Weekend Adventure

Eunice and I went to see my sister this weekend up in Massachusetts (well, the part of Massachusetts that is actually Connecticut).

The drive up was... Exciting. Sort of. Exciting in the way that only a 7 hour drive stretched into 12 hours can be. Where did the extra 5 hours and 100 miles come in you ask? Well, it's like this...

I wanted to avoid the George Washington Bridge. Desperately. I have this healthy fear of driving in New York. I went in by bus once. The sheer amount of traffic was terrifying, just as a passenger. So, I wanted very much to avoid the George Washington Bridge and anything relating to Downtown Manhattan.

In my first attempt to avoid the GWB, I took 287, and was going to follow that around. About 15 miles into it we realized that the branch of 287 we were on was going to take us through the middle of New York State, and we were probably on it far earlier than my sister had recommended. We decided this with about an hour and a half of discussion at a McDonald's. So, we turned around and went back to the Jersey Turnpike.

I don't like New Jersey. Really, who does? Driving through it on the turnpike in mid November is not a good way to see it. The weather was grey. The trees were hibernating and looked dead. New Jersey itself as some unpleasant smells that waft into the car as you zoom through it. My opinion of New Jersey has not changed.

So we were off to the Jersey Turnpike, looking for the New York Throughway. We stopped at the last rest stop on the pike to once again try and figure out how we were going to avoid the GWB. Eunice and I must have looked pathetic staring at the map in the rest stop, because 3 different people stopped to try and help us out. One recommended we turn around and go back to the New Jersey Parkway (which I'm sure is the wrong name) and go up to the Tappan Zee bridge. Another told us we didn't have to turn around, but if we were going to the Tappan Zee we'd be better off just going to the GWB, because at that hour both were exceptionally busy.

The second kind helper offered us a different route. We could go north, up 87/287, to 84 and go east from there. He assured us that though it was a longer route it would be faster, as I-95 (and the Tappan Zee) were going to have crazy amounts of traffic, all the way up through Hartford. The third kind helper was a trucker, and he confirmed the second person's story. So, off to 87/287 we went.

Did I mention that it was 6 p.m.? Dead center, rush hour, New York City.

Actually, the trip went remarkably well after we got off the New Jersey Turnpike. We later figured out that the trip north and east added about 60 miles and about an hour and a half of drive time to our journey, because there was some construction.

The extra time and mileage came from trying to figure out where we were going, and making some wrong turns. We arrived about 11:30, safe, sound, and tired.

The trip back wasn't nearly as painful. It only took us 8 hours to get home, using our newly-learned "shortcut" to bypass New York. We stopped once for lunch in the Hated New Jersey. New Jersey Turnpike food sucks more than food you get from rest areas anywhere else I've been. Yet another strike against Jersey. We stopped a couple more times to stretch, but never for very long. So we managed to keep the return trip to about 8 hours.

Traffic wasn't too bad until we hit Baltimore, at which point it turned insane and stayed that way until we got home. We think there was a Ravens game, and we hit the return traffic.

All the driving pain was worth it, though.

We got to see my sister and the play she worked on. She is a professor, teaching at a college in southern Massachusetts. She runs the costume and prop shop, with the help of some students. They put on one big play per semester. The students involved in the play enroll in a few different courses in order to get academic credit for working on it. Some enroll in the acting class, while others enroll in the prop/scene class. It's a pretty nice deal, though it is a lot of work.

They did Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo (though I don't remember which translation they used). It was excellent. I thought all the actors did a great job. The costumes and set were, of course, wonderful. I know I'm biased, but I think that my sister does excellent work.

I think the play has an interesting application to our time as well. In it, Galileo uses a telescope for observing the stars. He finds that the Earth revolves around the sun, and that the sun is at the center of the universe. Further, the planets and other stars are not set into big crystal spheres, which was the accepted view at the time. In announcing his discovery he is condemned as a heretic by the church, and ultimately recants late in life. After that he is placed under house arrest and not allowed to do any more research.

My favorite scene is one where Galileo is trying to convince other scholars that there are 4 stars that orbit Jupiter. They refuse to believe it. He asks them to simply look through the telescope. They quote Aristotle. It goes back and forth like this until they leave. They never do look.

I found myself watching the play and thinking about the presidential election and recent events. It seems to me we have the old guard who wants us to believe what they say, but not what we see. And by the popular vote, there seem to be a lot of people who refuse to look with their own eyes and see what's out there.

Anyway, I'll stop before I go ranting.

Sadly, I never did get to see the goats my sister told me about. Apparently someone near her has goats in their back yard. I was naturally terrified by this news.

Visiting with my sister was great. The play was very good. The drive was not so good. Overall this weekend get 5 stars for visiting and 2.5 stars for adventurous travel.