By Mark David Blum

For those of you who follow these columns, you note that on occasion I take my machine and my twisted vision of the world with me on a road trip and report back to you a perspective on life and life’s experiences you are not likely to find in a travel guide. Obviously, I do not report much of what does happen and at times to my detriment, my writing will be singularly focused on a single topic with the epic trip serving only as a backdrop. This tale is one of those.

(It is now 3:30 a.m. Wednesday July 19, 2006. The family has just crawled into bed having just returned from 3 days in New York City. The following is a downloaded diary of experiences detailed mostly as they occurred. It is unedited and raw at times; just like me).

It is now 12:15 p.m. on Sunday July 16. I am in the last car of the short Amtrak train running eastbound toward Penn Station for what is supposed to be a 3 day bender in NYC. Woo hoo.

For the record, after balancing the merits of driving, flying, and training; to go by rail was selected because it would be a new experience for the kid thus enhancing the adventure.

Our reservations with Amtrak were for the 9:30 a.m. train. It was a special train, complete with sleeper car; which we had reserved. They serve food, have Murphy beds, shower and bath, your own purser, and room to sleep. The extra cost was not that much and for six hours each way; was well worth the investment. I have traveled by train before and …ick.

But when we arrived at the train station, we were told the 9:30 would not be arriving until after 1:30 p.m. It was coming in from Chicago and the Amtrak people went out of their way to sell me on how beautiful and new this train was going to be. All I heard, was “ four hours late”.

To save face, the person told me there was a quicker, shorter train coming from Rochester at 11:00. Though it did not have the private sleeping quarters, it was going to be bringing us to Penn Station three hours before the 9:30 train. I flashed to Marcia Waldauer’s letter and Jeff Kramer’s column. So, we traded down, will probably receive a credit someday, and changed our seats to the later / now earlier train.

The 11:00 arrived shortly after 12:00 and all Syracuse passengers were directed to get into the last car on the train. Conductors would not let us enter or take seats anywhere else.

If you have ever had the pleasure of visiting an porta-potty that has been cooking at a 3 day rock festival in the 100 degree sunshine, then you know well the aroma that smacked me in the face when I got into the train car. The further into the car, the more intense was the mixture of chemicals, piss, and Amtrak crap. All the windows were sealed and the air conditioner was on full blast but nothing was taking away the stench.

FINALLY, with half a vacation day wasted sweating to death at the Syracuse train station, we are now off on yet another great Road Trip and Adventure.

It wasn’t easy getting on a train today. The Mumbai train bombings, doctors blowing up buildings in NYC, and the exploding situation in the Middle East had me feeling very leery of where I was and my ultimate destination. No, the fear did not stop me from getting on the train, but it lingered with me throughout the entire trip. It was a kind of heaviness and uneasiness that did take a way from the overall “adventure” of the situation.

So, after sitting a while, I went for a walk to the café car. Being in the last car and the food car being the first car, I had the pleasure of walking through the other five cars on the train. Only the Syracuse car … the last one … smelled like ass.

The food tasted no better. I don’t know how you can get a small bag of potato chips to get stale, but Amtrak found a way. The coffee tasted like it first was used to grease the wheels. The sandwich was microwaved … bread and all, and was a gooey sticky salty mess.

If there is anything I can say to convince you to ignore and avoid Amtrak at all costs, please let this be that moment. The people who work on the train are miserable, uncaring, rude, and treat you as as cattle. It helped having a family of Air Force personnel drinking heavily behind me and playing a game of war on the drop down table behind my seat. BANG SLAM SHAKE … on and on. When I fell asleep, apparently I was snoring and every time I did, the guys behind me went “woobooo woooboo woooboo”. Everybody was cracking up.

Finally, after creeping along at what felt like 5mph, we arrived at Penn Station. Wow, what a difference. It is clean and looks like any bustling airport. Up and out onto 7th Avenue at nearly 7:00 p.m. and there we were in the midst of the chaos called NYC.

Fortunately, our hotel was right across the street from the train station. The line to get a room was another 45 minute wait with the hotel staffing the desk with only one person. The grumpy grouchy “I don’t want to be here” desk clerk who finally waited on us sent us to our reserved “suite” which was nothing more than two double beds in the room the size of a toilet. Calls to the front desk did not resolve this. No wireless internet as promised really finished the first day off on a sour note.

Firs things first: FOOD. Since it was my turn to pick, I had a cabbie take us straight to the Lower East side for some real soul food. Katz’s deli; the most famous in the City. It was hot and crowded for a Sunday night, but we got a table and a Jamaican waiter finally arrived. I dove straight into some of my all time favorites … matzo ball soup, corned beef sandwiches for 2, an eggcream (the kid’s first), for a Dr. Browns CelRay. Three sandwiches, three drinks, one bowl of soup … $53.00. But even before I saw the check, I got that feeling … and I quickly got up, ran to the bathroom and puked up the entire meal. I have no idea why but what a waste of money.

When we got back to the hotel after a short walk and cab ride, we noticed the bathroom floor was covered in water. Apparently the toilet leaked. I went downstairs, got another room, and started to walk off with a luggage carrier to move our stuff. Suddenly, security runs up and takes the luggage carrier away from me. You are only allowed to pay a Bellman to move your stuff. They get to use the luggage racks. I just shook my head and walked off.

