Living in DC: Hunting High and Low

And now for a new series. I've recently accepted a job working for a transportation engineering consultant in Washington DC, and so we'll probably have a few posts about the move up there and my getting situated in The Big City. This post is mostly copied from Facebook, since I was going to just make an album there but I got more than a little carried away with telling the story. Here goes.


In the last month, I've had three different hunts Take On Me: the job hunt, the apartment hunt, and the Post Hunt. While I'm pleased to say that the first two are over, they were all fairly interesting experiences, especially the A-Ha moments in the Post Hunt. That thing was fantastic. This album covers all of my experiences Hunting High and Low in May-June of 2011.


I expect to put in some more updates once I've moved all of my stuff into the apartment. Depending on where I put everything, I guess we'll just have to see if The Sun Always Shines on TV.


The Post Hunt


The first and most fun hunt of the month was the Post Hunt. It's an afternoon of crazy puzzles requiring cleverness and wordplay and often Batman-like leaps of logic. However, if you are able to solve even one of the puzzles, the feeling is fantastic. As one of my friends said, "Figuring out a [Post Hunt] puzzle is one of the most gratifying things I've ever done. Ever."

I've been a follower of Dave Barry's blog for several years now, so every year I'd see him do a writeup of the Miami Herald Hunt and the fantastic puzzles it contained. In 2008, he and some of his colleagues at the Washington Post started a sister event up in our neck of the woods.

The week before the event, I saw him plugging the Post Hunt on his blog and I said to myself, "man, self, I really wish I were working in DC already so I could participate in the hunt." Then I thought back, "hey, I need to go find an apartment up in DC anyway in the next week... why not go up there a day early and do the Hunt?"



So I did. And IT WAS GREAT.

Solving each puzzle can be quite difficult. The organizers announce several coordinates containing the puzzles which correspond to locations on the map provided in the Sunday newspaper. When you arrive at the location, you're given little to no instruction on how to solve the puzzle, except that "the answer is a number." For instance, here's the only puzzle I took a picture of.

You show up in front of the Old Post Office Building and find this display. If you read the Washington Post Magazine (which you're supposed to before you show up) you might recognize this as a display on one of the pages. Should you add up the prices of the items? Should you count the leaves on the flowers and divide by the number of drawers? Should you ignore the table and figure out how old Ben Franklin (in the background) was when he died?

No. In this particular puzzle, you're supposed to realize that the only difference between this display and the one in the magazine is that this one is missing a mirror in the vanity. If you physically cut out the mirror in the magazine, it reveals a picture of a record on the following page, and specifically the words "45 RPM". The answer is 45.

If you want to know more about the diabolical cleverness in each Hunt puzzle, check out their website (http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/post-hunt-2011) for videos about each of the puzzles.

Anyway, there are five main puzzles. You need the solutions to these puzzles to enter the End Game - an even more devious puzzle - to determine the winner. In this case, a Beatles cover band sang snippets of songs, and you were supposed to use your five numbers from the early puzzles to figure out which one to pay attention to.

For those of us who didn't figure it out... well, the band played for us while we waited for a team to win so we could have all the solutions explained slowly to the rest of us.

All in all, the Hunt was a blast, the weather was great, and I'm really looking forward to next year's installment. We'll be ready, Pullitzer Prize-winning columnists and Tom!

The Apartment Hunt


On Monday, I had to buckle down and get to work before I could actually get to work. You see, I got a job offer from a company (Gorove/Slade Associates, a transportation engineering firm up in DC), which is great and all except that they wanted me to start in only a few weeks. Because of a wedding and some other committments, I only left myself with a week to find an apartment. And so with a few hours of frantically crammed-in research on Sunday night, I set off to visit places on Monday morning.

The first place I visited was the largest (1BR), the cheapest ($1085/mo), and the only one to offer garage parking at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, it's in kind of a sketchy neighborhood. Property crime stats are about the same there, but violent crime happens at about 4-5x the rate as in the other areas I was looking at. In fact, people at work said they wouldn't feel comfortable living there... so I took it out of the running after visiting. Too bad, the building was brand new.

From there, I walked south towards my second appointment, passing through a fantastic park with this mesmerizing fountain.

Oh, and a suave duck.

The second building was located near this Harris Teeter. Julia and her family live near one in North Carolina, so I was intrigued by the possibility of living down the block from a nice grocery store. That park from before was across the street as well.

