Happy New Year! Ringing in 2015 in Times Square

 In the early eighties my cousin Bob drove with his wife to New York on New Year's Eve, parked a few blocks south of Times Square, and walked over and watched the ball drop. I found this to be charming, but this little story adds to the body of evidence that the eighties were a long time ago.

The plan was to arrive in New York around 7:00pm and see how close we could get to Times Square. My thinking was that driving in Manhattan would be a ridiculous fiasco, so I opted for Mass Transit.

 So here are the steps we followed.

Depart Maryland at around 6:00pm, three hours later than intended. Drive to Jersey City, New Jersey. Following the directions on the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson) website, immediately get lost and resort to the Maps App on your son's Iphone. Find not the intended subway stop, but the one two stops further on. Receive instructions from the friendly PATH employee on purchasing and loading your fare card (Up to four round-trips can be loaded on a single card.) Ride the PATH train to the last stop at 33rd Street. Head for the ball-drop venue about ten blocks North. Walk up Broadway past the Macy's Christmas windows, lingering for a moment to enjoy them. Walk to 38th Street before being redirected West by an NYPD barricade. End up in a huge mass of humanity moving slowly up 9th Avenue, taking up the whole sidewalk and a good portion of the road. Feel the chill on your face but notice that the combination of walking, the long johns and the layers of clothing are feeling pretty good. Observe dozens of street entrepreneurs hawking gawdy New Years Eve hats, glasses, horns, and LED attire. Observe several dozen push cart food vendors grilling cheesesteaks and chicken kebabs, all luring you with delicious aromas. Look in the restaurant windows at folks eating pizza and drinking coffee and cocoa. Observe a huge police presence, every single officer friendly and professional. Be repeatedly hindered from turning East by, uh, hindersome police barricades. Finally turn East at 57th Street. 57th! Find a large gathering of people in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater watching a videocast of the Times Square festivities. And the videocast is counting down! Five, four, three, two, one, TWO HOURS UNTIL THE NEW YEAR!!!

Very funny.

Move further East, hoping to find a better vantage point. Finally find the back of the line at a closed-to-traffic 7th Avenue at 54th Street, a little South of the Carnegie Deli. You can't see the ball from here, but you can at least see into Times Square about six blocks South. This is as good as it is going to get. Look around. These are the folks who will help you ring in the New Year. Listen to the languages spoken. Middle Eastern dialects, Spanish, a little French. Folks are attempting to start a stadium-style wave. Glance behind you to the North and observe that the crowds have filled in several blocks behind you! Groups of revelers occasionally shout, "WOOOOO!" Helicopters hover overhead. Some 15th floor balconies are decorated for Christmas. A paper airplane of unknown origin soars thirty feet above. And then, after just a moment, the Times Square video screen is counting down from one minute.

This is the moment I finally feel chills. How many times have I watched this countdown from the comfort of my sofa or a friend's party? What happened to the year? It all seems to have gone by in a blur, a blink of an eye. Five, four, three, two, one,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Cheers! Fireworks! Both in Times Square and behind us in Central Park. And now the mass exodus, unhurried but deliberate. And now we can move closer to Times Square glimpsing the performance stages, the accidentally left-behind hats and gloves, the confetti still hanging in the air, and the huge amount of trash strewn in the street. We walk a now chilly dozen blocks, find the PATH train, Jersey City, Jersey Turnpike, and home by 4:30am.

We didn't even see the ball. It doesn't matter. We were in a happy crowd of a million people gathered to ring in the New Year in Times Square, the #1 place in the world to do so. Times Square! It was wonderfully, intoxicatingly exciting.

There are some that say that an adventure like this does not appeal to them at all.  Pity. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A Spring Day in the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania

 I have been here before.  That’s what I thought gazing 800 feet down at Pine Creek from Leonard Harrison State Park near Wellsboro, PA.  This gorge is known as the GrandCanyon of Pennsylvania, and it is beautiful to behold.  But it hadn’t occurred until this moment that I had paddled a canoe down there 40 years earlier.

It was 1981 and half a dozen of us Boy Scouts were being treated to one of Scoutmaster John Marley’s private stash of favorite places.  We were the elder Scouts, the Leadership Corps of Troop 802.  In rented canoes we paddled through 60 miles of the some of the most beautiful countryside I had ever seen.  The peaks towered over us and the creek revealed new pleasures at each bend.  I remember that even though Pine Creek varied in depth from inches to 15 feet it was always crystal clear to the bottom.  There were a few minor rapids.  We had to jump out of the canoes a few times to get through the shallow spots.  There were submerged rocks smudged with the colors of our canoes – apparently our canoes had been this way before.  We camped overnight around the halfway point.  I wrapped my gear-securing shock cord around a nearby tree so I wouldn’t lose it in the dark.  Looking for recreation after dinner we jumped back in the canoes and attacked each other with our water bailing scoops.  In the middle of the quiet night I was awakened by a terrifyingly loud freight train passing by on the opposite shore.  Except for the train and the occasional bridge crossing we were the only witnesses to this place.

Fast forward to the present.  The railroad is gone now, replaced by a fabulous rail trail ideal for biking.  When we walked the upper portion on a chilly Mothers’ Day we encountered few others, but clearly this is area is now available to the many.  The trail hugs Pine Creek from Ansonia to Jersey Shore, more or less the end points of our canoe trip.  Spring-fed creeks flow under the road bed.  The rock faces drip eagerly and some of the bigger spring outlets produce miniature waterfalls.  Geese pairs shepherd their young broods along the edge of the creek.

Up in Leonard Harrison Park the Turkey Trail takes you all the way down to the creek.  It is steep descent, but there are wooden stairs and railings at the most treacherous points.  And remember you have to walk back up to the top!  The whole walk is beautiful, but at the halfway point you encounter a spectacular waterfall as extra compensation for your effort.  There are other vantage points at various places in the gorge, but Harrison is generally regarded as the best.  A couple of State Parks abut the creek in this area and there are many trails to explore.

The town closest to the upper gorge is Wellsboro, a charming Norman Rockwell sort of place with an easily walkable Main Street with several restaurant and lodging options.  We stayed at La Belle Auberge B&B and enjoyed The Roost sports bar.  We narrowly missed seeing (by one hour) a local community theater production, and Gail was mesmerized by a store called The Enchanted Hollow. 

One thing I have wondered since that 1981 canoe trip.  Will I ever see my shock cord again?