The new room was a welcome surprise. It truly was the size of a small suite. Only one problem. It still had only two double beds and a barely working TV. There was no other furniture. The big surprise however came when we went into the bathroom. It looked as though someone had been murdered there. Red splotches, green splotches, scrapes, bangs, … a total mess. The assured me it was just paint but CSI NYC would have a field day in this room.

At the Hotel California, you check out but you can never leave. But, at the Hotel Pennsylvania, don’t even check in. A roadside fleabag motel offers as much as that dump for 1/10 the price.

Even the kid had a bit of wit to share. She said the television in the elevators was better than the television in the rooms. It was hard to disagree.

I don’t remember the last time I slept that many hours as deeply and soundly as I did that first night in the City.

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Good Monday morning New York

Adding to the list of reasons why I hate this City is the complete lack of wireless internet access anywhere. Not only did “New York City’s most popular hotel” not have wireless access, but neither did any coffee shop or other public access site …including Penn Station with a large walking area around the hotel.

About eight years ago, I was in this City on business and stayed in a hotel on Central Park South. Those who know me know I never sleep and along with the homeless person singing all night under my window, I was up early. I must have walked at least a mile in every direction at 4:00 in the morning and nowhere was I able to find a stinkin` cup of coffee. Unbelievable; for a City that supposedly never sleeps. I was so appalled that I even wrote the then Mayor saying, ‘Hey Rudy, what’s up with that?’” He never did respond.

So here I am again and this is NYC, home of everything in the world, and within a two mile walking radius of my hotel this morning, not a single internet hotspot. I even got hoodwinked by a Starbucks after walking in and asking if they had wireless access, they said “sure” and I paid for the coffee and bagel and sat down and fired up the machine. Then, I learn that they have wireless, but only if you pay $30.00 per day for access.

So, to Starbucks and to Mayor Bloomberg and to the rest of the hillbillies in this hick town, I have two words for you … F---, I mean ROAD RUNNER.

First up Monday … take the subway to WTC foot print. The kid needed to learn about subways and needed a civics lesson on both the Trade Center and Wall Street. After struggling a bit with the Metro card and constantly paying to get into the wrong train area, we finally arrived at the Trade Center subway station.

The first thing I noticed when the train arrived at the WTC station was that the entire station had been rebuilt. There was new construction all over and as I walked out from the deep underground tube, it struck me what it must have felt like to be trapped down there when the buildings were burning and falling. It was a very eerie and spooky feeling. You can almost feel the panic and chaos. All around the station as you are exiting, are children’s posters to their fallen parents, plaque after plaque remembering the dead, and outside of every window, are the signs of heavy construction. IX XI

I am not quite sure what I was expecting to see, but the WTC site looks now like every other construction site in the world. No signs of the fallen or the damage. If not for the fencing and signs and tourists milling about, you would not even give the site a second look.

When the idea of coming to New York surfaced, I explained to my kid that she should treat this as a ‘field trip’… meaning it is not all going to be exciting and fantabulous, but that she will see things and experience things that are ‘must see’s to better understand the world around her. As two examples, I reminded her that on my last 3 trips to NYC, I skipped seeing the WTC because it was always going to be here and I could see it next time. Likewise, on the list of top 5 places I had wanted to go and experience was the City of New Orleans. I used these to explain to the kidlet she should just sit back and do the stuff that is unfun too.

Once we got past the site, we meandered about the Financial District for a while. Meandering about the streets in NYC is not such a bad thing … unless the temps are near 100 and the humidity greater than that. Grabbing the Bull by the horns and the balls, we walked past the stock exchange and then on down to the Staten Island Ferry. By that time we were melting and so we hailed a cab back to midtown. The cabbie was great, a major chatterbox, and the FDR was wide open so we got a good and detailed quick tour of the East side of the island.

After a few minutes to change clothes and rehydrate, off we went to Times Square, 42nd Street, and Rockefeller Center – by foot --- ten blocks from the hotel. Most folks may enjoy the new Times Square …. Tens of thousands of square feet of well lit high end retail … as opposed to the tens of thousands of peep shows and street people. I much prefer the latter but ‘Guliani Time’ ended all of that.

Once our body temperatures reached the boiling point, we stepped into a restaurant, Maxie’s. It was a very cool and interesting place with a varied menu and tasty food. I recommend it to anyone. One appetizer salad, one potato knish, buffalo wings, and three drinks … $62.00 plus tip.

We suffered through the heat as we walked back down Broadway and through the fashion district. Yes the wife did Macys and the kid did Toys R Us. Eventually, we got back to our room, where after a cold shower, I have no recollection of anything that happened for the next 3 hours.

Woken in time to leave for the Bronx, we gathered up again and started the trek to Yankee Stadium. After funding several wrong trains, we finally found the right train and got on … along with 180,000 people. Of course we missed the stop, despite a thousand people with Yankee hats and shirts getting off, we sat firm. Once we got to our next stop, we got off, turned around and FINALLY made it to the stadium.

