Just got back from an excellent trip upstate for the fourth of July. Just wonderful to see family and friends, and feel like life is getting closer to back to normal. We drove up on Saturday the second, and it was a beautiful day for a drive. Listened to Kamasi Washington, plus a few of my own records on the trip. The first evening we hung out with Larry and Jackie at their house. Lizzy and Larry’s daughter Caroline joined us. Somehow between us we polished off a whole bottle of whiskey. Larry was the drummer in my first band in high school, one of the best drummers I know. Back in the day we were very into prog rock, bands like Rush and Genesis. The song YYZ happened to come up on a playlist, and Larry knew it was in 5\/4 time and the title of the song refers to the airport code for Pearson airport in Toronto. I blew his mind when I showed him the rhythm of the song comes from Y-Y-Z in morse code: – . – – – . – – – – . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We stayed with parents and Sunday morning we just sort of hung around and talked. Jeannie and I went for a walk down to the park and the lake. After lunch I went rollerblading around their neighborhood. The streets are much flatter and smoother than around here, and with less traffic. Mid afternoon my brother Martin arrived. His kids are all getting bigger, so Jeannie and were off to a hotel the next couple days. That evening we went out to dinner with Lizzy at Canalside, which is down at the waterfront where the naval museum used to be (and still is). They’ve expanded it with some restaurants, shops, museums about the Erie Canal, and a waterfront walk. Very nice. Lizzy recently got a big promotion at work, so we were celebrating that. We went to a seafood restaurant right on the waterfront, very nice. Afterwards we went back to her apartment and played Trivial Pursuit. Jeannie won, probably because there were so many baseball questions, despite Lizzy and I teaming up against her at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our hotel had a pool and a hot tub, so we started the morning of the fourth enjoying that. We had the place to ourselves, so I swam a bunch of laps, something I haven’t done in years. Then it was on to Wegman’s for beer and ice and party supplies. We spent most of the day on my parent’s back porch chillin’ and grillin’. Dogs, burgers and steak! Lizzy made a pasta salad. Classic rock on the radio, which I don’t always listen to, but still love. At one point Martin got out his rollerblades and his kids all had scooters, so we rolled around the neighborhood together. Later we played Azul, a Eurogame based around collecting tiles. We have this game at home, but Martin and Kathleen play it a higher level than Jeannie and I, and kicked our butts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the evening we went out to the park and laid our blankets on the lawn to watch the fireworks show. I hadn’t done this in a few years and it was pretty spectacular. I think the must have saved up the fireworks from the last few years’ cancelled shows. Afterwards Martin and I stayed up late into the night talking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The right home was nice too. More classic rock until we got tired of it. We found a roadside barbecue place about halfway home, which was perfect for lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it’s back to work and projects for a spell, but there’ll be more road trips and vacations later in the summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just got back from an excellent trip upstate for the fourth of July. Just wonderful to see family and friends, and feel like life is getting closer to back to normal. We drove up on Saturday the second, and it was a beautiful day for a drive. Listened to Kamasi Washington, plus a few of … Continue reading “Pour Me a Fourth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5881,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions\/5881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}