I woke up right at 4 a.m. I guess practicing for a week really paid off. Yes, I own an alarm clock. I even plugged it in and set it just for the occassion. But really do you like to be awakened by a loud noise blaring in your ear? Is that how you like to start a vacation?
I said goodbye to the cats and drove myself to the airport.
(I could have walked, but then I would have had to get up
even earlier.) Arriving the requisite hour too early for
my flight, I checked in, got my boarding pass, walked
uneventfully through the security checkpoint, and sat around
bored until boarding time.
A good place to interject my observation that TSA has accomplished its goal of becoming professional and consistent. I'm still not convinced that the kind of screenings they are allowed to do are the best way to protect the travelling public, but the TSA people did their job politely and efficiently in all the places I encountered them.
Mesaba Airways (Northwest Airlink) has a peculiar idea of designating 4 rows of the cabin as first class. These rows have only 4 seats across, instead of 5, and the passengers get to board before us peons and then watch us all crawl past. So while it may be a better class, there is still only one cabin area. But since it is designated as First Class, the flight attendents gesturing through the safety instructions have to do their the hand waving at the front of the cabin and then repeat it at row 5. On the flight out, the man stuck with the task seemed acutely aware of how foolish it looked. (Yes, it was an all-male crew going east.)
In the baggage claim area my friend Wendy met me almost on time. Notwithstanding her various dreams of coming with husband, son, daughter, or another friend, it was just the 2 of us for the tourist thing in Philadelphia. For me, doing the tourist thing is pretty relaxing. I even visit the tourist sites in my own neighborhood instead of taking "real" vacations. It isn't very challenging, but often mildly interesting, to visit the parks and visitor centers that cater to foreign travellers and to grandparents with their grandkids. And there is the bonus of seeing all the tourists!
So off we went to the Constitution Center! A few dollars later
and they let us watch the multimedia presentation and visit
the hall of statues! No, wait, I really relaxed watching this
stuff. The multimedia aspect of the presentation means that
they had one live speaker, some spotlights, projection on the
floor, lots of recorded sound, projection on a circular screen
that drops down from the ceiling, and projection on the walls
above our heads. Not very profound, but pleasant and fairly
well done. Which is also what I'd say about the general exhibits
about the Constitution and the US government. They cover a lot
of the basics of government under our Constitution, and take
pains to include a few major controversies, such as slavery
and Richard Nixon.
Now the statues are a whole different matter for a relative of James Duane Doty. The statues represent all the signers of the Constitution. They are set in a room which is only vaguely reminiscent of the place 2 blocks down where the event really happened, but you do get to wander around among them. I suppose to other people that might help the signers seem like real men. For me, they seemed like real streets These bronze folk wear their name tags on the floor at their feet. (They all wear the same shoes, by the way.) I went from nameplate to nameplate saying, "I know that street!" "I lived on that street in Madison! Right at the corner with that guy over there!" Doty really got high on the Constitution.
Lunch time. We wandered around for several blocks until,
realizing that we were looking for the wrong street number and
had found it, we moved up the street
to Jim's Steaks.
(That's at 400 South Street. Not South anything, I guess, just
south.) Genuine Philadelphia cheesesteak in genuine Philadelphia
for $5.85 and a wait in line.
Anyway, the next stop is across the street from the Constitution Center
at the Security Checkpoint. Yes, I felt like I was flying again.
I mean, as if I were taking another airplane. But it couldn't be
an airplane we were heading toward because the Liberty Bell is too
big for carry-on luggage. There's a whole building, without belfry,
dedicated to the Liberty Bell.
It has exhibits that explain the
bell's history, its crack, the repair performed on the crack, and
so on. Wow, it might have rung for Independence, or not. You do
kind of wonder why anyone cares about the bell in view of the lack
of connection with anything else that happened in Philadelphia.
Until, ah ha!, you find the exhibits on the use of the bell
in the anti-slavery movement. I didn't know that the bell had
risen to prominence as a symbol of freedom for blacks. Even though
I know that song about what I'd do if I had a bell, I guess it
never rang clear for me.
