 4 miles with people who seemed to let random amounts of cars through the one available lane. And then as soon as we hit pennsylvania, it was construction galore. The runner up to most annoying construction zone was through Quakertown where they had a major road reconstruction project going on. It was slow going for us, but the other land was totally stopped for miles. We decided at that point to take the Turnpike back and avoid the horribleness.
The most annoying though was about a mile away from the hotel. They had set up cones closing off (for reasons totally unknown) the left lanes of a 4 lane (2 in each direction with a turning lane) road. This caused the last mile of our drive to the hotel to take roughly 10-15 minutes. And then as soon as we got into the hotel, they took the cones down! Jerks!
After that began the search for dinner. We had planned on hitting one of the Olive Gardens in the area, but we had some difficulty with this plan. The first one as plotted by my GPS didn’t exist. The second one existed but was totally full with no parking anywhere in the parking lot. The third one was also totally full with no parking, so we settled on Papa Johns pizza.
Then we made our way out to the venue. I had to game the GPS a bit to prevent it from making us drive straight through downtown Philly. And thankfully, Wassy and Jay had just gone on a trip down there for a wedding and knew about the evilness that is the Roosevelt Boulevard. If you are unaware of this road, I will direct you to this visual aid. Take a normal road with 6 lanes in each direction and then split it into 4 roads with 3 lanes each. In between each of the roads going the same direction, add some little merge lanes so you can go between the sections. If you need to turn right you need to be in the outside set of roads. If you need to turn left you need to be on the inside set. And if you’re in the wrong set of roads and you miss the merge lane to get you to the right set, you’re in trouble. So thankfully, Wassy was around to make sure I was on the correct road as the GPS doesn’t understand this setup at all.
We got to the venue without too much trouble, aside from having to park way the heck away in the event parking lot. Parking was only $10 though…I was thinking it would be more. The venue was pretty cool. Looked like something to come out of Guitar Hero actually. It’s a converted Electric Factory (hence the name of the venue) with some animations of machinery on the wall and 2 full bars on the upper and lower right hand side of the room as you face the stage. Pretty cool vibe, but it’s unfun being packed in like sardines on the floor.
The show itself was pretty cool. We watched King’s X and the first half of Porcupine Tree’s set from the back of the floor and then after we got tired of getting crushed by people trying to squeeze into places where they can’t possibly fit, we moved upstairs and listened to the rest of the show from the bar while watching on the video screens they had set up. PT’s second set was really cool and had a lot of treats, including Strip The Soul into .3. They had some sound issues in the second set, but nothing too bad. Trains in the encore was also really cool with everyone clapping in time and singing along. Overall, I wouldn’t mind going back there to see a show, as long as I didn’t mind not actually seeing the band all the time.
The drive back was abysmal. It was raining…at night…on unfamiliar roads…unfamiliar 4 lane highways…with lots of traffic. We somehow managed to make it back to the hotel ok though, and after Wassy scared the crap out of me (She was sitting over by the window after I came out of the bathroom into the dark room. I thought she was in bed, but she wasn’t. Once I got over to my bed she said quietly “It’s awfully dark in here…” and it freaked me the heck out).
The next morning I got up before her and went down to the hotel lobby to plan our route to the Philadelphia Museum Of Art. Wassy wanted to go to complete a couple of school requirements, as well as to look around at their collection. So I figured out the best way to get there and wandered back up where I was informed that the roads in the area of the museum were going to be closed due to a charity run/walk. Daaaaaahhh!!!!!
Philadelpha Museum Of Art
I managed to find an alternate route and we left expecting horrible traffic in our future, but we were able to make it to the museum parking garage without any problems at all. The first thing we did was walk around to the front of the museum where the famous steps are that Rocky ran up in the movie.
Being a tourist, I had to grab a picture of the stairs since I was right there…but I declined to do the whole “Run up the steps and celebrate once you reach the top thing”. Much too tourist-y for me. Plus there’s an awful lot of steps and it was very slippery out.
