USA

As I have said before, New Jersey has a bad reputation to being dull and ugly industrial landscape whose population is either gangsters or commuters into the city of New York. My initial impression of New Jersey hadn’t been much better. When I first arrived all I saw was the crowded highways that seemed to be falling apart into a potholed mess and the strip-malls with typical fast-food chain restaurants. I spent my weekends fleeing New Jersey, off to New York City, Washington or Boston.

Over time, though, my impressions of New Jersey started to change. I got off the highways and started to explore the back roads of the Meadowlands area, and found interesting slices of small-town America mixed with the urbanity of a big city. Grand, turn of the century homes sit down the street from newly built condos. Quiet suburban streets lead to busy main boulevards where Asian-fusion restaurants coexist with greasy spoons.

There is a famous New Yorker cover by Saul Steinberg that showed a map of New York and the rest of the USA. Across the Hudson River, Jersey is shown as a brown strip of dirt. The rest of America to the Pacific Ocean is shown as a field of green with a few mountains and a couple of "lesser" cities like Chicago, Kansas and Los Angeles listed in small black letters. The cover both showed New Yorkers opinions of themselves in relation to the rest of America, but also highlighted their vision of New Jersey – a dirty strip of dirt across the Hudson River. Click here to see a picture of the cover

If Rutherford and the Meadowlands area was more than what it seemed, though, what else might exist in that small, brown strip of dirt that the New Yorker cover showed?

During a meeting last week, I expressed my interest in exploring a little more of New Jersey, perhaps getting out and seeing some of the outdoor sites in the state. Jim, an employee of my client who had just moved to New Jersey from Michigan expressed an interest in doing the same, so on Saturday we set out to see what wilds New Jersey would hold for us.

We first went to Mount Tammany in western New Jersey. Mount Tammany is the southern most peak of the Kittatinny Mountains, and overlooks the Delaware Water Gap, a mountain pass where the Delaware River passes through the Appalachian Mountains. The Delaware River serves as the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. There are a number of Mount Tammany hiking trails. We followed the Appalachian trail until we hit the blue blaze trail, which climbs 1200 feet from the river up to the top of Mount Tammany.

Atop Tammany, we paused to take in the view and have a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bottled water.

As Jim and I ate lunch, we swapped stories of our lives and adventures. Jim told me how me migrated from Aspen to Indiana to California and then across the country to wind up in New Jersey. I told Jim of my adventure on Mount Kilimanjaro and my bout with altitude sickness.

"I feel sorry that you didn’t make it to the top of Kilimanjaro," Jim said, after I related the story of having to quit after the fourth day and come down the mountain.

"I don’t mind," I said. "After all, the story of being bounced down the mountain on a stretcher makes a much better story than reaching the summit and coming down without any issues."

After lunch, Jim and I headed down the Red Dot trail. About 15 minutes after leaving the top, we rounded a corner and saw 3 people standing around a teenaged boy wrapped in a tarp.

"Is everything okay?" Jim asked.

"He hurt his leg," one of the people said. One of the three bystanders was an EMT who had happened upon the scene. She had helped the boy as she could, and they were waiting for evacuation off the mountain from the rescue crew. They assured us that there was nothing that they needed, and that we were fine to move on.

Before we left, Jim pointed at me and told the group that I had to be evacuated off Mount Kilimanjaro. Jim spoke to the boy and said, "Greg says that it’s a great story to tell, so the good part about all this is that after it’s all over you’ll have a great story to tell."

We stepped carefully the next few miles, afraid of twisting our ankles. The round-trip hike was about a 4 1/2 mile hike with a vertical climb and then descent of 1,200 feet.

We arrived back at the car, and it was only half past one in the afternoon. "Want to go to the highest point in all of New Jersey?" Jim asked. How could I say no?

High Point State Park, in the state’s north-west corner, contains the highest point in all of New Jersey at 1,803 feet above sea level. There is an obelisk at the site that rises another 220 feet that you can climb and see views off in all directions. A young boy, upon arriving at the monument said, "it’s not a big as the Washington Monument," which it does look very much like.