It's located in an old rollerdome, hence the funky roof and styling.

Unfortunately, the only sizeable studio apartment they had open was located on the ground floor right outside the trash room, so I was a bit put off. Plus, that building has had a number of bedbug reports, and when I asked the rental agent about insect treatments in the building it really seemed like she was trying to hide something, so I passed on it.


The third place was a bit of a mystery to me. It was very large for a studio but they were asking quite a steep price for it ($1492/mo). Turns out that was because: 1) the building was very close to Metro (just look at the picture - it's about 600' from door to door), 2) surface parking was included, and 3) utilities were NOT included.

However, after visiting the place (really nice appliances including in-unit washer/dryer) and walking around the neighborhood I realized that parking was free because you NEED a car to get anywhere apart from Metro. It's well over a mile to the nearest store or restaurant.

 I'd been worried that a place so close to an above ground Metro station would be noisy. I mean, it's the same rail corridor that serves Amtrak trains running out of Union Station. However, I hung around inside the building for a while as several trains ran by and I couldn't hear a thing.

However, as you probably noticed in the previous picture, the 600' from Metro to my door would have been taken up by a sizeable bus station, and as I quickly noticed there was a bus that turned left RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY WINDOW about every 2 minutes. Seriously, those things went within 15 or 20' of my living room, and they made quite a racket.

And so by that point it was 5pm on Monday and it was time to call it a day and head back across town and into Virginia to meet up with Mitch once more. All I'd eaten that day was a single pear, so as soon as I got back I ate the remainder of the food I'd brought to his apartment, which meant putting away a pound of strawberries in about two minutes. They were delicious.

Tuesday morning, due to bad planning, I had to pack up and leave Mitch's within about 10 minutes of waking up so he could get to work on time and I could still have access to my car that afternoon.


So around 8am I found myself sitting getting off the Metro at Farragut Square - the closest station complex to my new workplace - with only one appointment for the day. I had a bit of time to make some phone calls to try to schedule some more appointments, but mostly I read an actual PRINT COPY of The Onion and watched the squirrels run around.

It's probably just because they want your food, but between how playful they seem and just how close they're willing to get to people they really remind me of the Virginia Tech Squirrels. I can already tell that we're going to get along.

As I looked northward through the urban canyon that is Connecticut Avenue, I thought about just how much I wanted this next place to work out.

All throughout Monday, it seemed like the next place I was going to visit was the most fantastic place I could possibly live. I blew everything out of proportion so much that any one critical flaw was enough to completely ruin the place in my opinion. So I had high hopes for the next place.

I walked north from Farragut Square and in two blocks got to 1140 Connecticut Avenue NW, the building where I'll be working. If you're in the area, you can remember it because it's the one that says "IMPROV" on the front, which is appropriate because for the past six months I've pretty much been making it up as I go along.

 

Eventually, I reached my destination: the President Madison Apartments at the corner of Florida Ave and 20th St NW. It's easy to find because it's the only place in the area done in the Mission Revival architectural style.

Along the way, I'd had the opportunity to pass through Dupont Circle and very close to Adams Morgan... and I must confess that I really fell in love with the area along the way. It's just so walkable, and there are all kinds of cool restaurants and shops nearby to check out over the next year. Plus, once you're off Connecticut Ave the place just seemed so much calmer and safer than anywhere else I'd been in the city on my apartment hunt.

Now more than ever I wanted the place to work out.


...


And you know what, that's probably why I wound up applying for the place they offered me. It didn't matter that it was the second most expensive ($1315/mo), had the highest parking fee ($180/mo for a surface lot behind the building), and was BY FAR the smallest (340 sq ft)... I was sold before I even walked in the door.

You can see just how small the place is in this 270-degree panorama (click to zoom in). In fact, the main room is only 12'3" by 12'9" because so much of the square footage is tied up in the full kitchen and the entrance hallway.

Now, lest you think I'm a crazy person for actually wanting to return to dorm room conditions, let me start by saying that it's only a 14-minute walk to work from inside my living room, and let me continue by showing you some of the amenities of the building. 

As you go down into the basement, watch out for low pipes. All the ones highlighted in red here are low enough for me to hit my head on. Fortunately, I'll only need to go past this room when I need to access...