Thankfully, not 30 seconds after we arrived at the steps we were graced by the presence of not one, but two individuals making the famous run. Or trying to. One of the guys had to stop to catch his breath halfway through. But the first guy made it, allowing me to snap this picture:
He’s the guy in the middle with his arms raised. The guy on the right hand side is also running up. You can click on it and see the original size in Flickr for a better view. Every single time we looked out a window at the front of the museum, there were people making the run up.
French Cloister
The museum itself was REALLY cool. This was my first time there and I didn’t realize that they had more archetectual installations than actual art. Entire columns from old temples and churches (even the entire front of a church). They also had a bunch of recreated rooms, like a chinese study and an old kitchen. The coolest two was a French Cloister (pictured above) and a Japanese tea house sitting in a garden.
Celestial Woman
One of the coolest things though was the HUGE collection of Indian art and artifacts. The exhibition that Wassy used for her assignment was particularly cool. Ragas and Rajas: Musical Imagery of Courtly India. You can read more about it there but I’ll briefly summarize. It’s an exhibition of works that went hand in hand with the music of the court of India’s rulers. The pieces were amazing, very vivid colors and amazing detail with a style that looked a lot like it came from ancient egypt…except they were mostly painted in the 1600-1700s. And accompanying the exhibit was the music. It was extremely neat.
They also had a bunch of other artifacts from India and Nepal on display, including a Buddha statue that had about 40 hands, all giving the metal hand sign (throwing up the horns as it were). Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of a lot of stuff since I was too busy looking at it all. What I did take is in my Flickr photoset. We enjoyed the museum so much that we skipped out on going to the bakery we had planned on visiting and picking up some butter cake from.
So when we were done with the museum, we started the trip home, with a pitstop at an Olive Garden in Binghamton. This time it existed and it wasn’t busy, so we finally got our never ending pasta bowls. But we could really only eat one, so they ended pretty quickly.
But the drive back, in the Philly area was all about traffic and construction again. I-76 out of the city was packed and slow moving in places and the turnpike was also packed for quite a while. Oh yeah, the best invention of all time in highway toll roads is the EZ-Pass express lanes. No need to even go through the tollbooths or slow down. Awesome. Although speaking of EZ Pass, I’m afraid to look at my statement to see how much all of this cost me…
Once we got sufficently north of Philadelphia, the traffic thinned out and the driving was a lot easier. We started to wonder if we were going the wrong direction though because every time there was a construction zone, the way we were going, north, would be clear but the way south was backed up for miles with cars trying to make the merges. Strange.
Despite the heavy rain at night making it nearly impossible for me to see much in the way of lane markers on the roads and the guy who thought he would just make a left hand turn in front of me across my path of travel at an intersection that would have caused a pretty nasty accident had I not seen him, we arrive back at the apartment around 8pm. Just in time to unpack and get settled in for sleeping.
It was a fun trip, although I’m sad that Jay wasn’t able to come with us. I really want to go back to check out the rest of the art museum as we only had time to view about half of the main building. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it back down there again soonish.
Roller Coaster Concert Ride
Dec 8th 2008
If you may recall, my last blog post mentioned the fact that Wassy and I were going to attempt to head out to Albany to catch a TSO concert on Sunday, but we were worried about a stomach bug that was going around. As it turns out, we were both fine to go to the show.
Then we (I) was worried about the weather as we were supposed to get some really nasty winter weather about when we were going to be driving out. So we ended up leaving at 11am (for a 3pm show, 1.5 hour drive in good weather giving us plenty of buffer time). The plan was to go eat lunch at place that we ate at before when we went to see Dream Theater in Albany (Jackbit and Joltz, an "australian" sandwich place), then head to the show, then to Chili's afterwords.
The title of this post contains the words roller coaster because that's exactly what yesterday was. The drive up was nice…no weather problems at all. We got to Jackbit and Joltz to find they had closed, but we weren't too worried about that as we has 2.5 hours thereabouts to find somewhere to eat. We ended up chosing a KFC that was of questionable quality (especially their Dr. Pepper), but at that point it was just adding to the experience.