After climbing the monument, Jim and I headed off on the circular Monument trail. The monument trail is a gentle hike of 3 1/2 miles, which was good for my legs that were getting a bit rubbery after climbing up and down 1,200 feet back at Mount Tammany. The trail provides beautiful views of the Delaware River and the valleys below in Pennsylvania, New York State and New Jersey.

This is usually the point of the blog entry where there is some conclusion. I really have none. At least not one that’s very snappy. Oh well.

I haven’t updated my blog in a while, not because I haven’t been doing any travelling, but because I haven’t had much in the way of exciting events to write about. Sadly, that hasn’t changed. But I now have enough boring events to string together to make a full entry. So welcome back.

Summer in New Jersey

It seems that summer is upon us here in New Jersey. I work on a corporate campus in suburban New Jersey that has pretty, modern buildings in an idyllic grassy and treed environment. It has always reminded me of Europe, and I haven’t been able to figure out why. But it just hit me as I was walking along today – zebra crossings! The intersections within the campus have zebra crossings instead of the more standard North American double white lines to identify where humans can cross the street.

Exactly why pedestrian crossings are needed is a bit of a mystery to me, as there are few cars allowed on the campus, relegated instead of periphery parking lots. Beside for giving me some much needed exercise walking back and forth to my car every day, it provides a safe and quiet place for wildlife. I have on a few occasions seen cute little bunny rabbits hopping around in the bushes, and just the other day came across a falcon drinking water deposited in a puddle from a recent rain shower. I stood watching the falcon for a good 5 minutes before a security van, the driver interested in seeing the bird as well, drove too close and the bird took flight. The falcon flew low along the ground for about 50 feet, swooping up and landing deep in the foliage of a leafy tree.

It’s quite a shock to leave the quiet campus, get into my rental SUV and merge directly into thick traffic along one of the New Jersey highways.

Mr. Wesson Goes to Washington

The first weekend in May I travelled down to Washington D.C. from New Jersey. I drove down I-95 in my rental car, the windows down, sipping on Diet Cherry Pepsi and listening to U2 in the CD player. The drive is about 5 hours, and luckily other than just outside Newark and a few backups due to traffic construction, it was mostly open highway driving.

It’s been a long time since I took a solo road trip in a car. The last trip was probably back in 2004 when I was in Atlanta, and that was just a day trip to a nearby outlet mall to try and find a dressy linen shirt for my friend’s upcoming beach wedding. The last decent road trip probably dates back to 2002, when I would often set off on the weekend from St. Louis or San Francisco.

I’d forgotten how much I enjoy the road trip drive, which is strange, because I hate city driving. I can’t stand the stopping and starting and the constricted feeling of being surrounded by cars and constantly watching brake lights. If I can get out on the open road however, I am overtaken by a great feeling. It’s the same feeling that I have described in the past that I get sitting in airport lounges. The feeling that something new and interesting and originally is waiting for. It’s also the feeling of putting distance between myself and my weekday troubles. I don’t have to worry about due dates or project delays or resource constraints. All that can wait for Monday. All that is behind me, and each minute I put another mile between me and those issues.

Washington is a very interesting city. I’ve never been before, so it was all new for me. I stayed at the Courtyard Marriott Embassy Row at 1600 Rhode Island drive, which was about half a mile north of the Whitehouse and the National Mall, and just a few blocks away from Dupont Circle, which is a trendy area of restaurants, bars and coffee shops.

I had heard many bad things about Washington, D.C, how it was a city that had been “handed” over to the poor, and was a rough and scary place. I didn’t see any of that in my wanderings, and felt perfectly safe at night, even walking back and forth from Georgetown, 2 miles west of my hotel. It was a very pretty city, and has more photogenic buildings and monuments than any place I have ever been. I could write all about them, but instead I present a few thousands words worth of pictures.

Capitol Building, Washington, DC

Vietnam War Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background, Washington, DC

Teens from Illinois playing music in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC

National Mall, Washington, DC

We are the Knights Who Say Ni!

