Random Round Up

The latter part of December was spent working, which, as we have already covered, meant subsidized lunches. This is a turkey sandwich on brioche c/o Rybread.

A day or two before Christmas I walked around Center City looking for gifts and ended up enjoying a sushi lunch at Aki. Nothing too spectacular, lunch special priced crispy salmon skill, eel and avocado and yellowtail with scallion. I also had green tea.

This Christmas was spent again with NC Catherine and J. Work is so crazy and the expectations of my bosses not entirely reasonable, so I ended up going down on a train Sunday and returning on a train Wednesday. The train allowed uninterrupted work abilities due to wireless, and was altogether far more pleasant the airport/plane experience has become. Though each way there were certainly some delays. On the way down, however, I was able to complete my work day and still have a few more hours of train living. With those hours I watched Sense and Sensibility, blogged about cheese and wine, and eventually made my way to the club car to pick up a snack and a stiff drink. Snack was hummus. Stiff drink was Jack Daniels and ginger ale. I'll say this for certainty: it's worth spending the additional $40 for business class on an Amtrak train, more legroom, a reserved/guaranteed seat, and just one car away from the cafe/club car. On the way back up there was even a proposal over the loudspeaker.

When I arrived in Greensboro, my father, NC Catherine and J. were all waiting for me. Also waiting for me? Corn chowder. Good stuff and start to a rather rushed holiday season.

Parting Scenes From Suminski Innski

After bidding J. adieu in Hudson I drove back south to Tivoli and Suminski Innski. It was still relatively early in the night and I plopped down on the front porch with a glass of wine and a book, content to spend the rest of the evening reading and sipping. But Tim, the proprietor, asked me if I might like to join him and his two friends in a game of Scrabble, which of course I did because Scrabble is one of my favorite things. We sat at one end of a lovely long table in the dining room. Tim showed us some kind of crazy flashlight, and I ran and got my camera so I could take a few photographs of the flashlight's effect on this here chandelier.

Pretty things.
We ended up playing two games. I lost won one and lost one. Good competition. Good night.
The next morning I went back to the river for a few parting shots.
Then went back to the house to enjoy coffee and breakfast. That second night there were other guests, so breakfast was a communal experience. The other folks were up from the city. They had a blog or website, but I can't remember the name of it.
Breakfast was a marvelous mess of egg, cheese, tomatoes, broccoli and I don't know what else. Dill. Tasty.
Oh and sausage too. And bread. And jam.
After I filled myself with breakfast I made my goodbyes to Tim and the others, took one last photograph and headed out of town. I've said it once, but I"ll say it again, this was a really great place to stay for the weekend. The location and views were perfect for me. Tim was a great host. The bed was extremely comfortable and cozy. Oh man, it was just lovely.

Suminski Innski in Tivoli

During the first years of my post-college existence, I remained in the Hudson Valley. I worked a short while as an assistant manager/bartender at a failing inn before ultimately leaving that job in favor of working at a nearby sheep farm. This was one of my more inspired decisions, even if it didn't actually allow me to make ends meet. I worked at the farm/yarn shop for about two years and really loved the combination of rather mindless/zen body work that processing wool entails and the more action-packed activities, like herding loose sheep, dealing with newly-born lambs, mending fences, and either putting up or taking down my boss' storm windows. I haven't been back to the farm in a while and recently contacted my former boss, M., to see what the schedule was for shearing and lambing. She replied, and it turned out that shearing was the following weekend. I decided I wanted to go up and at least take some photographs and lend a bit of a helping hand. The only slight obstacle was where to stay. The Red Hook/Tivoli area is entirely free of chain establishments and some of the cheaper motels are a bit too seedy/long-term residency for me. I reached out to L. to ask her if she had any ideas and she came back with the Suminski Innski. And what a good call that was. I contacted Tim, the owner, who turned out to be a former bartender of mine during the halcyon days of my last year or so of college (I was, to put it mildly, a frequent patron). The Inn(ski) is located at the bottom of a long hill off the main road of Tivoli. Other than a gravel road, the only thing between it and the Hudson is a set of still-active railroad tracks.
I had requested one of the cheaper rooms with a view of the river and a bathroom shared with four other rooms...but upon my arrival I was bumped up to the one room with a private bath, as I was the only person staying that night. This was a boon for me, as the room was beautifully laid out and eclectically decorated and its bed extremely comfortable. And while I was totally fine with sharing a bathroom with strangers, it was also nice to have the privacy of taking a shower without worrying that someone was desperately in need of relieving themselves and held back solely by my penchant for long showers.
I arrived around 2 or 3 on Friday and spent the majority of my afternoon sitting on this porch reading Pride and Prejudice on my Kindle Fire. I also, from time to time, would venture to the river and back to the room. The weather even three hours north was still quite lovely, mid-60s and sunny. Perfect, really.
Tim has done a whole heck of a lot of renovation to the building. I'd never been down to it in its former state, but from the photos and the stories it's clear that the establishment as I saw it was a marked improvement to what it had been like ten years prior. Seriously, it was gorgeous and I didn't take nearly enough photographs of the interior parlors and dining areas, with their great variety of art on the walls.
A venture to the tracks. I loved the trains going by. Perhaps for some this would have been a distraction or too much of an interruption from the otherwise extremely quiet and peaceful setting. But for me, having grown up with tracks just about the same distance from my own front porch, it really just made me feel right at home. As I sat two young men (I assume Bard students) drove up to the tracks and got out. One had a camera, the other a trumpet. And for about 40 minutes I had the pleasure of reading on a sunny porch with a well played trumpet and the occasional rumble of a train as my soundtrack.
The view from one of the room's windows. When you live in these parts, as I did for six years, you almost become accustomed to the sheer beauty of the place. From rolling farms and well maintained old houses to the river itself and the Catskill mountains looming ever-present across that expanse of water.
Sunset.
Train.
Another window caught in mirror as sun sets photo.
De-lightful.