  ...the indoor bike storage room! Sure, the place is right across the street from a Capital Bikeshare station, but I'll probably bring two bikes with me anyway, one for recreational rides and my older bike for commuting.

One of these days I'll make a map of the region of DC where it's quicker to ride a bicycle than to take transit... but let me just say that you have to go about 8 metro stops in any direction - without transfers - to get out of that zone.


They've also got this exercise room, for when it's too hot to jog.


And I should mention that the fitness room has nicer TVs than I do, so I might just make it a habit of going down there to watch shows anyway.

From the high-ceilinged section of the basement, you can access this cool courtyard. It has some nice shady trees, a few benches, and one (soon to be two) awesome gas grills.

Click to enlarge

Around back of the building is the parking area. It's a surface lot, but I'm not too concerned about the safety of my car since the lot is surrounded by buildings on all sides, including a few apartment complexes, an embassy, and some row houses. That last category includes L. Ron Hubbard's house where he lived when he came up with the idea for Scientology. Since I'm on the same block, I figure that means I'm going to have to go see that museum.

If we go around the corner parking lot, in closer to the building...

 ...we can see my apartment around the corner from the lower section of the parking lot. Yes, it is a first floor apartment, but because of the gradual slope of this part of the Dupont Circle neighborhood I'm a healthy distance off the ground.

However, the coolest thing about my apartment is that the only surface I share in common with an adjoining apartment is the ceiling. That should really cut down on noisy neighbors. On two sides, I have walls to the outside. On our left in this view you'd have to go through my kitchen and their kitchen to get to the next apartment, and to get to the apartment to our right you'd have to go through two closets in the same way. Plus, I'm above a mechanical room so I might even be able to get away with Rock Band drumming at all hours of the day if the mood strikes me.

 So yeah, I'm pretty excited about the whole situation. I applied Tuesday, was approved Wednesday, signed up for renter's insurance on Friday, and I'm signing papers this coming Tuesday for move-in on Wednesday. Just check out this tentative floorplan for the new place. Looks like I might be using a bunk bed once more, in case the similarities to my dorm room weren't apparent already.

Yes, I do start work on Monday, but one of my friends was nice enough to let me stay with him for a few days until I can actually move in. It'll be sad to finally move away from home for real (even worse because I never actually got around to clearing out all of my childhood stuff), but I'm only 2 hours from home and there really is a lot to look forward to about my new neighborhood.

Feel free to drop me a line or to come visit sometime if you're in town. Parking will be difficult, though, but if you come by on the weekends you can park for free at a Metro station and ride in the rest of the way to save some money.

My new address will be:
1908 Florida Avenue NW #119
Washington, DC 20009

Don't be a stranger!

Boston Trip Part 7: These Boots Were Made for Walking

My original goal for the day in Manhattan was to try to leave by nightfall so I could be back to Richmond before midnight. But after looking at a map and making a list of all the places I wanted to see, it became obvious that my plan wasn't going to work out. Plus, when I found out that the MTA had discontinued the 24 Hour Unlimited transit pass I realized that I was going to have to do quite a bit of walking to make it all work out without paying more than I cared to on subway fare.

With nothing else to plan, I strapped on my boots and headed out the door of my uncle's walk-up studio apartment for another whirlwind tour of a major city in the style of my summer Europe trip.

Union Square

First, I had to pick up some cash. My trip to Nathan's the previous day had left me with $3, and that wasn't going to work. So I walked up to the nearest Wells Fargo branch, which happened to be a mile and a half away in Union Square. Fortunately for me, Union Square is far enough north that you can start to see some of the skyscrapers of Midtown, giving me a hint of what I'd find the rest of the day.

Grand Central! Grand Central! Grand Central!

I hopped on a number 5 express train, and before I knew it I was at a stop where I just had to get off. For a transit nerd like myself, Grand Central Station is like a great cathedral. The edifice is large and prominent, and because of its place standing in the middle of Park Avenue it is visible from blocks and blocks away.

The facade is so wide I had to make a panorama.

But that's part of the beauty of Grand Central - everything is enormous. It's all about the sense of scale, from the towering windows to the high, broad arched ceiling, everything is meant to bring a sense of openness to the traveler that frankly is lacking from modern transit facilities. Just look at what happened to Penn Station. However, unlike its cross town sister, Grand Central has handled the decline of intercity rail well, becoming a hub for subway traffic and commuter rail - and actually doing a pretty good job of it, too. Commuters crisscross the floor of the main hall at all hours of the day, and really it's just a fantastic place to sit back and watch the world go by.

