Saturday, November 3, 2007

The New York Experience: Day 1 - California to NY via East Bumbleford!

This is the first of a week or so of blogs from my road trip to one of the most mellow place left on the face of the earth. I'm talking about rural Upstate New York. Growing up in the "country" as we called it was a great experience as a kid but the excitement and drive of California is what I enjoy.

The trip from beautiful Burbank to Albany, New York was uneventful except for one little thing. My good friends at Southwest Airlines never told me we had one more stop on our flight out here. Now we though we were going from Burbank to Chicago and then from Chicago to Albany. Imagine our surprise when we ended up in Baltimore! Our ticket said that we "depart Chicago at 1:25" and "arrive Albany 5:45". I should have know that even with the one hour time difference, that trip was a wee bit too long. But hey, it's Southwest, the airlines that can determine what you "wear" can also determine "where" you're going to and how'll you actually get there. It just seems that Baltimore is in that straight line from Chi-town to Albany.

By the way, if you're ever at Chicago's Midway Field, don't expect the food you eat there that say's "Chicago Style Pizza" to actually represent the food of Chicago. I've had better frozen recalled Pizza's from General Mill's. Next time, there's always the McDonald's. I don't think they could screw it up that bad. On second thought, maybe they could.

After a nice uneventful flight, we landed in Albany to 30 degree temperatures. Yikes, that's cold for this transplanted California native. But at least out here there's no talk of fires, evacuations, respiratory ailments, etc. The air is clean and shall we say, Crisp! Fall is definitely here. The leave have pretty much changed and they are know hunkering down for the hibernation of winter.

After a quick little road trip, I finally got to see my 81-year old Mom who was more than happy to see us and was just as happy to finally go out to dinner. So off we went and we got the complete lowdown on all the construction that's happenings, who's died since the last time I was here and what's going on in our town local political scene. It's election time here in the small town and the signs and campaigning is everywhere you go. In fact, most of the candidates are former teacher's of mine or people I've know for years. But they are all older.

So we're off and running on this adventure in the mellow country. I wonder if I can vote on Tuesday and really make a difference in this small town! Stay Tuned!