This was a great home base for my Friday and Saturday. I'll share a few more photos once I get through with some meals and other activities.

Ramen c/o Ren's Ramen and Old Stomping Grounds

On the Friday after Thanksgiving I didn't have a lot of plans. Earlier in the week I had reached out to G. to see if he might like to meet up. G. and I grew up together. His mother watched me when I was little, and we lived about a 1 minute walk from one another and spent our entire elementary school and middle school years waiting at the same bus stop. We were buds back in the day, I'd say. But it's been a while since we've hung out and with time on my hands I thought 'why not,' especially when I saw a write-up for Ren's Ramen in Wheaton. Braving the Black Friday traffic, I wended my way over, parked, exchanged a dollar for four quarters, paid for my parking, and finally sat down. G. and I both liked the option of ordering pork belly into the mix, but he went a spicier route than me. I thought I'd be able to find their menu online and tell you exactly which dish I ended up ordering, but that seems to be a wash. In any case, it was porkful and I added a seasoned hard boiled egg to the mix of pork, seaweed, springy noodles, tofu thingies and scallions.
The broth wasn't quite as complex or creamy as my first true ramen experience in NYC, but it was still a marked improvement over the Top Ramen type of sodium laced water that often is what we think of when we think ramen. Tasty. Wheaton is not the most appealing of suburban cities. It's chock full of congested traffic, strip malls and real malls, and copious numbers of boring brick apartment buildings that eventually taper off into rather forgettable neighborhoods. I think the the regrettable thing about Wheaton is that it has no secret magic spaces of the outdoor variety. It's all concrete and brick with very few parks, and even those parks (I actually can't think of one) are sad. That said, Wheaton has also been a veritable cornucopia for adventurous eaters. It was to Wheaton that we would go to get dim sum on Sunday mornings, or Vietnamese on an odd week night. I believe Wheaton is also where I tasted my first pho and enjoyed teriyaki beef for the first time. Indonesian? Check. Salvadoran? Yep. And there used to be this really neat Viennese bakery, but that, unfortunately, is long gone. Anyways. G. and I both enjoyed reminiscing and catching up; pulling out names of past classmates to reflect over, often with no idea of what has become of them. As well as a few of our shared experiences. After lunch it was decided that we'd get coffee closer to where we grew up.
But once at the establishment that once was the Country Store, we found that it was closed and would not give us the glory of espresso. So, coffee-less, we traipsed through the woods, perhaps trespassed a little on the new construction, made a big loop and ended up on the train tracks, which truly did form some central part of both our childhoods I think. While the trains no longer honk their horns (horns?) as they barrel down in the tracks like they did in my youth, they are still an ever present part of the neighborhood and landscape. After scrambling up a relatively steep incline just feet away from my old house, we were up.
Took some photos.

Saw some deer parts.

It was nice to see G. I think we hadn't seen each other in the flesh for about 10 years or so, which certainly meant there were a lot of life experiences to share and catch up on.

Philly Phanatic Vampire Surfs the Trains

Chicago, Adieu

After dim sum I returned with the crew to the Lincoln Square crew because I decided that, instead of taking the predominantly underground red line, that I'd like to take the all above ground brown line to get one last few of the city. When I first visited Chicago, trying to determine whether SAIC was a good move and whether I could live in the city, I only took the brown line, and fell in love with all the back porches and hidden yards and maintained (or not) alleys that one could look down upon from the vantage point of a train car. It, like dim sum as a last meal, seemed fitting that the brown line would be my mode of conveyance to, well, another train line (the blue line), which would whisk me (in a rather mediated not whisk-y fashion) on to O'Hare. I took photographs, of course.

Thomas Takes Us For A Ride/I Forgot How I Like To Take Pictures of People

On Saturday morning, I drove out to Roxborough to meet up with J. and her kids S. and N. The plan was to go out to Strasbourg, PA to ride on Thomas the Tank Engine. We had tickets for the 10:15 am departure (the actual train 'trip' was about 20 minutes) but we didn't end up getting there until around 10:45...there was a level of stress to this since the tickets said they were only valid for the specific time...thankfully things were a bit more flexible and we were able to take the 11:15 trip instead.
S. is a big fan of trains, you see.


I couldn't stop taking pictures.
Brothers can't get along all the time.


I think S. is watching the conductor here, waiting for his ticket to be punched.



My favorite picture of the group.

It's so hard to be a baby.


Yo Thomas, whazzup?




We also met Sir Toppum Hat (spelling?) and were surrounded by hordes of children and their parents. This all took place in Amish country...lots of horses and buggies and clothing on laundry lines. I think the next time I need to get out of town for a night, I'll go west and surround myself with fields and Amish people.

Thanks to J. for the day out!