Saturday, June 11, 2011
owls & snakes
Elizabeth Murtha's son and Schuyler get acquainted over owls, hawks, and snakes.
Charlie gets to know the creature that got him kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
hello hotchkiss
Schuyler test drives her future room upstairs in Wieler.
reunion time
OK. So we make it to Lakeville and my mind kind of split in half. Driving through those gates was like revealing the portal to a dream land. It had been so long since i returned to Hotchkiss (let alone seen many of my classmates) that i honestly grew to believe that the school and all the classmates i didn't keep in touch with only existed in my imagination (or as a data entry on Facebook). And yet, here I was - a man with a family - sitting in the dining hall where hundreds of thousands of memories were made. The dining hall was fundamentally unchanged (unlike much of the school which had sprouted new wings and centers all over the place) which added to the mental dislocation. Sitting down at one of the familiar tables, ghosts of 1991 started flickering in the crowds and brushing past the table. Occasionally one of us would break the ice, embrace and review 20 years in as many minutes. The social hierarchy that dominated every high school is now flat. The insecurities of the teenage years are absent. The waistlines on the boys are larger, the hairlines higher. When people smile, the creases take longer to relax into their faces. Everyone was a little happier than expected. Everyone felt like family. Even people you may not have liked back in the day. We all lived as brothers and sisters. We ate all our meals together. We shared a home town at a crucial time in our lives. A day was enough time and it was nice to be anchored with some close friends there. I think may actually look forward to doing it again.
watching tv with the big boys
Friday, June 10, 2011
amtrak's empire route
Penn Station is not wheelchair friendly. Using strollers as a proxy, we found this out the hard way. Sure there is an elevator to the platform but it is in some other part of the building and you have to take two elevators in separate parts of the station to get to the tracks by which time the train has probably left the station. We banked on the escalators until the petty tyrant who runs the joint made us take the kids out of their strollers. So how do you carry two bags, two strollers, a car seat and a toddler down an escalator? Well, it turns out NYC is actually home to some very decent folks who - far from stealing our stuff and making off with a hefty load of Pampers - offered to carry half our stuff down for us and help us on the train. Thank you, kind people.
The journey from NYC to Albany is long but very scenic with the grand Hudson River accompanying you pretty much the whole way. Fortunately, Schuyler (eventually) obeyed the command to nap and Charlie gurgled and played with his gate check tag. Even Mama got a little tiny bit of shut eye.
look out lucca
So we arrive at our first destination: Aunt Shaunna's and Uncle Thierry's house. We had a couple of hours in NYC before the train to Albany and we got to spend that time with creature comforts and blue cheese pizza. The wonderful little Lucca played foiled to the grabby Schuyler and the jolly Charlie. It was so nice just to be in a real house after being in an airport all morning and spend some (brief) quality time with close friends and the rug rats.
gate check
We packed all these little toys for Charlie to keep him occupied when it turns out all he needed was the pink Gate Check tag.
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