It's been a topsy-turvy week, but I'm finally getting my head above water again here at our new home. A lot has happened, which I'll try to capture here, but I'm not sure I can get it all.
On Tuesday, Maj, Amita June and I spent the morning in Central Park in New York City. It was a beautiful day -- the rains had cleared overnight, and it was warm and crisp everywhere. We went to the big playground near Columbus Circle, which had about 1000 kids from 2 to 14 running in every direction, and a huge water spray fountain which meant that most of those kids were soaking wet. We went and grabbed lunch at the Whole Foods Market on the circle itself, and ate it out on the grass.
AJ and Maj went back to the hotel for a nap, and I got a haircut for the awards ceremony that night. Then I had coffee with Tim Wu, creator of the concept of net neutrality and a writer for Slate. We had a great talk about net neutrality, the future of Wikitravel (Tim wrote a critical piece in Slate in April), and new projects we're both working on. It was really pretty fun.
Unfortunately, I took too long talking to Tim, and not enough time buying myself a pair of pants for the awards ceremony. So by the time we were done, I was in a huge hurry. I ran down to the Old Navy on W 34th, picked a pair of black khakis off the shelf, and jammed in a cab to get back to our hotel room in time. Maj was done up to the nines, so I jumped in the shower, shaved, threw on my sport jacket and slacks, cut off all the tags with nail clippers, and ran out the door.
The event itself was pretty incredible, and I don't want to flood this blog post with all of my comments and recollections. So I'll add a more detailed report later today. (Update: finally written at Webby Awards 2007.)
tags: newyorkcity maj amitajune travel wikitravel timwu wholefoods webbyawards webbies
Drive time
Suffice it to say that we were out really, really late. We got up at 6AM the next morning to make our 8AM train back to Montreal, and it was clear to everyone (even Amita June) that if we tried to make this train it would be one of the worst days of our life.
But there's only one train from NYC to Montreal per day, so we'd have to stay in town another night, and then have the same problem the next morning. So Maj canceled our Amtrak train tickets -- which were 100% refundable, even a couple of hours before the train leaves. Bravo, Amtrak! Then I got to work trying to rent us a car to drive home.
It turns out that it's hard to get a rental car for a one-way trip from New York to Montreal. I tried Budget and Avis and National, and none of them would let me rent one-way into Canada. Annoyingly, none of their Web sites gave straight error messages on the subject -- I got "no cars available" or "unable to find your destination" (!) -- and I had to call the 1-800 numbers for each one in turn.
I finally got a car from Hertz, on-line, and there was even a little note in my confirmation email to the effect of "ONE WAY TRAVEL CONFIRMED". I guess there's a reason that some companies get to be number one -- the more flexible you are, the more grateful your customers are going to be. I, for one, am planning to use Hertz in the future.
I picked up the car at the W 55th Hertz office, and it took me 45 minutes to get back to our hotel at 7th and W 47th. The garage at Hertz goes onto W 54th, which is a "Thru Street" -- no turns allowed until you're halfway across town. And, it was bumper-to-bumper, of course. I finally gave up and made an illegal turn, and was promptly pulled over by a motorcycle cop. D'oh! Luckily, he let me off with a warning.
Our trip out of New York was uneventful, but pleasant. It was a beautiful day, and the Catskills and Hudson Valley are a beautiful place to drive in the early summer. Deep, cool woods and bright green fields -- they're lush and fertile-looking. We stopped in Lake George for an early-afternoon dinner, and then had a pretty sunset drive through the Adirondacks up to the border.
We got in late -- 10:30PM -- but it was overall a pretty good trip. And nice to have left at 2PM rather than 6AM.
tags: rentalcar amtrak newyorkcity hertz
MANA
Yesterday Mark, Allegra, Noéma and Anoushka stopped back through Montreal as they wended their way home to Lausanne. We had a nice lunch at Zyng and then took a walk down av Mont-Royal, where a pedestrian fair is going on this week. They got off yesterday evening, which makes the last of our RoCoCoCamp visitors to leave.
tags: mark allegra noéma anoushka
Pecha Kucha Montreal
I'm very interested to hear via Boris and James that we'll be having a Pecha Kucha night here in Montreal. It's going to be on 14 Jun 2007 at 20:20h (8:20PM) at the SAT.
Pecha Kucha is an unconference for designers (not necessarily Web designers). I think it sounds like a really interesting event, and I hope to go.
tags: pecha kucha unconference montreal