The Start of Something

I often imagined the way I left New York would be captured in one of those iconic moments, where I catch the buildings receding in the rearview and sigh a wistful breath, or watch it diminish and vanish thousands of feet below me as I literally fight free of its weighty pull. Instead, I left the city late at night, a day's worth of sweat and the smell of bleach clinging to my skin, driving east into Queens to avoid the tolls on the westside on my way north to a Marriott in Yonkers. Traffic was sparse coming out of the city, but thick going in; my brother and I squinted at all the headlights across the center divider as my parents crowded in the backseat beneath a minivan's worth of recently-packed luggage and boxes. I did not mark the moment I crossed the city's boundaries. I did not envy the people honking impatiently as they waited their turn to go in.

Later, after a night on a pull-out couch and a lunch with a cadre of my mother's old classmates she hadn't seen in forty-odd years, Roy and I would swing into the city one last time to say a final goodbye to a couple of friends we'd missed the day before. Traffic snarled through seemingly every street we turned down and getting back out became a chore. When the city eventually loomed and shrank and passed, outside the window to my left as Roy drove us south down the turnpike on the Jersey side of the Hudson, I snapped a couple pictures before New York disappeared behind a turn in the highway. None of them came out right; the city always looked too small. There was no time to get a better shot, and when I looked back up, we had rounded the turn. Sometimes, the past just disappears, before you get the chance to frame it in the rearview.

And then I was no longer leaving New York, but heading toward the first stop on the long journey back to my once and future home.

------------------------------

Despite the fact that I lived in New York for the same three years that really saw my wanderlust spark and swell, I never made it to a lot of the major cities that lie nearby. In a late effort to correct some of those missed opportunities (and to see some friends), Roy and I chose Philly and D.C. as the first two stops on our trip. We spent a good night in Philly, demolishing a couple of cheesesteaks, hanging out at a bar with some locals, and partying with Sung, who I've never seen having as much fun as he is now that he's enrolled in business school.

Sung's view from his apartment:

We kept it moving, though, taking off the next day after lunch. It was fun, Philly. D.C. up next.

Into the belly of the beast.

D.C.'s metro system really likes that brutalist look.

All the national monuments are pretty cool to see in person. The chili dogs from Ben's Chili Bowl were pretty cool to see in person, too. Better to eat. No picture, though. On through Maryland...

...where I took the first of very many pictures of corn on the side of the highway...

...and into West Virginia.

We stayed a very shitty night at a very shitty motel in presumably shitty Charleston (we didn't see much of the empirically shitty capital). Before all of that, though, we saw them Friday Saturday night lights over WVU's stadium.

Kentucky was our next real stop. We had a really pleasant lunch in Frankfort, but zoomed on out of there to make it to the bourbon tour at one of the region's many famed distilleries -- Buffalo Trace Distillery. This is the part of the trip where we slipped real comfortable-like into Kentucky accents. The two seasons of Justified we had watched the previous month probably had a lot to do with that.

Blanton's, one of their specialty batches, is still hand-bottled.

The distillery had its own well-kempt gardens, rich with Kentucky bluegrass.

After, it was on to Louisville, where we popped by Churchill Downs and its Dixieland castle aesthetic.

And then drove into downtown to grab a meal just down the street from the Louisville slugger museum.

In case you hadn't noticed, I've started to toy with the HDR capabilities of my camera. Still getting the hang of it.

I crammed a lot into this post. Illinois next time.