Mid-month in May, I saw Spamalot in New York at the Shubert theatre. Spamalot is a musical written by Eric Idle, based on the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

King Arthur was played by Harry Groener, who I recognized from Las Vegas (the TV show) and Star Trek, and apparently he played the mayor on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. John Cleese, in obviously a recorded bit, played God. Otherwise, I didn't recognize anyone in the cast, though they playbill said that they had all been in Law and Order. Apparently every actor in New York has been in Law and Order.

The show was good - I'd give it 3 stars our of 5. The first act stuck pretty much to the movie, with a few changes here and there. Camelot is a lot more Las Vegas, the knights actually went there, there is a role for the Lady of the Lake, and we get to see where the knights are found. The third act (second act, sire)... right second act is very different from the movie (which, of course, means a different ending), though there are still the knights who say Ni!, Hurbert in the castle in the swamp who just wants to sing (stop it, stop it... they'll be none of that!) and the killer bunny. But these recognizable elements are reconfigured into a very different plot.

The songs were up and down. On the good side, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life has somehow migrated from the Life of Brian into this show. There is a song called "The Song That Goes Like This" which I enjoyed. Nothing else really stands out - they are alright, but not the kind of song you come out of the theatre whistling. In fact, you'll probably be whistling "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life," which you could all whistle now as you all know it from a completely different movie. There are a couple times when the show is mocking traditional Broadway "show" music, but it only half comes off because they do it so much that the joke starts to become tedious. There are only so many times you can make fun of the Phantom of the Opera by aping it before you are just doing a show that is Phantom of the Opera-ish. The Lady of the Lake's part suffers the most from this, as she is supposed to be a caricature of the traditional Broadway Diva role, but by her third song I was starting to think the Lady of the Lake was just a traditional Broadway diva role. There is only so much winking and nudging one can do before the joke grows tired.

The sequence, though, with the French guards taunting the English Ki-Nig-Hits is excellent. It ends the first act, and really brings the first act to a close strongly.

So, all and all, worth seeing. However, I don't think I'll go and see it in Toronto. It's not worth seeing twice.

Final note: the Playbill has a "fake" playbill for a Finnish Moosical, "Dik Od Triaanenen Fol (Finns Ain't What They Used To Be)," which is apparently "the story, in music and song, of Finland's transformation from a predominantly rural agricultural base to one of the most sophisticated industrial and entrepreneurial economies in the world." It's definitely worth reading these pages.

Happy Towel Day, Interstellar Travellers

May 25th is Towel Day, a day to celebrate the life and works of Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Why, you might ask, is it called Towel Day? I’ll let the works of Mr. Adams explain it to you:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you—daft as a brush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag [non-hitch hiker] discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have 'lost'. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Boston

The first weekend of June, I decided to visit one of the other major east coast cities I have not seen, Boston. I’m glad to be working in New Jersey for the opportunity to strike all these “must-see” destinations off my list: New York, Washington and Boston.

By way of contrast to my self-driving road trip to Washington, I take the high speed Acela Express train from Newark, New Jersey to Boston. The Acela Express, while not up to the speeds of the TGV in France, has a top speed of 241 km/h, which is still pretty quick and it is the fastest train in North America measured by top speed.

Interestingly, though, The Acela Express is not that much faster than normal train service in North America, due to constraints with the track, power supply and regulations. The Acela trains can do the entire trip from Washington to Boston in 6 hours and 36 minutes, which averages to 109 km/h. The fastest portion of the trip, from Washington to New York, is covered in 2 hours and 48 minutes, averaging a speed of 143 km/h. A non-high speed train, Via Rail Canada’s train 66, an express train from Toronto to Montreal (stopping at both Montreal’s Central Station and Dorval station) covers the 520 km between the two cities in 3 hours and 44 minutes, averaging 142 km/h, only 1 km/h slower than it’s high speed brother.

