Posted by imolloy on June 16, 2007 – 11:13 pm
Today Mark, Marta, Joshua, and I tackled Bear Mountain. We set off at around 11:00 this morning (just barely morning), made the short 10-12 mile drive, made a few wrong turns, and finally ended at Bear Mountain Inn. It was an interesting site. Hundreds of families were there playing soccer in various fields, grilling food, playing basketball, and basically, not hiking. For the number of people who were at the base of Bear Mountain, we saw very few people hiking on the various paths.
The hike was pretty typical New York hiking woods. It wasn’t too hot, there were several dry river beds, lots the lush woods, and large rock formations. I’ll let the pictures tell the story, since it’s simply easier, though I should mention a few things. It took us around two hours to reach the top. To be honest, there were several paths, and we started on one that didn’t go to the top without realizing it. The hike was quite an exercise too. It wasn’t too difficult, but it certainly make you break a sweat. The hike was easily worth it when we reached the top and ate a little lunch, which was an interesting hodge-podge of bread, boiled eggs, chips, lettuce, and whatever we brought with us. The view from the top was also amazing, and is not captured (at all) by the photographs. They don’t provide any sense of scale, height, or distance, and without a wide angle lens, don’t convey the grander in the least.
What was especially upsetting about the trip was reaching the top though. After the long hike we were rewarded, not by the scenic views, but by kids, cars, and motorcycles. A simple reminder that this is America, and the reason we saw so few people on the hiking trails, is that most were too lazy to attempt the hike and opted to drive instead. You can see the top (denoted by a large tower) around the center of satellite image from Google. For those who were on the trip, an archive of all of the photos is available here. Since each image is 3.2 MB, I’ve scaled them down. If you would like the full resolution copies (3072 x 2304), just let me know.
Posted by imolloy on June 12, 2007 – 9:09 pm
Filed under NYC, Security
On Sunday around ten IBM interns and I made a trip into New York. We split into two main groups at the beginning: those who wanted to go to museums, and those who wanted to wander the city. I joined the wandering groups and we walked from Grand Central to Times Square , down Broadway to the Empire State Building. The day was cloudy, so we we decided to pass on going up; perhaps another weekend.
After that we wondered off to Greenwich Village and Soho, Little Italy (where we ate lunch), and China Town, before heading off to Ground Zero. I had never seen the World Trade Center pre 9/11, so it’s really hard to imagine exactly how much the area has changed. Based on the photos and using the surrounding buildings for comparison, it’s almost sickening.
Moving on, went went south to Battery Park, back north through the financial district and Wall Street, and past several court houses (all the time making the Law and Order “Dun-Dun!”). Finally, we took Park Ave. back to Grand Central and the train back to Ossining, about 10 miles north of my apartment.
If you don’t see the humor in this picture, you don’t know what I do.
Finally, it ended at Landmark Diner, which was actually really good. Three of the four of us who made it all the way to the end had enormous three-egg omelets and home fries and cleaned the pates.
So that was my first real trip into the city, as terse as possible, since I’m really not in a writing mood at the moment. My main reason for writing this is to post my pictures for the other member of the entourage. So, here is a tarball.
Posted by imolloy on June 12, 2007 – 8:27 pm
I had intended on writing several entries regarding the end of the semester (it was busy and we submitted our CCS but not AsiaCrypt paper), my drive back to Buffalo (I hate Ohio), my drive to White Plains (New York is a lot more attractive than Indiana or Ohio), and my start at IBM (it’s corporate, but fun). Then I realized that no one reads this who I don’t have regular contact with, so what’s the point? After going over two weeks without Internet access, the posts didn’t seem very relevant, so this is all you get.
