A visit to New Jersey and Long Island…
32 minute read
September 21, 2024, 3:34 PM
From September 12-14, Elyse and I, along with our friend Kyle, took a weekend trip up to North Jersey and Long Island. This trip was designed as a bunch of different things that we wanted to do in the same general area, mashed together into one trip. Elyse wanted to see the American Dream shopping mall, and I wanted to see it again when I didn’t have COVID. So that was our first day. I wanted to see what Long Island was about, plus see one of the last remaining Kmart stores in the country, which is out in Bridgehampton, New York, so we went out to the end of Long Island on the middle day. Then the third day was a bus show in Howell Township, which we all wanted to see, and then we went through Philadelphia on the way home to photograph the SS United States for what might be the last time. Our hotel was a Hampton Inn in Staten Island, intended to be kind of midway between these three very diverse locations. This trip, in the form that it took, was relatively quickly planned. The only constant here was the bus show, as that was the primary driver of our making the trip in the first place, and then we just added on the rest to make a weekend out of it. The original plan, had the oil pump not quit on us, was to take 3426 on this trip and display it at the bus show. With the bus, we would have still done American Dream and the bus show, but we would have stayed closer to Howell, and Long Island would have been replaced with the Jersey shore (since I didn’t want to drive a bus all the way out to the end of Long Island). I’ll say this: as much fun as it would have been for this to be a bus trip, I’m glad that we ended up doing it in the HR-V. There will be other bus events, but this just worked out well as a car trip.
Going up, I certainly demonstrated my New Jersey cred in the car. In other words, pay no attention to that Maryland license plate. I am originally from New Jersey, and I know how to drive like I’m from New Jersey, a place where signs and pavement markings are just suggestions, and you have to keep up with the big dogs in order to get where you’re going. If it tells you anything, prior to leaving the house, I posted on Facebook, “Going up to New Jersey today for the weekend, and thinking about how people up there drive like they’re from New Jersey. Then I was like, ‘Wait a minute… *I’m* from New Jersey!’ So I’ll be driving amongst my peers, despite my Maryland license plate.” We took the Turnpike from the bottom all the way to exit 16W, and I handled it like a champ.
Continue reading…Categories: DASH, New Jersey, New York, New York City, New York Subway, NJ Transit, Philadelphia, Retail, Ships, Transit, Travel
A day in Filthadelphia…
10 minute read
January 3, 2024, 12:46 PM
On Friday, December 29, I went up to Philadelphia for the day with my friend Aaron Stone. We each had our goals up there, and for the most part, we accomplished them. I wanted to see the “Four Seasons”, and Aaron wanted to see the SS United States. And then we both wanted to go to King of Prussia Mall. Elyse, meanwhile, was unavailable, as she was on a work trip to Roanoke for bus museum business.
I feel like, for this trip, we scheduled it more or less perfectly. We had exactly the right amount of time for what we had intended to do. We left in the HR-V from my house, and made two quick food stops in Ellicott City and Catonsville. Then it was straight through to Delaware House. That was a bit more involved than I had anticipated, though, as there was a large backup just north of I-695, which slowed us down a bit. I was regretting not looking at Google ahead of time before deciding not to bounce at White Marsh and taking Route 1 for a ways, like I did last April on the New York trip. Route 1 is a viable alternative to I-95, and this would have been a good time to use it.
Then after Delaware House, we continued straight through into Pennsylania, taking I-95 through Wilmington. Every time I go through Wilmington, I always say that I want to explore it, but then I never plan a trip to actually go to Wilmington. It always gets bypassed, either by skirting it to the southeast on trips that go into New Jersey, or by never getting off of the highway while going through on the way up to Philadelphia. I went to Christiana Mall last year, but still haven’t done Wilmington itself. Aaron and I discussed possibly doing a quick side trip through parts of Wilmington on the way back down, time permitting, so maybe we’d do a little bit in Wilmington, but that can was kicked down the road for now.