We had an awful lot of time before the show, so we headed out to Crossgates Mall to wander a bit. Wassy stopped by the Apple store and played around with the new multi-touch touchpads on the MacBook Pros in Photoshop CS4. She was sufficiently wowed by it. It did look really neat. We also discovered that there's an IMAX theater in albany. Which made us wonder why we drive to Rochester for our IMAX movies (it takes about twice as long to get there than it does to get to Albany).
After wandering for a while, we headed back out to the show where we hit a really huge snag in the form of INSANE traffic. I-787 was a parking lot so we ducked out at an exit and tried to navigate the streets of Albany to get to the parking garage. This was extremely slow going. Tensions and frustrations were rising and it was starting to look like we wouldn't be able to make the show in time. I eventually navigated down some side streets with the use of the GPS to attempt to circumvent most of the gridlock and we ended up in sight of the venue just before 3pm, still stuck in traffic. I told Wassy that she should hop out and head in because it might be a while before I find a parking spot and she hadn't seen the show before, so she went in and I was left to get to the garage. we were there late enough where I had to park on the garage roof.
By the time I got there it was after 3pm. I didn't want to wait for the elevator down so I sprinted down 6 flights of stairs and all the way across the parking lot building and the length of the times union center to where I could get in. As it turned out there were having some issues with one of the lighting pieces and that delayed the start of the show, so we were able to catch the whole thing. After the horribleness that was the ride in, the show was totally awesome.
I've said before, and I'll say it again. If you have not gone to see TSO, you need to go. Because nobody does a show like these guys. Case in point:
See?? Wassy took some very aweome pictures during the show so that's where all these images are coming from. As per usual, the lighting was set up on movable trusses that reconfigured themselves as the show went along depending on the song. They added a lot more uses of laser and pyro through the entire show and it was really nice. The new string master (female violinist, first name is Anna…but I'm blanking on her last name) was running around the stage and really getting into it and rocking out. At points she slid across the floor on her knees and bent over backwards to play on her back, and one time she took center stage and bent over backwards while still playing. She's very very nimble.
The first half of the show was the normal Christmas Eve and Other Stories set, which is enjoyable enough. It kinda lulls in the middle due to the presence, chiefly, of the song Old City Bar. it grinds the momentum of the show to a halt. We were in the PERFECT seats for First Snow. We It was "snowing" all around us and the lasers flashing off the falling snow was awesome.
The second half of the show was much more high energy and they threw in a lot of songs that they don't normally do which is nice for people who have gone to the show year in and year out. I really prefer the second half of the show to the first every year and this year was no exception. The new songs from Night Castle were good too, and I'm looking forward to that album. 2009 is looking to be a good year for music.
Before I get off the topic of the show, I just wanted to add this final picture from the grand finale. THIS is how you end a show:
Now for the down slide of the roller coaster. The show ran late, due to the lighting issue, so as we were leaving the, next show people were coming in, which caused havoc with the parking garage. We got back to the car just in time to have everything stop moving. Since we were at the top of the parking garage, we basically had to wait for everyone else to get out before we could even start moving. I suspect there was some sort of gridlock situation that was encountered as well because nothing moved on the roof for at least an hour after the show. Eventually we decided to leave the car parked and see if we could find someplace to eat while we waited for the congestion to work out. We wandered around for about 30-40 minutes and couldn't find anything that was either open or any good. so we went back to the car to determine that nothing had moved . Period. Half hour of nothing moving at all. It was…horrible. Eventually they started directing traffic to get people out but it was about 2 hours after the show ended before we finally made it to Chili's.
This part of the roller coaster ride was where it finally started to go up again. We had a really nice dinner and Wassy really enjoyed her margaritas. Not so good waitress, but we got our food and it was good. The car ride home was fun as well except for the part where we got stuck behind a snow plow for about 4 miles. But after all the stop and go traffic of the day, I was happy to just be moving.
So overall not the major relaxing day that we had both hoped we'd have, but the concert was awesome, the stuff before and after was good. The traffic kinda canceled it all out though. Next year: Going to a show in a city that isn't playing 2 shows in 1 day. Going to a show with a parking lot instead of a parking garage. Not going to the Times Union Center again.
