Got back from a ~1500 mile trip earlier this week. The first leg was from here (Cleveland) to Montreal for IFESS05, in a van, starting at 3am the morning after July 4th. That makes it sound a lot worse than it was; the miles ticked by fairly quickly and the van was big enough for a snooze. The conference was a bit disappointing, but Montreal was great, and we had the International Jazz Festival to entertain us in the evenings. From there it was down to New York to stay with a friend, which was great. Spent a lot of time walking around the city, drinking coffee in Greenwich village, and Guinness in the Irish pubs.
Finally, I took the train back to Cleveland. This took a couple of hours longer than the advertised 12 hours due to track works, but was still enjoyable. The stretch from NYC to Albany along the Hudson River was very pretty, and the sun was setting just as we got into Albany. From there the train heads west across New York State to Buffalo, and along the Great Lakes to Cleveland. Everybody I spoke to before I left warned me that the train was absolutely not the way to go in the US, but I would certainly do it again and recommend it to anyone. Just don’t expect to get there quickly.