Based on the speed, I would have gotten a much more “high speed” trip had I reversed my plans, driving to Boston and the train to Washington, but things worked out much better for me the way I did it. The weather for the trip down to Washington in the car was beautiful. It was sunny and warm, and I had the window down and the tunes cranked, arriving back in New Jersey with a smile on my face and a driver’s tan (left arm red, right arm pasty white). On leaving on Friday for Boston, the weather all up and down the north-east coast of the USA was horrific. The rain was pelting down, causing rivers to burst their banks and roads to flood. The 20 minute drive from my office to the station took close to an hour as I strained to see brake lights and foot deep puddles through the flap of increasingly pointless wipers. Arriving at Newark Penn Station with a sweat soaked shirt and clenched teeth, it was nice to sit back on the train and let someone else worry about the driving.

The train, while perhaps not Paris TGV fast, is very comfortable and relaxing. I wasn’t able to get a window seat for the trip from Newark to New York (about 20 minutes, mostly underground), but in New York almost all the passengers got off, allowing me to switch to a east facing window seat for the ride along the coast. There is some pretty scenery along the way, with the train sometimes running right beside the ocean and through a number of quaint, New England sea-side fishing villages. The train is comprised of 6 cars and 2 engines, one at either end of the train. There are 4 “business class” cars, 1 café car and a “first class” car. The business class seats, which I took, are very comfortable and provide enough room to cross your legs, even if the person in the seat in front of you has fully reclined. There are massive luggage compartments above your head that will fit most suitcases, and luggage racks at either end if your bag is too large. One car is designated as a quiet car, where no cell phones or conversation is allowed for those that want to get a little rest.

I alternated between reading a book and staring at the scenery passing by, and the trip passed quickly. We arrived at Boston’s South Station 15 minutes behind schedule, but I didn’t mind. The sweat on my shirt had dried, my teeth had unclenched and I was ready for a weekend of relaxing and site seeing.

I used my Marriott Rewards points to book a hotel in Cambridge, right by the MIT campus and just across the Charles River from Boston proper. The hotel was very nice, and because of my status I got an upgrade to a suite room, with a separate sitting room and a flat-panel TV. My view looked out over the Charles River towards the south end of downtown, including a view of the famous CITGO sign that is visible in all the highlight reels of baseball games at Fenway Park.

On Saturday, Peter, who is a friend of mine from my days back at Andersen Consulting and a long time Boston resident, took me on a tour of the sights of Boston. Boston is full of historical sites related to the Revolutionary War, many of the details of which Peter (who was a history major) was able to provide to me (as an Canadian educated in the exploits of fur trappers and mounted police and not about Paul Revere and Samuel Adams). The only damper was the rain, which fell in varying strengths the entire weekend.

I was prepared for the rain, though, as I had the spiffy travel umbrella I bought for 10 Euros back in September in Paris. I’m not positive that I really know how to use an umbrella. I see other people walking around with umbrella held steady and level above them, keeping them dry. I find myself struggling with keeping my umbrella above me as the wind reaches underneath the lip of the umbrella and lifts it up and away from me. I get wet, my arms get tired and the umbrella gets battered. On Saturday night, the wind took its final toll on the umbrella, snapping 3 of the arms of the umbrella, collapsing the umbrella. I deposited the umbrella in a garbage can and calculated its utility to me. I bought it in September, used it perhaps 4 times in France, a couple times in Toronto and twice in Boston. 8 days of use for 10 Euros doesn’t seem like a fantastic deal to me. I think in the future I’ll stick with raincoats.

Fenway Park and the Green Monster, Boston, USA

The Holocaust Memorial in Boston. Glass panels etched with numbers, like the Nazis tattooed on the prisioners in the death camps

Trinity church and the I.M. Pei designed Hancock Building

The bar that was used as exteriors for the T.V. Show. The inside looks nothing like the TV show, and they charge you outrageous amounts of money to eat or drink there.

On Sunday, after a lovely lunch with Peter, his live-in girlfriend Kelly and her son Will and a quick site-seeing tour around downtown Boston, I caught the Acela at 4:10 back to Newark. The train was again comfortable, and we got a good clip going through Rhode Island that made it really feel like high-speed rail travel. I even caught a glimpse of a deer standing on an embankment watching the train roll by. The sun had finally come out, and people were walking along the beaches and sea-sides, stopping to watch the train speed by.

It’s been a great month of east coast USA travel, knocking off a bunch of places I’ve never seen before, seeing a good show, snapping some nice pictures, and, perhaps most importantly, falling back in love with travel by train.

