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Thousand Islands Part 1: The trip before the trip

My brother and sister-in-law have been working for years on a a show - his music, her script. After many years of working to get all the pieces in place they finally got a production in New York. Needless to say, the dates of the limited run overlaid the dates of my Thousand Islands trip, meaning the only way I was going to get to see it was on the way either to or from the trip. So, the day before I would otherwise have left for the kayak trip I managed to cram all my gear, plus Ted and David, into my car and head north. I had made reservations at a hotel in Newark, NJ - which had parking for oversize vehicles (I had a kayak on the roof of my car), easy access to Manhattan via the PATH train, and was on the right side of the city for a quick getaway the following morning. The oversize parking turned out to be at a lot a block away. With some trepidation I left my car with my week's worth of camping and kayaking gear under the care of the skells working there and the boys and I headed into Manhattan. The PATH train stop in Newark is everything you'd expect of a New York area train station - grimy, smelly, and crowded, but the Manhattan transportation hub at the new World Trade Center looks like something from a sci-fi movie set. Gleaming white, with a large arched hall that looks like you're walking through the skeleton of a futuristic robotic whale, it's quite a sight.

Pizza in Tribeca
 After finding our way out of the whale we proceeded to walk uptown towards Greenwich Village. It was a work day, so Tribeca was thrumming with people. We window-shopped our way through Soho (I think the only shop we actually went into was Fjallraven). By this time it was after 4 PM and we were on our way to dinner, but we hadn't stopped for lunch on the way up and so we ducked into a pizza place for a quick slice. Soho gave way to the gentrified grittiness of the East Village. We paused at Cooper Union to spin the Alamo cube. Then we headed east and met Henry and Cailin at Veselka, a Ukranian restaurant - a favorite haunt of mine from my Village days. The boys have taken a liking to it as well because of their excellent pierogi.

Spinning The Alamo
The show itself was quite good. I mean, it's the first time it's been given a full production so it had some rough edges to be refined, but overall we all enjoyed it. After the show we took the subway back downtown and then the PATH back to New Jersey. We shared our PATH car with a deranged fellow. He was openly bleeding from his one flip-flop clad foot. We couldn't see the condition of his other foot since he was wearing a McDonald's wrapper as footwear. His sweatpants were sagging so far down that his entire butt was exposed, and he was pacing back and forth in an agitated fashion through the train car. It's sad to see someone in that condition, but I will say that riding mass transit with at least one scary fellow passenger is an essential part of the New York experience.

Nice parking space!
Friday morning, when I went to retrieve my car I found it up in the air. The parking lot, in order to increase the number of available spots, parks cars two high and mine was up on a top deck. With the kayak on it, it was quite a sight. The parking lot attendant grudgingly agreed to move the three cars blocking mine in, pulled mine out - and I was on my way!

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Location: New York, NY, USA

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