Progressive Roadtrip Report – Day 1
May 25th 2008
Wassy and I have arrived in Washington DC. I'm typing this up this morning while she's getting ready for us to head down for breakfast and the other associated activities of today since I didn't have much time to do so last night. Or the energy for that matter. So…here we go. Well, actually, before we go, I just want to point out that all of the pictures I took (that were deemed acceptable for internet consumption) are located here at flickr.
I left from my place at 5:30am and arrived at her place by 6, as per the scheduled plan. A quick pit stop to gas up the car and we were off driving. Wassy had the wheel first, so I hesitantly turned over the control of the Rogue to her. Not that she's a bad driver or anything…but I'm just a little nervous when other people drive my car. The trip started out pretty foggy. I mean…very foggy. We basically were driving into a cloud as we drove down route 12. Eventually we ended up at around 7:00am stopping at a McDonalds in Norwich, NY for breakfast. At this point in the trip we still didn't really realize that vacation was here at last after weeks of waiting. We were also worried about zombie attack in the fog, considering Norwich had a large pharmaceutical corporation, a hospital and a fairly scary looking cemetary all right next to each other.
I should also mention that I had my first Egg McMuffin as well. We should have taken a picture but alas, I forgot. The trip was proceeding very nicely up to this point, with the only snag being that it seemed like one of Wassy's debit cards wasn't working right. But we pressed onwards anyway, leaving the fog behind us.
We entered pennsylvania ahead of schedule as it seems my time estimates were a bit too large. No problem as it gave us some time along the route to relax a little bit and not have to worry about getting there in time to do anything.
The first thing we noticed in Pennsylvania was that they were offering free coffee 24/7 at rest stops on I81. This seemed…kinda strange as there were actual people manning the free coffee stations. I'd imagine this would get pretty darn borning when nobody needed coffee. Additionally, we questioned the effectiveness of this safety campaign as if you're tired enough to need coffee in order to keep driving, you probably shouldn't be driving in the first place.
The other interesting thing was I81 South through Scranton. We came upon a road sign that told us that to stay on I81 we needed to go to the left when the road split, but the GPS lady was telling us to go to the right. So Wassy decided to follow the GPS lady and we hung a right. And on the right there was another sign saying I81 south, exit right. So we took that exit and ended up on I-81 south…the road that went off to the left. We have no idea how this was physically possible and looking at the intersection in google maps only helps slightly. I think it's a dimensional warp or a wrinke in space-time.
We had planned a stop in Hazleton, PA which was pretty much the midpoint of the journey to get gas and switch drivers. However, at a rest stop earlier I had noted that the vending machine had 3 types of skittles, so that caused Wassy to want something sweet and fruity. Which ended up being Tropical Skittles at the gas station in Hazleton. I got myself a white chocolate big cup peanut butter cup. Mmm… And after Wassy's debit card didn't work at the pump, we determined the problem…she was using the wrong card. Oops. At least it wasn't a big problem.
With me at the wheel, we continued down the road to Washington DC, heading south again on I81. It should be mentioned we passed the fateful exit for Tremont, PA, the run down mining town that we had stopped at for gas on the trip down last year. Thankfully, we were able to bypass that this time around with a little more solid planning.
As we passed through harrisburg though, we began to notice curious signs. Signs that advised us that "Motorcycles are EVERYWHERE". We looked around and saw no motorcycles which eventually led us to believe that we were walking into a motorcycle ambush and they were going to jump out of the trees at us. For the rest of the trip every time we saw a motorcycle, we repeated the phrase "Motorcycles are EVERYWHERE!". Another interesting road sign we passed was for a roadside stop. It advertisded "Snacks. Soda. BEER". With "BEER" being about 4x the size of the snacks and soda part. Other interesting road signs included a billboard for an "Ultima Massage II" with "Tractor Trailer Parking". Uh huh…so that's what they're calling it now.
The most interesting series of road signs though was just outside of Gettysburg. As we were traveling down 15 there was a little white sign on the side of the road advertising "Fresh Honey" or something. And every half mile or so there was another sign. It started off appetizing enough. Fresh honey, hand picked strawberries. But then it turned into things like raw goats milk and strange turkey parts. The two best signs had to be "Do you like pottery?" And then later down the line "We have pottery!", followed by "Meet the potters!".