Yankee Stadium is beautiful. It is a grand old park with all the amenities and is tightly packed. It was a near sell out crowd with more than 53,000 in attendance, including Rudy G and Taylor Hicks. Us, we sat along the third base home run bleachers, way out of reach of any homerun ball unless Barry Bonds were out on bail. We were surrounded by dozens of Asians who did not care about either team but who cheered whenever one of the three Asian players on the two teams came up to bat. Apparently, these New York Asians don’t give a damn about teams, but are more interested in the race of the player. Racist bastards.

Another surprise at the stadium was seeing the first non human form of life since we left Syracuse. No, I am not talking about the hotel staff, but a simple City sparrow. Nowhere in the City had we seen any signs of non human life. When the sparrow landed near us, I pointed him out to the family as being the only non human animal form I had seen in days. That is when the sparrow turned to me in a classic New York accent and said, “what the fuck are you looking at?” Then there was this weird animal that suddenly scampered across the infield. It has been a lot of years since I have seen a matterbaby outside its native habitat.

After Mariano Rivera came out in relief and loaded the bases in the top of the 9th and putting the tying run on first, the Yankees still managed to win. There must have been at least five double plays made by the Yanks – something I have never seen in a single game. The papers were brutal, however, renaming A-Rod to E-Rod because of his two throwing errors. From what I saw, those guys are worth every dime. We covered half their salaries buying $4.50 bottles of water. If you want to know how Steinbrenner feeds his hungry overpaid players, it comes from ripping off the fans by charging $45.00 for cheap seats and stealing dollars from dehydrated and dying people. We sweated through the return subway trip, made it to the hotel, and collapsed.

***********

Happy Tuesday NYC

It was bad enough the hotel advertised high speed wireless internet access and it did not have it. It was worse when I got a bathtub that looked like someone was murdered in it. The ultimate insult came this morning when at 5:30 and with nothing to do and nowhere to be, I grabbed a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, made myself comfortable in the hotel lobby, and sat down to do some work. A hotel employee came up to me and said, “Sir, there are no outside foods allowed in the hotel”. Stunned, I packed up my stuff and went to have a few “words” with the hotel manager who when he appeared, seemed to have just been woken from a nap. All he did was just stare at me while I talked, kept asking my room number, and never did a thing to ease my anger. Frustrated beyond words, all I could say is that he would be hearing from my lawyer and stormed off. I hate when “they” win.

After a walk in the sweltering heat to find a unique breakfast joint, we stumbled upon a Greek diner. The wife had an interesting feta and spinach omelete. I enjoyed challah French toast. The kidlet ordered a muffin which came in 2,000 pieces and burned. We assume they tried to cut it and toast it. One omelete, one burnt muffin and an order of French toast at a tiny diner… $21.00.

It was just too hot and sticky to do any walking. Tours via bus or helicopter cost more than we were willing to afford. Hence, after a late breakfast, we returned to the room and rested in the A/C until it was time to check out.

At 1:00 we went down to the Amtrak VIP lounge awaiting a train. It is now after 3:00 and the train is already 2 hours late. The train started at Penn Station so I was befuddled as what as the hold up. There were reports of power outages on train lines and some of the tracks were buckling from the heat. I was very thankful we were the Amtrak lounge with comfortable couches, free food and drink, and a cool relaxing environment should keep us pacified while we sat for hours. There was a near riot as the train still had not arrived by 7:00. We were given sandwiches and potato chips and all the soda and coffee we could drink. I was ready to feast on someone’s ass.

It was a damn near riot in Penn Station as all trains in all directions were late. Oh and of course, being that Amtrak is taxpayer funded, most of the employees did not seem to give a crap about quality of service or integrity in the system. My Congressman and my Senators should do all they can to cut off ALL public funding for Amtrak. Maybe with a little competition and free market pressure, this horror story will bring no more pain and misery to any citizen.

Finally they called the train about 7:40 p.m. and it was “ahhhhh time” – a nice meal in the dining car and then out like a light (with no wooboo booboobooo) until Syracuse. Peace was at hand.

Or so we thought.

Remember, we reserved the sleeper car for the three of us. Well, the rocket scientists at Amtrak had only me traveling in first class and my Mrs. and child were in coach. How they managed to screw that up escapes me, but suffice it to say, three of us were jammed into a little tiny sleeper room designed for one comfortably, two tightly, and three noway. My wife’s name was somehow changed in their records to “Rosemary” to which I quickly responded by introducing my child, ‘Rosemary’s baby’.

Yes I bitched and complained (with the ultimate tact and respect) and the purser for our car went out of her way to help. The conductor came up and tried to shake me down for another couple hundred dollars; which I refused. Behind the conductor stood my purser shaking her head “no no no” and so I told the conductor we would make do. When the conductor left, the purser gave me my own private four person suite. I tipped her half what Amtrack was trying to steal from me and enjoyed this large quiet room all to myself. (The wife and kid thought I was in a room like theirs. Little do they know).

The last thing I remembered was leaving the Albany station. (The train stopped to change crew and take on supplies for Chicago. I bolted out to suck down two quick cigarettes).

Until next time…. Happy Rails to You.