While I wait to see whether I'm heading to Brooklyn for a special night tour at Green-Wood Cemetery . . .
>
Update: A mere 2 hours and 40 minutes
after setting out, here I am home again!
by Ken
I know I promised last night to explain how the doctrinal zealot named to be the new archbishop of San Francisco, Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, could actually lift the Catholic Church out of its swamp of lies. I came home this afternoon with the express intention of finishing that post. Unfortunately I've been sitting here listening to the rain, waiting for news, thumbs up or down, about tonight's scheduled special tour of one of the city's more spectacular scenic-historic sites, Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery (where, by the way, I've never been!), which occupies 500 acres on the harbor-facing slope of the Terminal Moraine that forms the backbone of Long Island, including the NYC boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn.
The rain has tapered off since I got out of the subway an hour or so ago, when it was raining as hard as I ever recall seeing it rain here in New York City. It was raining so hard that sheets of water were gathering on flat sidewalks waiting to cascade into raging street gutters.
If I had planned better, I probably wouldn't even have come home. This morning I had to travel pretty much the full length of Manhattan Island to get to the Staten Island Ferry to get to the meeting place for my Working Harbor Committee walking tour of the north shore of Staten Island with Mitch Waxman, from the ferry to Snug Harbor on the Kill Van Kull. The weather was ominous, and the forecast all weekend is the same, but we got through the walk, and I faced only light raindrops when I took the bus from one of my favorite NYC locations, the Noble Maritime Collection (at Snug Harbor) back to the Ferry Terminal.
Now that I've come back home, though, to get to Brooklyn I'll have to travel back down the whole length of Manhattan! And my head was too jumbled to finish the planned post. With luck, after tonight I'll have lots to report on . . . uh . . . whenever . . . .
Well, it appears we're a go, so I really have to go now. . . .
UPDATE (9pm ET): BACK FROM BKLN,
AND THE JOKE IS ON ME -- HA HA
The above was finished sometime around 6:15pm ET, and set for posting at its appointed hour. By then, as you know, I had concluded from such updates as I had gotten that we were "on." I guess I really believed the event would be canceled. By the time I had to leave if I wanted to catch the A train that would get me to the R train that would get me to Green-Wood in time for the early arrival I kept being exhorted to accomplish, a couple of minutes after 6:20, I was so frazzled that I didn't realize until I'd walked down from the sixth to the third floor that I'd forgotten to check my poor little fold-up umbrella to see if it had sufficiently undrenched itself from its earlier ordeal to allow an attempt at refolding. I hadn't even thought to grab a cap, as protection against possible light rain.
The only things I remembered were (a) my paperwork and (b) the flashlight I'd bought earlier in the day, even though I still hadn't figured out how to force it to do anything, like allow me access to its innards. (I hoped that during the long train ride I might yet crack its secrets.) And I figured I didn't dare climb back up, for fear of screwing up that A-train leg of the journey -- miss that connection, and there would really be no way of recovering the lost time.
However, I caught both my A and my R trains in such good time that at 7:30 I was at the 25th Street stop of the R, facing only the long uphill block from Fourth Avenue to Fifth -- where I would be an early arrival indeed! I even had time to attempt a mad stratagem I'd concocted when I'd been in fact unable to get the new flashlight to do anything: see if maybe there was someplace around that corner of Fourth Avenue and 25th Street where I might purchase a flashlight. And sure enough, there was a "99 cents & up" store where I managed to score a flashlight and even bought batteries to make it light up. I'd thought about trying to score a cheap cap too, and maybe a cheap umbrella, but in fact it had turned into such a gorgeous evening that I decided to chance it. I did stop in a deli to buy a bottle of soda, having forgotten to equip myself with my usual bottle of tap water when I left home. And as I walked up that block to Fifth Avenue, I was feeling pretty good about it all -- and congratulating the event planners for having the wisdom to forge ahead and proceed with the festivities.
I was a little suspicious when I reached Fifth Avenue, and didn't see any sign of impending festivities. There was a guard at the closed entrance gate, though, so I went up to him and asked where I was supposed to be for the Twilight Tour. That's when he told me they'd canceled it. So I walked back down the block to Fourth Avenue, after a short wait caught a Manhattan-bound R train, made the transfer to the A at Jay St-MetroTech (tonight marked the second and third times I've used that relatively new free-transfer point; I've got it down cold now), and eventually -- as noted above, some 2 hours and 40 minutes after setting out -- recrossed the humble threshold of my apartment. Sure enough, there was a 6:18 e-mail informing me of the cancellation.
