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02/09/2004 Archived Entry: "A Busy Week"

The last week and a half has been busy, for a change, and I need to do some updating ....

The photo above was taken while I was parked on JFK Boulevard by 30th Street Station in Philadelphia on Thursday. It's a panorama of five handheld shots (forgot my tripod!), put together in Photoshop CS.

Thank goodness for ski trips, or this time of the year would be extremely slow. The week before last I had ski trips on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday: Thursday to Big Boulder and Friday to Shawnee, both in the Poconos, PA; Saturday to Blue Mountain in Palmerton, PA. The photo at right was from the bus parking area at the bottom of Blue Mountain.

Monday was a corporate group in New Jersey visiting my home town of Perkasie, PA; Tuesday and Thursday were sports teams going to away games; Wednesday was a school group going to New York City for the day. The photo at right is the fountain at Lincoln Center -- it was warm enough that day to be turned on and flowing -- a sign of spring?! As I mentioned before, I love parking near the Lincoln Center so I can walk to the public library there and make use of their free high speed Internet access in the warmth of the library.

On Friday we had six coaches scheduled for ski trips, all of which were canceled because of the rain, except for mine -- so I was back at Blue Mountain again. Conditions were slushy and icy, but the rain stopped about two hours after we arrived, and the kids had a great time -- the mountain was nearly empty since most trips had canceled.

Yesterday (Sunday) I was back in NYC with an adult group going to see Hairspray, one of my favorite Broadway shows (photo above was taken through the windshield from my driver's seat as I waited for my passengers). I found my favorite parking space near the library at Lincoln Center again, but, alas, due to budget cutbacks, the library is now closed on Sundays and Mondays, according to a sign on the door. So I had lunch at the Olympic Flame Diner (great food at reasonable prices; 10th Avenue at 60th; photo at right) with another driver and good friend, then spent the afternoon in the coach reading and napping. Thanks to a Verizon hotspot near there, I was even able to jump online for a short while and get my email. Traffic was extremely light going into the city Sunday morning, as usual, but very heavy coming out -- the opposite of last Wednesday, interestingly, when it was very heavy going into the city, and extremely light coming out -- the opposite of my normal weekday experience in NYC. I'm not sure what the explanation for that was. But it goes to prove my point -- NYC is an interesting, dynamic city, unpredictable in almost every way. I still love driving there, however!