Categories: Cameras, National politics, Philadelphia, Retail, Ships
A solo adventure up north…
23 minute read
January 21, 2023, 10:17 AM
On January 5 and 6, while Elyse was at National Harbor attending MAGFest, I did a little overnight trip up north while I was unsupervised. This was to be a quick adventure, since this wasn’t one of my long weekends, and the goal was to pack as much fun as I could have into two days’ time. The plan was to leave home in the late morning on the 5th, go up to Philadelphia that day and stay at the Courtyard by Marriott in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, which would stage me for the second day, where I would head over to Trenton and then take the train up to New York. I would spend about eight hours in New York, ride the train back to Trenton, and then head home from there. Interestingly enough, this was an adventure where I put more focus on the logistics of the travel than I did on what I would actually do at the destination. Thus, the execution didn’t go as well as I had intended, as I ended up getting there and then was like, well, now what? as I more or less played it by ear with less direction than I usually like to give myself. I also knew that this would need to be a more indoor-focused trip, because it was going to be rainy or overcast all day both days. This adventure was also unusual because on this adventure, the drone stayed home. The Philadelphia day was not going to be conducive for flying, and New York, forget about it – too many people to worry about.
For the “Philadelphia” day, I actually put more of my efforts into the Wilmington area than I did in Philadelphia. I have a list of photo shoot ideas on the computer, which I jokingly refer to as “the place where photo ideas go to die”, and initially pulled out the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, which a photographer friend had previously photographed. However, I wanted to do the interior, and they also closed at 5 PM, so that would have to be a first stop since it closed relatively early. So while I wanted to do it, I put it into the “we’ll see” pile, because I wanted to do some stuff in Delaware, which would have to come first because of its location. I ended up spending a lot of time at Christiana Mall, since I’d been going past it on 95 in 15+ years of adventures up north, but I’d never stopped there in all of that time.
When it came to Christiana Mall, I sort of knew what to expect. Christiana Mall was a one-story mall, and, unlike a lot of malls these days, was doing well. As such, I didn’t go in expecting something massive like King of Prussia and then experience disappointment when I got a one-story mall. Even for a one-story mall, the facility was smaller than I expected, being arranged roughly in a loop. It had five anchor spots, and they were all filled. I think that the biggest surprise there was the way that Target was attached to the mall. In most cases where I’ve seen Target at an enclosed shopping mall, the store is either adjoining the mall but otherwise freestanding (i.e. no mall entrance), or the mall entrance is located at the front of the store near the regular exterior entrance. Not so at this store. At Christiana, the mall entrance for Target was in the back of the store. From the perspective of the store, there was a row of self checkout machines in the random location in the back of the store, and there was a mall entrance nearby. If it tells you anything about how random the mall entrance’s location is, after I finished up at Target, I had to hunt for that mall entrance in order to get back to the mall. It is very non-obvious in its placement.
Categories: Delaware, New Jersey, New York City, Philadelphia, Scion xB, Travel
A trip to New Jersey with Elyse and Woomy…
17 minute read
August 14, 2022, 7:57 PM
On Thursday, July 28, Elyse and I took a trip up to New Jersey. The main purpose of the trip was to visit the Scrub Daddy headquarters in Pennsauken, where the company has a retail store. Then we built a day around this in order to justify the trip. We were no stranger to Scrub Daddy by any means, as we had previously stopped by their facility on the last day of our Atlantic City trip back in January, just to see where it was. I remember how excited Elyse was during that visit to Scrub Daddy’s headquarters, and on that occasion, we just photographed the outside of the building, since the retail store wasn’t ready yet. I could only imagine how excited Elyse would be going in and actually seeing the place.
We left the house around 10:00 AM, and got as far as Delaware House by noon. This was to be our potty stop on the way up. Elyse noticed an Edwards Integrity on the outside of the facility, and got some photos of it:
Categories: Companies, Elyse, New Jersey, PATCO, Philadelphia, Products, Roads, Ships, Travel, Woomy
Philadelphia? How about New York?
7 minute read
August 18, 2019, 12:55 AM
August 13 was a day of unexpected twists and turns, for sure. What was supposed to be a trip to Philadelphia with friends ended up turning into a trip to New York City for Elyse and me. As originally planned, we were going to meet up with Brian, Trent, and a few other folks from the DC area who were traveling up separately at 30th Street Station, and the bunch of them plus Elyse were going to go fan transit for a while, while I did my own thing, mostly photographing in and around Center City. That didn’t happen.
What caused our plans to change was twofold. First, the weather forecast called for storms all up and down the east coast. So I would have to figure out something else to do, as I would be rained out. Secondly, we were running a tad late due to traffic around Baltimore that led us to take a more southerly route before resuming our planned route. Once we got up there, the plan was to park in New Jersey and then ride PATCO into the city. What happened, though, was that the other group didn’t want to wait for us at 30th Street Station, and so they went and continued with their plan without Elyse, and took SEPTA Regional Rail out to Norristown, with the idea that we would catch up with them later. We learned this while we were on PATCO riding into the city. So essentially, they ditched us. We did not take too kindly to this, and so rather than chase them in an effort to catch up with them, when it was pretty clear that we were not a priority (otherwise, they would have waited for us), we did our own thing instead.