On the plus side (there's always a plus side, isn't there?):
(1) The travel didn't cost me anything, since it went on my unlimited-ride MetroCard. In fact, you could argue that those two extra trips actually lowered my per-ride cost for this 30-day period.
(2) I got practice taking subway rides. At this point in time I don't exactly need practice taking subway rides, but I did get practice with that A-to-R transfer at Jay St-MetroTech. And to think, when it was first announced, I couldn't imagine when I might ever need to use that free transfer! I could even stretch this "plus" -- now I've done an actual dry run of the trip from my home to Green-Wood Cemetery, and back! Of course I don't plan to make that trip again.
Ever.
UPDATE (9pm ET): BACK FROM BKLN,
AND THE JOKE IS ON ME -- HA HA
The above was finished sometime around 6:15pm ET, and set for posting at its appointed hour. By then, as you know, I had concluded from such updates as I had gotten that we were "on." I guess I really believed the event would be canceled. By the time I had to leave if I wanted to catch the A train that would get me to the R train that would get me to Green-Wood in time for the early arrival I kept being exhorted to accomplish, a couple of minutes after 6:20, I was so frazzled that I didn't realize until I'd walked down from the sixth to the third floor that I'd forgotten to check my poor little fold-up umbrella to see if it had sufficiently undrenched itself from its earlier ordeal to allow an attempt at refolding. I hadn't even thought to grab a cap, as protection against possible light rain.
The only things I remembered were (a) my paperwork and (b) the flashlight I'd bought earlier in the day, even though I still hadn't figured out how to force it to do anything, like allow me access to its innards. (I hoped that during the long train ride I might yet crack its secrets.) And I figured I didn't dare climb back up, for fear of screwing up that A-train leg of the journey -- miss that connection, and there would really be no way of recovering the lost time.
However, I caught both my A and my R trains in such good time that at 7:30 I was at the 25th Street stop of the R, facing only the long uphill block from Fourth Avenue to Fifth -- where I would be an early arrival indeed! I even had time to attempt a mad stratagem I'd concocted when I'd been in fact unable to get the new flashlight to do anything: see if maybe there was someplace around that corner of Fourth Avenue and 25th Street where I might purchase a flashlight. And sure enough, there was a "99 cents & up" store where I managed to score a flashlight and even bought batteries to make it light up. I'd thought about trying to score a cheap cap too, and maybe a cheap umbrella, but in fact it had turned into such a gorgeous evening that I decided to chance it. I did stop in a deli to buy a bottle of soda, having forgotten to equip myself with my usual bottle of tap water when I left home. And as I walked up that block to Fifth Avenue, I was feeling pretty good about it all -- and congratulating the event planners for having the wisdom to forge ahead and proceed with the festivities.
I was a little suspicious when I reached Fifth Avenue, and didn't see any sign of impending festivities. There was a guard at the closed entrance gate, though, so I went up to him and asked where I was supposed to be for the Twilight Tour. That's when he told me they'd canceled it. So I walked back down the block to Fourth Avenue, after a short wait caught a Manhattan-bound R train, made the transfer to the A at Jay St-MetroTech (tonight marked the second and third times I've used that relatively new free-transfer point; I've got it down cold now), and eventually -- as noted above, some 2 hours and 40 minutes after setting out -- recrossed the humble threshold of my apartment. Sure enough, there was a 6:18 e-mail informing me of the cancellation.
On the plus side (there's always a plus side, isn't there?):
(1) The travel didn't cost me anything, since it went on my unlimited-ride MetroCard. In fact, you could argue that those two extra trips actually lowered my per-ride cost for this 30-day period.
(2) I got practice taking subway rides. At this point in time I don't exactly need practice taking subway rides, but I did get practice with that A-to-R transfer at Jay St-MetroTech. And to think, when it was first announced, I couldn't imagine when I might ever need to use that free transfer! I could even stretch this "plus" -- now I've done an actual dry run of the trip from my home to Green-Wood Cemetery, and back! Of course I don't plan to make that trip again.
Ever.
#
posted by KenInNY @ 6:00 PM
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