And then you cross the street. There is a big difference between crossing the street in a secured National Historical Park and crossing the street at an ordinary corner in Philadelphia. The difference is whether you are going east and west or north and south. If you cross in the secure direction, you find yourself at Independence Hall. That's an old building with a couple of meeting rooms on the first floor and some odd people dressed in funny ranger hats doing a lot of talking. Oh, those are rangers. (They just don't range quite as far during a day's work as colleagues in, say, Yosemite.) You get to see the actual color of the paint on the walls of these rooms at the founding of our nation. And to enjoy a few non-original features, such as air conditioning vents.
Leave the tourists behind and go up to Nazareth, Upper Nazareth, Bushkill, and Schoeneck. Not necessarily in that order; the route we took invalidated anything I might previously have known about the spatial relationships. But how to get from Nazareth to Jacobsburg Park? Why, mountain bike, of course! On the hottest day I've experienced all summer! Over unfamiliar terrain! On a bicycle Rick borrowed from Otto that I've never ridden before! And doesn't shift up! Only down! Now, that's adventure, even if it did only go for about 4 miles.
Once at the park, we adopted a cooler method of travel. That is, we walked the river. It might be cooler to just lie down in the water and let it run over you, but only one of the 3 of us attempted that, and then it was by accident. Running water is always relaxing, cool water on a hot day, so the walk was guaranteed to be pleasant. The children and dogs, of which there were several, were the better part of the walk. Happy children, playful dogs, scudding clouds, running river, growing trees; one could easilly think we were living in the best of all places at the best of all times.
And why not? It was vacation.
Schoeneck Moravian Church, which seems to be invisible on the web, held a Lovefeast to observe the day of convenenting for Single Brothers. I don't think that was done specifically in honor of my visit. They did honor me, however, with leftover sugar cake to take home. Some did survive the entire trip back. It is all gone by now, of course.
OK, still hot. What to do? A movie! Granted you can watch movies
anywhere but not always with the same people. (Remember, I'm the one
who flew to Pennsylvania to spend my $100 dinner allowance that I got
for allowing my employer to change more often than my job. But that's
another story.) So, a movie.
The Manchurian Candidate or to be more precise the new
Manchurian Candidate. The old one I never saw; the new one was defeated
by an obscure mixture of unspecified values and gut emotion.
Never mind that emotion likely will be susceptible to manipulation
sooner than rationality – have you ever cried at a movie?
The bigger question is whether we should believe in the possibility
of the criminal intent assigned to the leaders of Manchurian Global Corporation.
Ah, yes, the flight home. The cold front that I commented about last week (and which is finally getting past you this morning) did delay my flight from taking off. They were spacing the planes heading over the weather farther apart to allow manuvering room. So not only did I wander around the airport betwixt security and the glass walls for one hour, we then sat in the plane on the ground for another because NOBODY has the SENSE to let us stay in the terminal until there is at least HOPE for the plane to leave the airport.
People in my office said, "That gives them a better on-time departure rate." I said, "We didn't depart until the wheels left the ground. Ask anybody on that plane. And besides, if you accept their departure statistics, how do they explain a regional jet taking 2.5 hours to fly to Detroit? Were they lost?" Of course, the people in my office have SENSE, at least some of them.
Anyway, the flight I took was listed on the board as having both
Detroit and Green Bay as its destination, and we got only a single
boarding pass, so we GRB passengers figured that at least the hassles
were ended when the landing gear retracted. But in
DTW,
the flight crew knew NOTHING about continuing passengers.
We had to get off, get new boarding passes, sit around in the terminal,
wait for the new captain to get the new cabin crew on board,
get back on the plane, and add unnecessarily to the disruption
of everyone else boarding.
These delays ate up more than the full layover in DTW, so I walked into Austin Straubel 30 minutes later than scheduled.
The poor folks who came from Logan had sat on the ground for 5 hours, they told me. So, all in all, it was not too bad a flight.
Yes, the whole rainy morning of Labor Day has now been used up and I truly understand why the only people who blog are the ones with way too much time on their hands.
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