We decided to skip the exit. We eventually ended up taking a break and eating lunch at a Ruby Tuesday's in Gettysburg which was nice. We had planned at stopping at Arby's but we had enough time to do something a little more healthy and relaxing.
After lunch we took the short drive down and entered Maryland, with the obligitory state sign picture taken by Wassy. The traffic started to pick up here (which is why I had taken the second driving shift, since I was more comfortable with my car.)
Things really started picking up once we got past Frederick, MD. Sorry, I was unable to locate the giant stick they have there. And eventually we arrived at the beltway, which would be more aptly named as a parking lot. It seems that we had finally encountered the memorial day travelers coming into Washington DC.
Things were basically stop and go for about 20 minues, in which we covered about 4-5 miles. Of road. But eventually we got through it and ended up at the hotel, after driving through the scenic roundabout again. Fun.
We arrived a little early expecing not to have a room ready since they made such a big deal about being full up and all. But there was almost nobody in the lobby when I went down and we were able to get a room right away. So after taking our stuff up to the room and getting settled in (Wassy instantly took over the bathroom with her suitcase full of bathroom related items) we headed out for the metro and for a stroll around the national zoo.
The zoo was particularly busy, although I guess we should have been expecting that considering it was a really nice day as well as memorial day weekend. We tried to hit the buildings first because they were going to be closing before the grounds did. The ape house was a madhouse. People everywhere trying to look at the apes, so we wern't really able to see much of anything there.
Eventually though we made our way past the crowds of people to a less crowded part of the zoo where we saw some sea lions and seals. They also seemed to have a lot more fish than I was expecting they would have at the Amazon rainforest type exhibit. Really cool stuff as I had wanted to see some fish at the national aquarium before realizing that the one in DC kinda sucked and the good one was out on Baltimore. But anyway, we saw some really big fish which I took some pictures of which are located in my flickr feed since I don't have the space to stick them here.
I do want to mention though, that the theme of the zoo trip seemed to be animals having a little too much fun together. Well, except the ducks…
We were a little bit concerned at first when two seals looked like they started to go at it in the water. That probably wasn't what was going on of course…but it sure looked like it to us! Take the photographic evidence there as proof. And then we saw a bunch of rapist ducks. It was…strange. There was a bunch of male ducks who were pretty much tackling a female duck. She'd scurry away but then a male would leap on her back and pin her to the ground. Nature at it's finest!
After we got back from the zoo, we went down to the hotel's restaurant which was very nice, just as it was the last time we were here. We had the palce pretty much all to ourselves which was nice because the waiter was right on top of everything. The service is very very nice there. After dinner and desert (mmm, white chocolate cheesecake) we headed out in search of some drinks. We started out at a bar just next door to the hotel (where we discovered the wonders of enjoying a nice Bob Marley. Mmm, fruity goodness), and eventually ended up back at the hotel lounge and then up in the room watching Knocked Up on HBO for a bit before nodding off to sleep (as it turns out we both fell asleep before the end of the movie so nobody knows what happened exactly)
Plans for today are the National Gallery of Art, and then Crab Smashing at night. Vacation continues!
Don’t They Know I’m On A Schedule?!?!?
Aug 29th 2006
Just got back from my trip to Best Buy to pick up Score…my that certaintly was interesting. First, it’s raining out, so there’s some giant sized puddles on the back roads which were the quickest way between work and Best Buy, so I get to dodge puddles. Then, I get on the main roads and end up following the slow moving lunch people coming out of the bank that’s in the area.So I get past them…BOOM! Construction! 1 lane road, 40 miles per hour. Grrr.
So I finally make it to Best Buy and grab the CD, but I can’t find the DVD. They don’t have it on the shelf iin the usual position so I scout around and eventually find it on an endcap with the new releases. I also grabbed the new Starfox game for the DS…Starfox Command.
Anyway, I go to pay and the guy takes forever…sigh. Then back through more traffic and construction. End result was my lunch ran 15 minutes long. Guess I get to stay here for a little bit after 5 to make up for it.
But Score is in my hands! I can’t wait to get home now.
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