My current project in New Jersey must be the most schizophrenic project of which I have been a part (where, I should point out, I use the term schizophrenic in the sense of “characterized by the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic elements” rather than related to the disease).

I won’t go so far as to say that it has been “a trip of contrasts,” because the use of calling attention to the “contrasts” of a location is one of the biggest clichés in all of travel writing. But I will say that there is a huge difference between by days and nights in New Jersey and my weekends in the city.

I took a rare mid-week trip into New York last night from my usual stomping grounds in Rutherford, New Jersey. Rutherford is on the cusp of the “Meadowlands,” which is some developer’s marketing-speak for the swamp that exists just across the Hudson River from New York City. It’s actually kind of pretty, in a strange way that I alluded to before when I said it reminded me of taking the train through Siberia. Driving through it, it’s hard for me not to feel comforted by the low lying, browning grass and pools of blue water reflecting the sun.

My hotel sits on the banks of this boggy area. If I get an east facing room, I look out over the bog and can see the skyline of New York, the Empire State Building clearly dominating the skyline of mid-town Manhattan, with “low” valleys of buildings spreading north and south until another sharp rise in height as you approach Times Square in the north and the financial district in the south. In an east facing room, you get to watch the sun as it rises through the forest of glass and steel towers, and as the sun slips behind you at the end of day, you can watch the lights of the skyscrapers flicker on.

Looking out over the swampy Meadowlands towards the skyline of New York

A west facing room has me looking out on New Jersey rising away from the swampy Meadowlands. The view is of tree-covered hills providing a deep green camouflage to what lies beneath. I look out over a series of small towns – East Rutherford, Lyndhurst, Nutley, Clifton, Montclair and beyond. Driving along the highways radiating out from the bridges and tunnels crossing the Hudson River from New York City, the landscape in these towns is punctuated by malls with all the usual suspects of big box stores: Barnes and Noble, Applebees, AMC Theatres, Loews and Walmarts. These superstore alleys along the highways no doubt lead to the common New York impression of New Jersey – that it’s all swampland and ugly suburbs. But just a few blocks off the highway and the towns are mostly single-family houses built in the years just after World War II with small downtown streets full of quirky shops and non-chain restaurants.

New Jersey heading away from New York, the trees indicate why it’s called the Garden State

On Tuesday night it was from one of these quiet, tree-lined streets of small town America that I walked out to the route 3 and caught the bus into New York. Within 40 minutes from boarding the bus, I am deposited at the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan. I walk out and see the mammoth structure of the New York Times tower under construction in front of me, and buildings rising up to form the walls of 8th Avenue.

This is where the “coexistence of disparate or antagonistic elements” is so strong – from tree-lined small town to one of the largest cities in the world in 40 minutes. Even the change by just spending the 5 minutes in the Lincoln Tunnel is impressive. Weehawken is the town on the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel from New York, and while no idyllic small town, it’s 6,000 people per square kilometer density is nothing compared to the close to 26,000 people per square kilometer density in Manhattan. As the bus passes through Weehawken towards the tunnel, it follows a massive curve down to the entrance of the tunnel. Built right above the tunnel entrance is the baseball diamond for the Weehawken Indians, a high school baseball team. Sitting in the traffic, you can watch the local students play America’s pastime on the grass, and one still has the impression of being in small town America.

The high density of New York city is obvious from this shot from the Empire State Building

The buildings form walls along the streets. Broadway, pictured above, is called the “Canyon of Heroes” for the high building walls and ticker tape parades

From the 4 story high bus terminal at the Port Authority, I take the E train to Lexington Ave and 53rd street. From there, I wander down to the BearingPoint office on 3rd Avenue and 47th Street. I am in the city to take a short 2-hour course at my company’s office. The BearingPoint office is just blocks from the United Nations Headquarters, which is really just an excuse for me to introduce the fact that I took a tour of the UN building last Saturday, and took some pictures of the place.

