Day 3: Journey to Ithaca

There comes a time in every man's life when he must board a train in New York City at 3am, to arrive in South Station in Boston at 8am, to travel to one's apartment to retrieve an item, then return to South Station at 9am, and board a bus that arrives in New York at 2pm. I was hoping that day would not come so soon for me, but life hardly ever works out as planned.

The train ride was an exciting semi-conscious adventure punctuated by occasional moments when the train motor would stop dead, everything would go silent, and all the lights would go out for a few minutes as a time. I bravely sleep-walked through this and, 5 hours after leaving New York, located the sought-after item in my apartment in about 4 seconds.



Then back on the bus, where I spent another 5 hours drowsily listening to the Hungarian traveling doctoral student sitting next to me trying to communicate with the Spanish high schoolers sitting behind us. I would have thought it was adorable if I was not so cranky. But when I returned to New York, my associate was there waiting for me and we were ready to continue the adventure.

We fled the city and started with a drive through New Jersey. Here's the highlight of that part of the drive:



Going through Pennsylvania, we decided we had to make a stop to see some of the sights in Scranton. Here's the tank that guards the outskirts of town:



The Friendly's on the outskirts of town:



Ye Olde Auto Wash:



And probably the most abandoned city park I've ever seen:



My associate believes that the order of things on this sign should be rearranged so that "prom" comes before "bridal". In Scranton, I'm not so sure ...



We did get into the center of town, which appears to be under construction at the moment:



But we did find out where the girls are:



After getting the hell out of there, which we couldn't seem to do too soon, we drove through some beautiful countryside, which I didn't get any good photos of because it's hard to take photos of things you're whizzing past in a car. We did see our first cows, though probably not our last:



This general there continued through Pennsylvania and western New York state, with things getting progressively more bucolic. Like Odysseus, we were struggling to make our way towards Ithaca. Also like Odysseus, we were hammered with a severe storm along the way, which I will post a video of if I get a chance to work on compressing it.

We did make it in, only to find a party had already begun in our honor!



Actually the party was in honor of the birthday of one of our gracious hosts in town, both of whom can be seen with my associate here at the local homemade ice cream joint:



And not just any dairy stand, but one with a warm message to its collegiate visitors:



And now we're back to where we'll be spending the night, thanks to the generosity of the landlords, one of whom is seen here:



So here I am, having done 20 straight hours worth of traveling but overall none the worse for wear. Tune in tomorrow, to see what happens when I make a run for the border.