We ended up getting off of PATCO at City Hall station in Camden. There, we walked over to the Walter Rand Transportation Center station for the River Line. Neither of us had ever ridden the River Line, so this would be a new experience. We were surprised that there was very little transit-oriented development around the River Line stations. Much of what was right around the stations that we could see was older construction that predated the service.
Categories: New Jersey, New York City, New York Subway, NJ Transit, PATCO, Philadelphia, SEPTA
Horns with bugles attached…
4 minute read
October 27, 2016, 8:24 PM
As I mentioned earlier, the trip to Philadelphia that Elyse and I made on October 3 was primarily about fire alarms. In short, I now am the proud owner of 16 Federal Signal Model 53 fire alarm notification appliances, and 12 Couch coded fire alarm pull stations. This was the total haul:
Categories: Elyse, Fire alarms, Philadelphia
The evolution of a cloud…
4 minute read
October 5, 2016, 10:24 AM
Sometimes, you don’t notice the way things change right in front of your eyes until you analyze them a bit more. I was recently in the Philadelphia/King of Prussia area with Elyse on what was primarily a fire alarm-related mission (more on that later), and was photographing the Manayunk Bridge. First of all, for those not familiar, the Manayunk Bridge is a former rail bridge that was closed to rail traffic in 1986, and which reopened last year to pedestrian and bike traffic as a rail trail. I had previously known it as the big arched bridge that the Schuylkill Expressway goes under, i.e. this, as seen in November 2001:
Categories: Nature, Philadelphia
Good to see our old house looking better than it has in quite some time…
5 minute read
June 30, 2016, 6:15 PM
Back on June 9, Elyse and I took a one-day road trip to Philadelphia. From the outset, this was to be something of a transit adventure, with a visit to the SEPTA gift shop as one of the main priorities. On the way up, Elyse even got annoyed with me for a few restroom stops (hey, when nature calls…) because she didn’t want to miss the SEPTA store. But then as we were heading up I-295 towards Lindenwold station to get PATCO, I commented as we were approaching the exit for US 322 that this was the exit that you would take to go see my old house in Glassboro. Her response was an enthusiastic “Let’s go!” Looks like someone just gave up their right to complain about the time.
That said, we went over to Glassboro, and over to 304 Cornell Road. I was surprised to see how nice the place looked:
Fun in Philadelphia…
7 minute read
April 28, 2015, 11:29 PM
Back at the end of March, I went up to Philadelphia with my friends Melissa and Elyse. We had a list of things that we wanted to do, and we did as many of them as we could. We had a blast, plus we got to meet up with my cousins Mike and Tara for dinner. This trip was also a proof of concept for how my various little outings might go now that I routinely work late nights, since my typical workday runs from approximately 4:00 PM until just before 2:00 AM.
Logistically, it worked out this way: Melissa met me at Glenmont station around 11:00, and then we traveled up to Howard County to get Elyse. Then from there, up to Philadelphia via I-95. Then in Philadelphia, everything that we were planning was transit-accessible, save for one thing, but we worked it all out pretty well.
Our first point of interest was the non-transit-accessible one: the SS United States. This would be a quick look-see for some photos, and then move along to other targets. We parked at the IKEA store across the street, and then Elyse and I walked over for a look (Melissa stayed in the car). Here are pix:
So I made a little side trip into New Jersey on the way home…
7 minute read
September 27, 2009, 6:42 PM
My travel day on Friday went fairly well, and I am so glad to be home again. As much as I learned on this trip about Mac servers, and as much fun as I had, it’s still great to be back in Silver Spring.
That said, my travel day worked out pretty well for the most part, but I don’t think I’d actually want to live in South Jersey again. Many members of my family have found it wonderful, but I don’t think it’s for me.
After checking out of the hotel, I went down to Chinatown in Philadelphia. I hadn’t been there in ages, and so it was worth a visit. Turns out that Ho Sai Gai, a restaurant that my parents used to go to in the 1970s, has reopened its location at the corner of 10th and Race. We went to Ho Sai Gai at its new location up the street from the old one just about annually from 1996 to 2001, and during that time, the corner location had always been abandoned, with a few improvements here and there. Now it’s once again open for business:
Categories: Family, Glassboro, Philadelphia
What is wrong with the drivers up here?
