Rain & more rain...

Friday June 9, 2006






We had one day of good weather in the City before the rain arrived on Wednesday, it has been raining off and on since and the rain has followed us back to Marshfield. We did not let a little rain dampen our visit to New York; we just made good use of our raincoats. We started on Wednesday back at the Museum of Modern Art, which being Wednesday was open. The newly renovated and reopened Moma is amazing. The building is incredible, almost as impressive as their collection. They have no doubt the most incredible collection of Modern Art in the World. It was so immense that after 3 ½ hours, we still were not able to see much of the collection. What we did see was awesome. Many of the most famous works from artists like Picasso, Kandinsky, Dali, etc., as well as great collections of architectural drawings and photographs. It was overwhelming.







We had plans to have dinner with Kathy’s college roommate, Jen Korten, her husband Brendan Spillane and their children Catriona & Aidan on Staten Island. We made our way to the tip of Manhattan, checking out Battery Park & the Castle Clinton before catching the ferry to Staten Island. We had a wonderful get-together with Jen & her family. They prepared a wonderful dinner for us and we spent a lovely, albeit too short evening with them. The ride back on the ferry was great; the view of the skyline through the drizzling rain was worth the ride in itself.



Yesterday the rain continued as we checked out of our hotel and made our way back to China Town to catch the Fung Wah. On the way we visited the Theodore Roosevelt birthplace on 20th Street. It is a recreation of the childhood home and collection of many artifacts from Teddy Roosevelt’s life. The bus ride back was much longer due to traffic, but we eventually made it back to Marshfield. We made it back in time to coincide with the arrival of our sister-in-law, Kari Kilroy & her kids Sophie & James. They will be visiting until next Wednesday, so we won’t be doing a lot of traveling until next week.

New York City

June 7, 2006






If you ever need to travel from Boston to New York City on the cheap, we highly recommend taking the Fung Wah Chinese bus which runs on the hour to and from South Station in Boston and China Town in Manhattan. It costs a mere $15.00 each way and the trip takes about 4 ½ hours. We decided on the fly to go to the city, and finding an affordable place to stay in June in Manhattan proved impossible. We ended up staying in Flushing, which is about 20 minutes on the 7 train outside the city. It was much, much cheaper and fairly easy to get in and out of the city. Our first evening in the city we checked out Times Square then headed to Little Italy for a nice meal at a place called Da Nico at Mulberry & Broome. It was nice except for the Meadow Soprano wannabe who was on her cell phone at the next table through her entire meal, much to the chagrin of her date.


Today, we were up fairly early and headed to the South Street Seaport to the TKTS booth where ½ price tickets to the day’s Broadway shows were on sale. We got off the subway right next to Ground Zero and walked around the former site of the World Trade Center. It is a moving experience. Work is moving slowly on the site, but they have built a small memorial along the fence which commemorates those who perished. There is something more visceral and poignant viewing the site, much more so than say a Civil War Battlefield, my guess is because it was something that is so recent and that each of us experienced in our own way.

We explored the area around South Street, but none of the shows they had available jumped out for us at the TKTS booth, so we opted out of a Broadway show. Instead we headed to Penn Station where we met my friend Mandy Roerden & her friend Shana who had taken the train in from Copiague to hang out with us. Mandy is a fellow kookoohead or fan of the Counting Crows. We walked from Penn Station, through Times Square to the Moma (Museum of Modern Art), stopping for a quick lunch. Sadly the Museum was closed, it being Tuesday and all. So we continued our walk, through Central Park to the Guggenheim where we took in their current shows, architect Zaha Hadid and Jackson Pollock, “Paintings on Paper”. We then caught a train back to Times Square where we went to see the new Jennifer Aniston/ Vince Vaughn movie, “The Break Up”. After the girls headed home, Kathy & I stopped for dinner at the Stage Deli, before heading back to the hotel.
Mandy, Shana, Michael & Kathy

Marshfield, MA

June 4, 2006

Marshfield, MA

We have made it to phase 2 of our journey as we have arrived safely in our base for the next few weeks, Marshfield, Massachusetts. Our trip from Indiana took two solid days of driving with a nice stop-over in Beford, Pennsylvania where we toured some of the many beautiful covered bridges in the rolling hills of the beautiful area. We encountered our first major traffic issues as soon as we crossed the New Jersey state line. Driving through torrential rainfall and fog lead to traffic problems and the first accidents we came across. There were three bad ones within 50 miles of entering the state and a guy almost sideswiped us as we slowly made our way through Connecticut. We eventually made it here to Kathy’s father’s home which we plan to use as a jumping off place to explore New England. The tables are somewhat turned this week as we are on Kathy’s home turf when we were on my home territory last week.



Kathy & Al Needham

Our first stop here, and one of the reasons we arrived when we did was to attend the 70th birthday party of one of Kathy’s dearest family friends, Betty Kohlberg. It was a joyous affair dominated with wonderful performances by her adorable grandchildren. Connecting with family & friends is one of the most special aspects of this trip. To that end, Kathy along with her sister Julie & niece Bayla treated me to a trip to one of the special places she visited as a child. The Uljas Koitto Temperance Society Summer Camp. This beautiful place is on a small lake in Pembroke, MA and the centerpiece is an authentic Finnish Sauna located right on the shore of the small lake. Cool temperatures, rain & fog did not deter us as we soaked in the 230 degree heat of the sauna then leaped into the chilly lake. It was an amazing experience. It was especially nice interacting with the wonderful people there, it was a total immersion into the South Boston culture.

One of the more difficult aspects of blogging is finding wireless internet service. The lack of service in this area, and in the days ahead where we may be camping for extended trips will make updating this blog difficult. I hope to keep it as up to date as possible, but do not panic if it gets a bit behind. Also I’d like to wish my friend John Cornwell a speedy recovery. Complications from his appendix removal led to another 4 ½ hour surgery on Thursday and our thoughts are with him to get well quickly.

Julie, Alan & Bayla

Kathy & Jim w/ Jean Drinkwater




UKTS Summer Camp

Woodacre Farms Soap