But there was no time to loiter around - I started out on East 2nd Street, as I exited Grand Central I found myself only at 42nd. With plenty of traveling left to do, I set off west towards the center of the island. A long block later (Manhattan's blocks are rectangular, with the east-west direction about four times longer than the north-south one, at 1/5 mile versus 1/20 mile), I found myself crossing Fifth Avenue, and snapped this picture facing north. The road is perfectly straight and almost completely flat until it dumps into the East River at 143rd Street, 101 blocks to the north (that's 5 miles for those of you playing along at home), interrupted only by a couple of rotary intersections and a park with a swimming pool up in Harlem.

It really is a like being in an urban canyon.

The Avenue of the Americas

I continued east, eventually reaching Rockefeller Plaza. Just like with all good touristy attractions, everything there was tremendously expensive, so I passed on doing iconic things like visiting the skating rink or Top of the Rock. I did, however, get to see Lutz from 30 Rock standing around outside the front doors in a big cordoned-off area, so I'll have to keep an eye out to see if that scene pops up in a future show.

On my way out of Rockefeller Plaza, I swung by Radio City Music Hall before heading north down Sixth Avenue. Eventually, I reached 56th Street - Central Park South, complete with fancy hotels and things - and entered Central Park.

Central Park

Compared to the asphalt flatness of Manhattan, Central Park is quite a welcome shock. Trees abound, wildlife (albeit a limited selection) bounds around, and rock outcroppings rise up out of the earth as the many walking paths swoop around from ballfield to lake to meadow. As you get further into the park, traffic noise dwindles and a sense of tranquility envelops you, only broken by the occasional oddly echoy outdoor skating rink or the occasional sunken traverse roads that cross the park every ten blocks or so.

Not only is the view from this lake
awesome, it also brings the
number of places I've visited in
Where the Hell is Matt? up to six.

I continued north through the park passing several noteworthy landmarks with remarkably nondescript names, like The Mall and The Lake. The best part of being in the park is when you get to one of the many big open spaces and you get to look out over a serene pond or leafy trees... only to see an impressive line of tall buildings off in the distance. It's a truly fantastic effect to look at.

Eventually, I got up to the Central Park Reservoir, which continues the effect to an even greater degree because of the sheer expanse of the pond itself - it covers 106 acres and holds over a million gallons of water - and the resulting fact that you can see such a large area of Manhattan from its shores.

They don't even use the reservoir for drinking water anymore.

The Guggenheim

The parking situation and traffic lights
really aren't set up to let you
photograph the museum.

I finally reached my turn when I got to 90th Street in order to go and see the Guggenheim Museum. Even though I'd seen it countless times in books, I figured that as long as I'd traveled 90 streets north of my uncle's apartment, I might as well stop to see some of the Wright stuff.

Even though the museum is crazy expensive - like everything touristy - they have no restrictions about coming in and visiting the gift shop. Luckily enough for me, the gift shop is right off of the atrium... which was really all I'd wanted to see anyway.

By this point, I was beginning to realize just how silly my plan to see everything in Manhattan really was. It was practically noon, I'd agreed to meet my uncle for lunch, and I was about 65 blocks away from his work. So naturally I went to see the United Nations.

The UN

This required hopping on the subway again, riding back to Grand Central (Grand Central? Oh boy!) and then making my way 4 long blocks east to the appropriately-named East River. Unfortunately by this point it was really cloudy and the lighting conditions were bad and the building was too wide to photograph from the island side of the building and plus it was undergoing renovations anyway because apparently diplomats don't like windows that leak when it rains... so this is the only halfway decent picture I got.

And then by this point it was 12:45 and I hadn't even bothered to call my uncle yet. Oops. So after setting a plan (I'd meet him at his work on E 25th), I began consulting the bus and subway maps and timetables to pick the quickest mode to get there. The conclusion? Unless I really wanted to ride a bus (or to test out Bus Rapid Transit) it would just be quicker to walk the 20 blocks.

It was a pretty good decision, I think, except for the really frustrating signal timing. The light would turn green, you'd start heading south, and right before you got to the next cross street the light would turn red again. It just so happens that at 4 mph, it takes 45 seconds to walk 1/20 of a mile... and there was 40 seconds of green time in that direction.

