28 miles March 23, 2024
(poetry journal)
The sign said, 28 miles to Kingston.
We had not intended to come this far north, taking a trek
along River Road that turned into 9W, following signs that said, “Bear
Mountain.”
Only when we got there, we kept going, this long and winding
thing, and then, we stopped at the sign saying “28 miles” because we had never
intended to go there, not yet, not since I took my daughter there before COVID,
seeking a bit of the East Village she could no longer find in NYC, we stopped
and wet back, leaving the sign and its destination behind, for another time, for
our annual overnight stay when we were better prepared to deal with the
consequences, 28 miles turning into 30, then more as we made our way home.
(Journal)
We were a half an hour south of Kingston when decided to turn back south,
We had not intended to go so far north but had followed a highway
that started near our town and snakes its way along the Hudson going north. We
wanted to see where it went and if it was a less tedious route than the usual
one we took to the Woodstock area.
And it turned out to be an amazing trek – if not for the fact
we got lost twice on the way back, a long and winding road north that turned
into a nightmare when we wound up in the extreme northern suburbs of Bergen
County.
We had intended to check out Bear Mountain, which was an
amazing landscape when we passed through it, and expected to stop at the Wick
Diner in East Rutherford for dinner on our way back – plans that changed when I
could not get the GPS on my cellphone to tell me exactly where we were and
eventually stumbled around until we found the Parkway and took that south,
getting caught up in the insane traffic at key exits such as Route 80 and Route
46.
Route 3 was less cumbersome, and we stopped off at the Tick
Tock Diner – the last vestige of the world where I had worked nearby in a print
shop.
Mick Jaeger was on the menu for a meal he had ordered during
the Rolling Stones’ last visit to Giants Stadium.
I ordered a hamburger and fries, instead, before we took the
last few miles back to home, setting aside Kingston for another trip later.
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