In reality, the tour isn’t much. You get to look at a model of the building, a couple of pieces of art, some propaganda on what a great job the UN does and 4 meeting rooms. Of course, there is a certain amount of awe that one feels when entering the meeting places of the Security Council and the General Assembly. There’s been a lot of history made in those places, most famously probably when at a meeting of the General Assembly on September 29, 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev took off his shoe and slammed it against the desk in anger.

The group touring the UN with me was a very international mix, to go with the international location and purpose of the buildings. Besides the Canadian (that’s me), there were 3 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Russian (no shoe banging for him, though), 2 Germans, 1 Brit and 10 Iraqis. The Iraqis where split between two families, one that had been here for a while (their daughter was wearing a Slipknot sweatshirt and peppered her speech with the word, “like”) and a newly arrived family (the father struggled with English to ask where the Iraqis sat in the United Nations. The answer was in between Iran and Israel. Yikes!)

UN Headquarters, New York City

Did he just say that he'd bury us?

Security Council Chambers

General Assembly Chambers

But enough about the distant past of last Saturday and back to last night, and my trip into the city on a weeknight. After my course wraps up, it’s only eight o’clock and I decide I might as well have some dinner in the city (as opposed to my usual dining options in New Jersey of fast food). So I head down to Grand Central Terminal and their famous Oyster Bar in the basement of the station. I enter the restaurant and take a seat at the bar, grabbing a dozen oysters from Long Island and a pint of Heineken. The beer and oysters go well together, but I find myself still hungry. I order another dozen, this time from Washington State and another pint of beer. The Washington State oysters are amazing, just the right amount of salt to make them taste like the sea without tasting too much like rotten fish.

The bill comes, and it is outrageous – nearly sixty dollars without tip. But, what are you going to do? It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to eat oysters at an institution that has been serving travellers like myself since 1913. I know that I have had cheaper seafood, and certainly could probably even find it in New York. But some things just need to be done.

Main hall of Grand Central Terminal


Train track platforms in Grand Central Terminal. Used mostly nowadays for commuter trains to Long Island

I walk along 42nd street, through the south end of Time Square and back to the Port Authority in a light drizzle, amazed at how quickly after it starts raining that the street vendors have replaced their stock of sunglasses with a stock of umbrellas. Upon arriving at the Port Authority, I have half an hour to kill before the NJ Transit 192 heads back through the Lincoln Tunnel and along Route 3 to Rutherford, so I grab one last pint of beer at McAnn’s Pub. I sit at a high-top table, watching the other commuters chat with each other and sneak glances at the TVs showing baseball, hockey and basketball.

I sip my beer as I sit on the cusp of passing the line that separates the two “disparate or antagonistic elements” of New York and New Jersey. In one, I sup on oysters, take mass transit and chat with Russians and Iraqis at the United Nations. In the other, I drive a car on tree-lined streets and speedy highways, gobble down fast food and lie on a pillow-soft, king-sized bed watching the sunset over tree covered hills. It’s nice to know how close the two are, and how easy it is to switch between them.

Hello and welcome Road Gladiator readers!

You have found yourself on GregWTravels, containing my advice about fun and exciting places that I have been around the world. I travel a lot of business, but too not much of it gets up here. Mostly here you will find entries about with what I do in my down time with all those points that I can accumulated on airlines and hotels.

For my loyal TP readers who are wondering what I am talking about, I was recently invited to be a guest blogger on the RoadGladiator.com site, a site for constant business travellers like myself. In addition to my introduction, I wrote a piece on how to handle your laundry while on the road, and also a piece on why it's best to stay healthy while travelling (because insurance claims suck). Take your vitamins!

To catch you all up, my recent travels have taken me to New Jersey, USA. In general I am in a suburban town with lots of chain restaurants, but New Jersey isn't so bad. I quite like the boggy, low grass lands between Rutherford and the airport. Yesterday I was driving to the airport as the sun was setting, and it was quite beautiful. It reminded me of the grass lands stretching across Siberia, and remembering past fun trips always makes me smile.

The other good thing about New Jersey is the proximity to the city of cities (at least in the USA and Canada), NEW YORK! I've spent a few weekends across the Hudson enjoying the fruits of the city that never sleeps. So, for your amusement, some photos.

