1.10.2006

Ten Local Trips to Take Before I Retire

Staten Island Ferry Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. 1 - Take a round trip ride on the Staten Island ferry

2 - Take an Amtrak trip on a sleeper car like in the old 1940s movies, or something like the Orient Express where you have a private room and sleep as the countryside passes by. Perhaps a trip to New Orleans, or Chicago or someplace the train trip takes overnight to get to and then you wake up and have breakfast on the train.
3 - Take the Metroliner or Acela to Washington or Boston, or both.

4 - Walk across the George Washington Bridge. Preferably in daylight.

5 - Traverse the old Morris Canal across New Jersey, or as many parts of the Canal as are traversable - including Lafayette Village and perhaps a good long look at the Clifton nature center that includes a part of the canal.
Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.6 - Fly over my house in a private plane a la Sky King - that's with me as a passenger.

7 - Take an authorized tour of the PATH operations; go someplace where the tours never go. I'll find out where the cars go when they are out of service. Do they go through a PATH car-sized car wash? Where do they pull up when they get cleaned? What do they - the engineers and conductors - do when it's not rush hour?

8 - Share the poopdeck with the skipper of a ferry as he crosses the Hudson River from New Jersey to Manhattan to New Jersey to Manhattan to New Jersey over and over again.
Construction era photo - Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.9 - Travel to the top of the tallest building in New Jersey and see if I can see Highpoint - then go to the top of Highpoint and see if I could see the Goldman Sachs building in Jersey City.

10 - Take a Jersey back road to a fishing hole that's stocked exclusively for fly fishing & watch the fishermen work their flies.

For as many times as I've seen the Staten Island Ferry cross under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, I've never once set foot on the ark-like ship. The closest I ever came was one time when I met the restaurant ladies at American Park Restaurant in Battery Park. I admit that I was so labored to park I considered putting my car on the SIF and picking it up later when the ship came back after dinner in the upper room.

Anyway, those are a few of the things I would do if, say, I were the transportation writer of a major daily newspaper in a large metropolitan area somewhere in New Jersey.


Leave your manequin behind photo - Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
Leave your mannequin behind?
Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

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The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

Morris Canal: Across New Jersey by Water and Rail (Images of America)

1 comment:

ARB said...

Of course, in reference to the old Morris Canal, I was thinking of WATERLOO VILLAGE in Stanhope, not Lafayette Village - which is a shopping mall further west.

Maybe I'll see you there at The 2006 and 11th Biennial
GERALDINE R. DODGE POETRY FESTIVAL
is coming home to Waterloo Village, Stanhope, New Jersey.
September 28 – October 1, 2006.