2 minute read
September 21, 2009, 11:21 PM
It makes one wonder – what the crap is wrong with the drivers up here? This is like the outer reaches of the Philadelphia region, and these people drive like maniacs. These drivers make Fairfax County drivers look calm. What really got me is when I got passed illegally on the right on a two lane road because the guy behind me thought I was going too slowly. That just blew my mind. Otherwise, these people won’t let you in, and show no mercy.
And what makes this even more frustrating is that it’s not like these people are doing this on a six-lane road like Georgia Avenue or Rockville Pike. This area looks like a cross between Staunton and Stuarts Draft. The roads are narrow, mostly two lanes. And the lines at the lights are long, and the area doesn’t even look like it would be jammed with commuters, but it is. One thing, though – Philadelphia drivers don’t honk like we do in DC. DC-area drivers are quick to lean on the horn, and I’ll admit having driven with my hand close to or on the horn more than once. In the DC area, we don’t give people the finger so much. We just blow our horns.
Otherwise, though, the drive up here was uneventful. I-95 is kind of old and needs upgrading in places, but those drivers were fairly courteous. It’s these commuters that are ruthless.
Categories: Philadelphia
Anonymous DC does Philadelphia…
5 minute read
March 30, 2009, 1:21 AM
On Saturday, March 28, Anonymous DC pulled off a surprise raid outside the Church of Scientology in Philadelphia. We told no one, not even our own parents. We called it “Operation Inquisition”, because no one was expecting us, just as no one expects the Inquisition. And at 9 AM, we departed, arriving in Philadelphia just past noon. Thank goodness for HT’s GPS, which guided us straight to our destination without problem.
And having parked the cars, our raid began outside the Church of Scientology in Philadelphia. This was a very different experience than raiding outside our own local Founding Church of Scientology. For one, we have more room in DC. We have the sidewalk in front of the Founding Org, as well as the triangle across the street. In Philadelphia, we had half of a somewhat narrow sidewalk in front of – get this – a “storefront church”. Yes, the Org in Philadelphia is a storefront location, with two “Free Stress Test” signs on the door. How fail.
But regardless of what it might have looked like, we raided it. The cops, who came out to see what was up, even noticed that we weren’t the usual Anonymous that raids outside this Org. Yes, we were from DC, and Philadelphia Anonymous had been “pwned”.
The storefront Org.
Categories: Philadelphia, Project Chanology
Hello from the city of brotherly love…
2 minute read
November 4, 2007, 10:10 PM
Well, from the suburbs of the city of brotherly love, at least. I’m not in Philadelphia proper. Anyway, though, I made it. I am spending three nights in Fort Washington for a class in Blue Bell.
What’s weird, though, is how the locations go. I live in Montgomery County, Maryland. Then I traveled however far it is to Philadelphia, to end up in… Montgomery County. Pennsylvania, mind you, but a Montgomery County, nonetheless.
And then otherwise, it cost $11.75 in tolls to get up here. Every time I looked, it seems, there was a guy in a yellow safety vest with his hand out. The Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore cost two bucks. The Susquehanna River bridge cost five bucks(!). Then the Delaware Turnpike, the short stretch of I-95 in Delaware, cost four bucks. Then driving a few miles up the Pennsylvania Turnpike cost another 75 cents.
I’m just glad that tolls are few in the DC area. The only toll road I know of in my area is the Dulles Toll Road.
Categories: Philadelphia
I’m going to Philly…
2 minute read
November 2, 2007, 9:16 PM
This Sunday, I’m going to Philadelphia, and I’m staying until Wednesday. I’m taking a course which explores the function of a Macintosh in great depth. For those of you familiar, it’s MacOS 101, which is titled “Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.4”. In short, I’m going to be able to troubleshoot a Mac like the pros, so that when a Mac hiccups, I should know how to cure those hiccups, or at least tell you why it’s hiccuping.
Then I’m also going to have two computers in tow. Since I’m going to be doing some of my regular work while I’m out on this little business trip, I’m going to have “Jeff”, one of our office Macs, with me. Then I’m also going to have Lappy, my personal laptop, with me for taking care of the Web site and such while I’m out.
And the drive is almost all Interstate, too, starting at the Beltway in Silver Spring, and going almost all the way to my hotel in suburban Philadelphia. Specifically, it’s mostly I-95, which should be interesting. Last time I rode that stretch of I-95 was to go up to New Jersey in January 2003 for a funeral. So we’ll see.
Categories: Philadelphia, Work