Madison Square Park, Hold the Gardens

So slim! So sexy!

Anyway, for lunch we had some pretty fantastic Indian cuisine, but before long it was time to set off again on foot. My uncle's office is near Madison Square Park (which is really nowhere close to the present-day Madison Square Garden), which is bounded on one corner by the intersection of 23rd Street, Fifth Avenue, and Broadway - the home of one of my favorite structures, the Flatiron Building.

Built in 1902, the Flatiron was one of the tallest office buildings in the world when completed, and it was the first true skyscraper in New York to be constructed with a steel frame. However, the thing that does it for me is the shape. Set on a curious triangular block, the building's longest side is only 190', the offices at the point are only six feet wide. It's like a wedge driving northwards towards Midtown, carving Broadway out of Fifth Avenue.

Another neat thing about Broadway at Madison Square is that the city has decided to cut down on traffic on Broadway and improve pedestrian safety by entirely removing cars from several sections of Broadway. In fact, in the picture above, I'm actually standing in the middle of Broadway, except planters and tables have been added to severely cut down through traffic by decreasing capacity. Although this sounds like a bad thing, it actually improves flow by reducing the volume of traffic crossing Fifth and reducing conflict between vehicles and pedestrians. A few bike lanes still traverse this section of the square, but large swaths of roadway are now available for seating and recreation.

Miracle on 34th Street

After admiring the innovative traffic developments, I followed the lead of the Flatiron Building and headed north. A short hop on the N train put me squarely in the heart of Midtown in Herald Square at 34th Street and Sixth Avenue. This sight greeted me as I climbed out of the station:

That's something interesting to point out: you have to use stairs everywhere you go in Manhattan. For someone whose subway experiences are mostly limited to the Washington Metro, the lack of escalators in other cities' transit systems is most curious. However, it makes sense considering these older systems like New York, London, and Boston were built during a time period where the government could really tear up a street to put in a subway line using cut-and-cover methods. Subways built in this way are usually a lot shallower, and often it is only 30 or 40 steps to the surface. Nowadays, citizens are more involved in the construction of new transit systems through federally-mandated citizen comment periods, and so the Metro - designed during Johnson's Great Society programs of the late 1960s - was built deeper underground using submerged tunnel boring methods, hence the escalators.

However, the real reason why I stopped at 34th Street wasn't to visit the Empire State (I did that when I was six), it was to visit 34th's other famous occupant, Macy's.

You can see more of the pedestrian conversion in front of
Macy's - I'm standing in the middle of Broadway here.

I'm nerding out right here.

However, I wasn't here to shop - I was here to sightsee. I had just recently completed my master's thesis work on pedestrian flow on escalators, and I wanted to see something I had only ever read about: wooden escalators. All four escalators between the main floor and the basement inside of Macy's are the original wooden escalators that were installed in 1927.

Get With the Times Square

From Herald Square I continued north along Broadway. As the block numbers increased, so did the showiness of the storefronts and the audacity of the advertisements. This could mean only one thing: Times Square approaches.

Times Square was crazy busy. Even with the new street enhancements like wider sidewalks, bike lanes, and the extra space that resulted from closing Broadway for five blocks, pedestrians absolutely covered every inch of sidewalk. People piled up at cross streets waiting for traffic to clear, and when the light finally turned green two walls of people twenty wide would surge towards each other like a bizarre game of Red Rover.

As I passed through Times Square, I popped down a couple of sidestreets and into a couple of stores just to see what all the craziness was all about. I saw the front of that ill-fated Spider Man musical, and I even got a chance to pop into the flagship Toys-backwards-R-Us store. They had legos!

However, the real amazing thing about Times Square is the billboards. There are all kinds of spastic electronic displays, ranging from tasteful landscape scenes in car commercials with lifesize cars hanging from the sides of buildings to garish seizure-inducing flashing monstrosities. It really is absolutely mad what these people come up with. Perhaps my favorite one was the interactive billboard for some beauty product. The board was hooked up to a camera pointed at the square, and every few minutes something funny would happen to the people down on the street displayed in the live feed, like random people catching on "fire" or the street turning into a whirlpool and everybody getting sucked away or something. But the billboard has a more notable feature, and that because it is effectively a giant mirror it is the only picture of me that I took during the entire six day trip. You can see me in the red jacket (it was kind of cold) on the blue background of the street (blue means "pedestrian zone").

