The Schumin Web

Journal

@SchuminWeb

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.

Categories: DASH, New Jersey, New York, New York City, New York Subway, NJ Transit, Philadelphia, Retail, Ships, Transit, Travel

A proper visit to Charleston…

28 minute read

May 9, 2024, 10:14 AM

From April 17-19, Elyse and I made a weekend trip down to Charleston, South Carolina. It’s funny how this worked out. After our visit to Charleston last October, we both were left wanting more. We saw lots of potential in Charleston, and wanted to go back, but we weren’t sure whether we wanted to drive back again, vs. flying. Charleston is eight hours away, which is quite a long haul, and it’s almost entirely through rural areas once you get out of the DC region. In other words, not very exciting. But then when we looked at airfare, we realized that it was really expensive, and that with all of the goings-on at the airport plus multiple flights, we wouldn’t save any time compared to driving, plus we would be limited as to what we could bring with us, and would probably need to rent a car down there. All of that said, that pushed me into driving territory, because then we could bring whatever we wanted, go on our own schedule, and have fun on the way down and back. Plus then we would have the HR-V in Charleston.

On the southbound leg, I tried to keep the trip as close to all-business as I could. I only planned on making four stops: one in the Richmond area, one in Skippers, Virginia (the last Virginia exit on I-95), one somewhere in North Carolina, and then one at the Buc-ee’s in Florence, South Carolina. That would get us to Charleston at a somewhat reasonable hour as long as we kept to it.

Richmond was intended primarily as a food stop. My original idea was to stop at the Sheetz at the Atlee exit, and do Sheetz, and I pitched that to Elyse a few days prior to our trip. It’s funny – when I pitched the idea, Elyse’s response was something to the effect of, “When were you going to tell me about this?” and my response was simply, “What does this look like?” Elyse said that she didn’t want to do Sheetz, because we always do Sheetz, and then suggested we find a barbecue place. I was like, “You had me at barbecue.” Looking it up, I found two places that weren’t too far off of I-95. One was a place called Q Barbeque up in Glen Allen, and then the other one was Oak & Apple right in downtown. I chose Oak & Apple, because it was right in downtown Richmond, and closer to the freeway. More or less get off of the exit, go like two blocks, and boom, there it is.

Categories: Converted buildings, Fire alarms, Netculture, New Flyer D35HF, North Carolina, Photography, Retail, Roads, Ships, South Carolina, Transit, Travel

A trip across South Jersey…

16 minute read

April 27, 2024, 9:41 AM

On April 4-5, I went on a solo trip up to New Jersey. It was a trip that I had been looking for a time to do and one that Elyse had no interest in. April 4-5 was where it fit in my schedule, so I planned it out and went. That said, I was certainly crossing my fingers and anything else that I could cross that the weather would hold out. The forecast for my travel dates would be mostly cloudy and rainy, with a possibility for some breaks in the cloud cover and precipitation. I wanted a very productive overnight trip where I came back with a nice, big photo take, and not a trip that got rained out and ended up being a scouting-future-locations kind of trip. That’s the thing about overnight trips and such: they’re planned and booked in advance, so the weather can be a bit of a roll of the dice. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you don’t.

The plan was to go up to New Jersey via I-95 (i.e. my usual route) and then go across South Jersey on the first day, ending up in Egg Harbor Township for the night. Then I was going to go down to Cape May and take the ferry across to Delaware on the second day, returning home via US 50. Elyse and I tend to call this sort of trip profile a “loop trip”, since we are more or less constantly covering new ground, and doing almost no backtracking. These sorts of trips are fun when they work out, since it eliminates the return-trip blahs, where it’s clear that the fun is largely over, and we’re just retracing our steps back home. On a loop trip, almost no road is traveled on twice.

This one was a little unusual in that I had a doctor’s appointment at the hospital in Olney first thing, so I attended to that and then left straight from the hospital. However, the ride up didn’t exactly inspire confidence in my ability to have the productive trip that I wanted, since it was raining more or less the entire way up to New Jersey. My first planned photo stop was the Church Landing Fishing Spot in Pennsville Township, where I planned to try some different angles of the Delaware Memorial Bridge with the drone, but due to bad weather, I skipped it. I’m not worried about it, though, because we visited this area once before in 2022, and I don’t expect that it’s going anywhere any time soon, i.e. I can do that on a future visit. Fortunately, the rain stopped not long after I got into New Jersey, though the cloud cover would persist for most of the day.

Categories: Delaware, Family, New Jersey, Ocean City, Photography, Ships, 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

An afternoon looking at Legos…

6 minute read

August 21, 2022, 7:06 PM

On August 6, Elyse and I headed out to Chantilly for BrickFair, which is a Lego show held at the Dulles Expo Center. This was my second time going to BrickFair, following my previous visit in 2018. Like in 2018, I had fun, and I photographed a lot of Lego creations with my phone, while Elyse checked out all of the vendors. I am always impressed with what I see at these events, because it puts whatever Lego creations that I made back in the day to shame. My stuff was decent, and I always took pride in the way that I engineered things to work with the parts that I had available, but this stuff is worlds beyond anything that I ever did.

There was so much to see here, and while I got around to all of the tables, I definitely didn’t see everything there, because there was just that much to see, and we had only budgeted four hours. Here are some of the highlights of what I saw:

The Chicago Theatre.

Categories: Events, Fairfax County, Ships

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

A trip out to Hampton Roads…

18 minute read

April 19, 2020, 10:15 AM

From April 3-6, Elyse and I made a trip to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia to visit friends and do some photography. The way I figured, the trip was already paid for, and so as long as we took adequate precautions, I saw no harm in running it as planned. After all, I go out every day to go to work transporting the public, so it’s not like we were “breaking quarantine” or anything, since I’m out in the environment on a regular basis throughout all of this. All that said, if you don’t like that we took this trip, keep it to yourself, because I don’t want to hear about it. On our trip, we stayed in Williamsburg, and had a fun time, mostly photographing architecture and infrastructure with friends Aaron and Evan Stone.

Meanwhile, leaving the house, I had the worst shotgun passenger ever:

I mean, despite his sour disposition, you really didn’t think that we’d take a trip without bringing Woomy along, did you? Elyse quickly threw him out of the front seat so that she could ride, and so Woomy rode in the cup holder.

Categories: COVID-19, Hampton Roads, North Carolina, Richmond, Roads, Ships, Transit, Travel, Woomy

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: