The snow came out of nowhere and vanished just the same. I was really nervous to realize that we had a “huge snowstorm” bearing down on us within 24 hours of leaving for our current tour. “Winter Storm Saturn”, “the Snowquester” and “Snowmageddon 2013” were slated to drop 8” of snow on us over the course of Wednesday, right before our Thursday departure for New York City – and it looked to follow us right up I95.
Not entirely sure what fizzled, but we got a bit of rain, a bit of slush and today is sunshiney and pretty warm. I-83 is relatively idyllic as we approach our right turn at Harrisburg before heading on to our first stop at Christopher Street Coffeehouse in the heart of New York City. I’ve got plenty of things to worry about still – will there be traffic? (of course there will) Will there be parking? (probably not) Will we cover our losses? (always a concern with the tolls, fees and costs of playing in NYC) Will people come out? (that at least probably isn’t a big worry)…. Eh, I got lots of worries but a storm ain’t one.
Edging our way past 18-wheelers and “admiring” the number of new housing communities have sprung up since our last run up this way, “admiring” the number of familiar businesses that are now nothing but dark storefronts and “for lease” signs.
The face of the country changes. The Sequester takes effect, the stock market shoots past its previous record, people struggle, ilyAIMY rolls on. We’re fortunate to Live such an amazing Life and we skate over much of the turmoil, paying our bills and taxes and actually doing better than we ever have before even as our principle outlays climb higher and higher. Now if only I had an employer paying matching funds into some sort of retirement plan…. My 401K would be ROCKING it right now.
Heading East through Pennsylvania into the grey of the storm that passed us over, it looks like we might just dip into its edges. The mountains in the distance are complete in their purple majesty cliché and white and grey clouds are streaming over top of them. Little spits of rain are hitting us and we’re getting thrown around by the wind pretty good. After we play in New York we turn back south and west and backtrack a bit to Philadelphia where we are actually bedding down with our old friend Shane – the very first person to ever put us up on the road!
We haven’t seen Shane in forever so it’ll be really wonderful to catch up. He first saw us with his Dad at the Riverdale Bookstore about a decade ago. We stayed on his college dorm floor at the beginning of this Journal – and one of my first-ever struggles with wireless connectivity (an external card since when I’d bought my laptop it seemed a useless, unsupported feature) occurred balancing on his windowsill with his roommate’s lizard jumping onto heather’s head. Heather polished up her freshly taught stick-shift skills getting to his dorm room that night and he gifted us with our very first mapping software. Yeah –it’s going to be really, really cool to see him.
The city at night as we escape her clutches. For all that parking made us want to kill 20 men in horrible, barbaric ways – the drive in and the drive out of the city was relatively painless…. painless enough that we could actually even appreciate the scenery! Some of the more bizarre scenery as we exit New York through the industry of New Jersey.