Watch out Peter! That giant digital lady is going to smush you!

It tries so hard!
It doesn't even know it's been replaced!

Another cool feature in Times Square was the visitor's center that opened last year an an old 20s-era theater. Granted, it's mostly an excuse to sell tickets to Broadway shows, but they do have a couple of cool exhibits like highlights from famous Broadway shows playing on a loop on a large screen in the old proscenium arch or historic (and g-rated) peep-show booths from the seedier days of Times Square. My favorite part was the big Waterford Crystal Ball from New Year's Eve 2007 (the 100th anniversary of the ball drop), which went through its usual color show and counted down to midnight every 15 minutes like it was still the star of the show.

North on Broadway

Continuing north, still by foot, I reached the Ed Sullivan Theater (where they film The Late Show with David Letterman), Columbus Circle (not that picture friendly), and finally Lincoln Center all the way up at 65th Street. The plays there were really expensive, but I was more visiting because of its featured role in films like The (original) Producers and Ghostbusters.

Did you see Black Swan? That was here.

Financial District

I then boarded a train again and dived back down south to catch a few more sights before the evening rush began. I stopped by the new construction on One World Trade Center, wound my way around the waterfront behind the World Financial Center, and checked out some of the winding streets that characterize the old-town feel of the financial district in general.

On my way back towards the center of the island after stopping along the Hudson, I couldn't resist poking my head into the WTC PATH Station ("Port Authority Trans-Hudson", the commuter rail that goes to New Jersey), mainly because it is home to one of the highest-capacity escalator banks in the world. During peak rush periods, six of the eight escalators in "PATH Hill" are switched to the same direction, allowing people to enter the station at the rate of 38,000 people per hour. Granted, there are only 40,000 people that use the station per day (and that counts both directions), but given how quickly the financial district in Richmond clears out I get the idea that most of that traffic happens in a pretty short window.

In fact, there's a 35-second scene in the fantastic documentary Koyaanisqatsi that features the pre-9/11 WTC PATH station and its escalators showing just how busy the escalator bank can be as traffic flow swells and ebbs as trains arrive.

Would you believe this is only a temporary station
until they finish the real one in 2014?

On my way out of the financial district I popped down Wall Street just as 5:00 struck, and all of the sudden it seemed like EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD was rushing towards me. I retreated out of the way up some steps, and in what could only have been a couple of minutes the crowd completely vanished and the place became practically a dead zone. As I walked back out onto the street, I found out that the stairs that had offered me shelter were the iconic Federal Hall, which served as the first capitol building in the United States.

After a bit of searching, I found the New York Stock Exchange practically across the street. I hadn't noticed it there because I was expecting it to be sporting the oversized American flag it seems to have in most pictures these days instead of a large advertisement featuring Tyra Banks, which kind of ruined the stuffy capitalist atmosphere of the place.

Civic Center

Given the late hour, I started to make my way back towards my uncle's apartment. I walked north, eventually reaching the Civic Center, home to New York City Hall and the far more imposing Manhattan Municipal Building.

It's big, AND it was featured in Ghostbusters!

Right across the way is the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Because of how high above the water it is, the base of the bridge is actually over 1/3 of a mile away from the river, which make for an interesting set of loopy roadways in order to connect the bridge to all the important streets it bypassed because of the elevation difference. In fact, from where I'm standing in the picture below I'd only have to walk one block to the other side of city hall before I'd be closer to the Hudson than the East River. Manhattan really is a remarkably compact place.

Foley Square is home to the New
York County Supreme Court...
from Law & Order!

I only had to go one block further north into Foley Square before I could catch one of the green line trains north to a station near my uncle's apartment. It was still about a mile of walking between that station and his place, but along the way I got to cross Bowery and Houston, and across the intersection there was a fantastic view of the Empire State Building some two miles to the north.

The End of the Tour... or is it?

And so as I climbed the four stories up to my uncle's apartment, it became pretty obvious that I was in no state to drive a further six hours to Richmond. And so as soon as he offered to let me stay another night, I readily accepted and we hatched a plan to go see a few more sights.

First, we hailed a cab (a cab!) on the corner outside his place and headed west down Houston towards Chelsea and the Meatpacking District to see a place I'd only ever read about, the High Line!

