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03/08/2004 Archived Entry: "Philadelphia Flower Show"

Yesterday I drove for a company tour to the Philadelphia Flower Show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The show, put on by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, is in its 175th year and one of the largest of its kind. There are dozens of large, thematic displays within the show, as well as a market where you can buy nearly anything related to flowers and gardening. The show began yesterday and continues through March 14th.

After dropping my passengers at the Convention Center (which, btw, was pretty well organized -- coaches must be preregistered and are assigned one of two drop spots), I parked on JFK Boulevard near 30th Street Station. I've never been to the Flower Show despite having talked about going for years, so I decided this was my opportunity. Since I was already at 30th Street Station, it was very easy to take the train just two stations away to Market Street East ($3.50 each way); you don't even have to go outside to get from the train station to the Convention Center. It's a short 15 minute (or less) ride, with trains running about every 15 minutes all day, and it worked out very well. I really enjoyed the show; the flowers and displays are quite amazing. But the place was packed; I took more than 100 photographs (including the rose, above right), but had to be patient for people to move on so I could get close enough to the displays to see anything. Almost everyone else had a camera and was taking pictures, too.

It was also my first opportunity to drive one of our newest coaches. Our company just took delivery last week of two new MCI J4500s, and yesterday was only the third trip for the coach I drove. I love that new coach smell! Comments from the passengers were very positive, too; like the J4500s we got last year, they have the smoothest ride of any coach I've ever been in. The transmission (all our J4500s have the 10-speed auto-shift manual transmission) isn't quite as smooth as the fully automatics in our D4500s, but with a little more conscious control of your foot on the gas pedal and an eye on the tachometer (shifts are very predictable for the most part), you can keep the ride pretty smooth through shifts, too. They're not as fast off the line as the automatics but they're no slouches, either. I'll gladly drive one of the new J4500s anytime.