Ithaca=gorges

The town slogan - Ithaca is gorges - makes for an easy-to-overuse pun. And overuse it I did last weekend, during a quick trip to Ithaca.

The gorges in question are a few deeply-cut waterways on the edges of town. Not far on the edges, either - one of them ends in a waterfall about three blocks from the house where we were staying, which was itself just three blocks from the center of Ithaca's downtown.

Beyond the gorges, Ithaca itself is a quirky college town well away from anything else in upstate New York. Our weekend trip coincided (not really coincidentally) with the town festival, which turned the main downtown strip into a market. The street was lined with tent stalls, each filled with some sort of craft for sale - unless it was food for sale. Two stages featured live music. There was nothing particularly unique about the event, although as always it's more fun to visit an area filled with people enjoying themselves (and it didn't hurt that the weather was perfect).

Of more interest to me was the opportunity to take my own day trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, a 2 1/2 hour drive from Ithaca.

Perhaps it's from being spoiled, living in a city filled with Smithsonians, but I was slightly surprised by the size of the HOF
. For as many artifacts as the place must have, the two floors of exhibits are just a taste. There were a few display areas were it seemed the hall had tried too hard for a clean and modern museum look, and the spacious rooms were sparsely decorated.

Where the hall shone were the areas that were far more crammed in with displays and artifacts. The first few displays on the history of the game were the most fulfilling, mostly because they played to my bias - the older the baseball era, the more fascinated I am by it.

An exhibit allowing you to virtually explore a computer rendering of Ebbetts Field or Boston's South End Grounds was great, but left me wanting more parks. (I wanted to see the Polo Grounds and the Baker Bowl).

The last spot hit is the actual hall filled with the plaques of those selected for induction. It was a respectfully somber and inspiring area to wander about and read the accomplishments of the biggest names in the sport. The only downside is the sometimes atrocious likenesses on the plaques.

Make no mistake - I loved the hall. Walking among the pieces of baseball history was exactly how I wanted to spend the afternoon. There were just a few things I wished were there but weren't. Perhaps No. 1 on my wish list would be an area with a computer station to browse through video/audio of old games. There is a small area honoring broadcasters and writers who have covered the game throughout the years, but few examples of their work. If I had the ability to sit and watch old game broadcasts, or at least clips of historic moments, I could spend days doing so.

NYC vs DC

Before I moved here, I was no fan of D.C. Some of the neighborhoods around here have started to grow on me, but I'm still not a fan of the city's general character. Sure, the mall is great, but once you stroll out of the museums and memorials, the downtown area is just one big collection of concrete buildings.

One of my friends put it this way: D.C. is thick, not tall. And it's this I'll never be able to get past. Especially when I wander around through Manhattan for a day and return to D.C.

Sure, it's never fair to compare anywhere to Manhattan. But it's just so much nicer, for me, to wander around New York where the defining characteristic is vertical steel rather than horizontal concrete and where every block has a different shop or establishment to discover. At least here the museums are free.

out of town

I spent Labor Day weekend in the car driving through most of the Eastern Seaboard's metropolises. Friday I left D.C. for a not-quite-leisurely drive to Providence, Rhode Island, which was the first time I could use a Rhode Island address as a final destination.

The ride wasn't quite leisurely due to a deadline (my sister and I were headed to Providence to meet our younger cousin, who was flying into Providence that night and moving into her college dorm the next day), Labor Day traffic and a lack of any extra time built into our schedule to compensate for the traffic. A two-hour wait to get across the George Washington Bridge into NYC didn't help. We ended up stuck in traffic for 45 minutes just to get to the exit to drive an extra half-hour or so out of our way to avoid the bridge.

In the end, though, we made it to Providence less than an hour late, forcing cousin to wait just a few minutes (her luggage took some time to appear). We then stayed up far too late (just because) and waking up far too early (for me) to move her in.

The traffic on campus was as bad as the traffic on the roads - she ended up waiting in line to register for her key, to pick up her ID and finally to get up to her room (shared with three others). I was only 10 years out of my depth, but I did get asked if I wanted to open a student checking account, which was a nice gesture.

The moving-in and supply run to Target completed (Rhode Island, to me, consists of the one campus and a strip of big-box stores) we left cousin and headed south to New York City, where another cousin was putting us up for the night. Again, we stayed up too late (a few corner bars and one hookah bar and all of a sudden it's 3:30 a.m.). And again, we woke up too early, to meet a friend of my sister's for brunch. Then a walk through the city, including a Brazilian street fest. Fun times, including the sunburn (who goes to New York and gets a sunburn?)

The weather was perfect, a sunny, crisp late summer day. I started to think back and realized in my mind, New York has the best weather in the country. All my trips to the city have been in the spring or early fall, and every day has been sunny, upper 70s, low humidity. Perfect. Of course, the natives laughed at this slander of their city.

We left NYC late in the afternoon to head back to Baltimore, where we finally got some sleep before helping my sister's boyfriend move into his new house. Then back to D.C., where I stayed up late packing and woke up far, far too early to fly to Missouri, thus ending the tour of the East Coast.