The High Line

Most cities these days have some kind of linear park - either a walking trail, or a bike path on a converted railroad bed, or something that can be used for exercise or recreation. However, a dense borough like Manhattan doesn't really have the kind of space to put in one of these... at least not ordinarily. However, a unique opportunity existed in this part of town. The historic meatpacking industry needed a lot of freight shipments to bring in raw meat and process it into usable products, and much of this was done by rail. As street traffic increased, the railroads eventually agreed to fund a tremendously expensive elevated rail trestle to bypass over 100 at-grade rail crossings and expedite shipping. Over the years, the decline of the meatpacking industry in Manhattan proper meant that rail shipments effectively ceased, and the trestle fell into disrepair and became overgrown with vegetation and graffiti. Generally, it was a nuisance and an eyesore, and property owners around the trestle lobbied for its demolition.

However, in the last five years, the city and private investors have scraped together funding to redevelop the trestle from its original function as the carrier of several rail tracks into a linear park. If you think about it, a linear park really is the perfect use for an old trestle - it's physically isolated from the street network so it is safer for its users while also providing a continuous ribbon of pathway. It's also quieter and because of the controlled access points at the occasional stairwell or elevator, it is easier to lock up at night to discourage misuse.

They selected vegetation to mimic what grew
naturally during its abandoned phase.

The High Line has become very popular in the neighborhood. It gives its users an escape from the harshness of their formerly industrial neighborhood, with tasteful landscaping and benches of varying architectural themes. In fact, many of the groups who called for its demolition only a few years ago are now enjoying higher property values as a result of having a park right outside their door. Heck, the trestle even cuts through buildings in a few places where the trains used to be able to unload, so it is great that they were able to keep those features.

There are also a few more quirky features, like this ampitheater-style seating area with glass windows that looks out north along Tenth Avenue (right). I could sit there and watch the traffic go by all day. It kind of makes me wonder what it would look like if Tenth Avenue were to freeze out.

The High Line isn't anywhere close to finished yet - only about 1/3 of it is open to the public - so after only 9 blocks (about half a mile) we descended down and went to dinner. Let me tell you, food is EXPENSIVE in Manhattan.

SoHo, Little Italy, and Chinatown

On the way back, we were again faced with a mode choice dilemma. My uncle insists that there is no good way to travel east-west across Manhattan (except for maybe buses, and we didn't have a bus schedule), so we decided to walk back to his place. Turned out to be a good choice because it allowed us to wander through some of Manhattan's older residential neighborhoods.

Unlike most of northern Manhattan, this region's streets are not at the standard 29 degree tilt, and in fact a few of them even have CURVES, what a crazy concept. We zigzagged our way southeast through NYU and eventually came upon Washington Square Park, home to the appropriately named Washington Square Arch, which has been featured in more moves than I care to name.

I snapped this photo of the arch and Fifth Avenue stretching out north beyond, and it was only after I got home to Richmond and was sorting through my photos that I realized that the Empire State Building had snuck into the background and photobombed me.

The Empire State is ALWAYS WATCHING YOU.

Gmap-Pedometer.com

It certainly felt like I'd walked a long way, but without a pedometer to track my steps I really couldn't be sure how far I'd traveled. Fortunately, there are many websites like the Gmap Pedometer to let you figure that kind of thing out in a much easier way than adding a bunch of destinations into Google Maps. Plus, it lets you use terrain data to create profile views of your route as well... although in Manhattan that view would be quite boring.

According to my calculations, all in all I walked 22.3 miles while in Manhattan. Ouch. 22 miles on dirt is uncomfortable, but pavement is much less forgiving. I was glad to be sitting down for most of the next day.

Anyway, I took the resulting maps and stitched them together into the large map below, and added in labels highlighting the various landmarks I visited on my travels. Walking is shown in the red lines, and other modes of transport are shown in dashed lines and labeled with the mode of travel or train number. My uncle's apartment is near the bottom in the center, and trips are numbered in order of when I took them. The numbers in the red bubbles are mileage for that particular leg of the trip.

I would not recommend this agenda to visitors. Click to enhance.

In our next (and hopefully final) installment of the Boston Trip, Peter drives the last six hours to Richmond. On the way, he gets carried away discussing quite a number of controversial transportation topics, but we'll cut that stuff out. That guy is a real windbag, as you've clearly just seen.