Here I sit in Central Park, taking a quick break from the constant movement that takes place in the surrounding Manhattan streets.

Leaving the park and entering the chaos can reveal some great finds, though, like this dragon dancing and drumming demonstration put on by a group in Chinatown, which is also a great place to get really cheap food!

You need to see the tourist sites, of course - like the above Rockerfeller Center, or the Empire State Building below.

A walk across the Brooklyn Bridge is always a nice stroll.

So many famous names in New York city. Here's a photo from Greenwich Village, which is just north of the Tribeca, seen below, where something was being filmed. Perhaps it was local resident Robert DeNiro's latest film.

Times Square, New York City, taken on a cold and windy night, is bustling with tourists at any time of night, any day of the week. If New York is the city that doesn't sleep, Time Square is where they do the not sleeping.

Thanks for reading, and if you having had enough of linking through, here's another link for you. Yet another travel blog by me at Ball of Dirt, where I talk more about my mishaps and adventures, and offer a lot less useful advice. But it's a lot funnier to read about me getting sick, getting scammed and getting frustrated than it is to read about where to stay.

“Cathy I'm lost I said though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America”
America, Simon and Garfunkel

My sister recently said she thought I drank too much and that I was spending my time running away from something by all the travel I am doing.

So I took a shot of tequila and flew to New Jersey.

I do think she has a point on the drinking. There have been a few Sunday mornings when I have crawled out of bed and thought that my life would probably be better if I hadn’t had those last few drinks.

The running away comment, that’s more complex to address. I remember back in July of 2000 when I first got my job at BearingPoint (then known as KPMG Consulting). It had been a bad couple of years prior to getting the job at BearingPoint. I had just left a job that I didn’t like so much that I was pretty sure it was making my physically ill. My stress level certainly was quite high. I was still dealing with the death of my mother less than a year earlier, and my family was in transition as they learnt to interact in “the new normal.” I was out of shape. I was having trouble with relationships – both with women (which hasn’t changed) and also with my friends. I was angry a lot of the time.

All very different problems, but all connected in a very important way. They all took place in Toronto. The air was heavy with the ghosts of my recent past. I felt trapped in the city. I felt like I wanted to change, that I wanted to be a different person than I was, but it was too hard. It’s much easier to just fall into familiar roles when confronted with familiar people and places then it is to try and change. It’s too confusing for the people you deal with and it’s too confusing for you.

I was asked to get on a plane and fly to Denver for a short project. I stepped off that plane and felt like a heavy weight was lifted off my shoulders. Denver was geographically and architectural different than Toronto, with it’s mountain backdrop, lack of significant bodies of water, wide streets and shining sunshine. Nothing looked the same, and I didn’t know a soul. I was free to act however I wanted to, not to just fall into the familiar roles of the past. It allowed me to re-invent myself completely.

So I cultivated being away from Toronto, finding opportunities to extend my 8 week initial project into 8 months of living as a new person in a new city.

Of course, change isn’t easy. And the person I became in Denver, while suiting me for a time, ended up being a self-destructive, self-loathing nitwit. So, I jetted off to a new city (this time San Antonio) and a new persona. And then I went to Montreal, and St. Louis, and San Francisco, and South America, and Atlanta, and Africa, and Paris, each time tweaking the person I wanted to be a little more. Each time trying new things, and each time learning a little bit more about the person I want to be.

Returning to Toronto for periods after each trip, I would find the ghosts filling the city less and less. Changing the way I related with my friends and family was easier as the distance of space and time had lessened the pressure to fall into familiar roles. And the places and spaces of the city didn’t hold the emotional resonance that they had in the past.

Perhaps now I have become too comfortable running. Perhaps it’s too easy now to jump on a plane and head off to some exotic locale or some less than exotic work location than it is to try and build a life in Toronto. But then again, perhaps this travel allows me to grow more quickly as a person than I would dealing with a daily routine in Toronto. Maybe, when the situation you are in is getting you down, it’s not such a failure to pick up and run. Maybe that’s the best way to win.

Now, if I can just say no to that last beer next Friday night.