myweekandwelcometoit

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Go Fish

Hello World,

Well, it's obvious that either Comrade Mischka is on vacation at the Black Sea and away from his infernal weather machine, or he's been banished to a distant gulag somewhere in the wilds of Siberia (although I don't think it's likely that my prayers have finally been answered after all these years) because the weather around here couldn't have been nicer all week. A couple of weeks like that, and I'd run out of things to complain about, and then where would we be? (Don't answer that!) Fortunately, there's been no lack of political shenanigans and celebrity peccadilloes to fall back on, not to mention, work. (I asked you not to mention that!) In fact, when I came home from work yesterday and realized that I had been wearing my blouse inside-out all day long, to say that it would be par for the course in a week like that would be putting it mildly. Garcon, more pineapple upside-down cake, if you please!

A bright spot in the week, however, was getting together with friends on Saturday. We visit our friends in the Albany area for the Thanksgiving and Martin Luther King holiday weekends in November and January, and they usually make a trip or two down here in the spring or summer. Normal people would do this the opposite way, so they weren't driving 200 miles north in the dead of winter, but there you have it. We bid them a fond farewell in January, promising to get together again soon, but what with one thing and another, the eagerly anticipated spring adventure never materialized. I came back from vacation, and expected to find plans afoot for a summer event, but I was disappointed there as well. I said to Bill that pretty soon, Thanksgiving would be rolling around again, and our fledgling warm weather get-togethers would have worked about as well as the Motley Crue reunion tour (don't ask) only without all the lawsuits. Then suddenly out of the blue, our friends said they were coming last Saturday, and it would not be an understatement to say that life became worth living again.

Our plan, such as it was, involved meeting at the always popular Eveready Diner in Hyde Park at 10:30 for brunch, and then set off from there to some areas of interest, as the spirit might move us. Not wanting to be late, we started out bright and early, and made excellent time to our destination, with the end result that we got there way too early. Our friends, meanwhile, took the opposite approach, preferring to defy the laws of time and physics, and decided that they could somehow make this 2-hour trip in a single hour instead. Unfortunately, the laws of time and physics prevailed, and our friends were consequently an hour late to the diner. Because we had left home in a steady downpour, and arrived at the diner to more of the same, we went inside to wait, rather than staying out in the rain. When we told the hostess that we would be joined by four other people, she was happy to give us a large booth in the corner, but Bill said that after about 45 minutes of waiting for our fiends, our waitress would pass by our table and sigh elaborately. Finally our friends did arrive, and maybe you have to be sitting alone at a big empty table for an hour, but when one of them asked if we'd had time to look at the menu, we thought it was the funniest thing we'd heard all week.

Brunch was a rousing success, and I can vouch for the pancakes, plus I had a pineapple smoothie that was scrumptious. Somehow, even though our friends drove all the way down from Albany in the rain, they managed to bring the sun with them, and by the time we left the diner, there was a glorious sunny day just stretching out before us. Wasting no time, we went a little ways up Route 9 to the Hyde Park Antiques Center, where we had been before, and worth the trip. It's set in a large and rambling house, and features collections of interesting paraphernalia from many different vendors, some of whom take up whole rooms with antique furniture and household items, while others have just a glass display cabinet full of jewelry, coins or figurines. The items run the gamut from everything you can think of, to things you could never think of, and everything in between. There is something interesting everywhere you look, and no matter how far you go, there's still more to see. It will come as a surprise to no one that I bought some salt and pepper shakers, but even I was surprised that I bought a used book, which is something I need about as much as a fish needs a bicycle, as the saying goes. I don't even have a fish, so I've got no one to blame this book on but yours truly, and that's not just a load of crap, I mean, carp.

Not content to rest on our souvenirs, we went further up Route 9 to Kings Highway Antiques, which made us feel like we had gone through the looking glass and nibbled on some of Alice's magic mushrooms. Where the previous establishment was enormous and sprawling and made us feel overwhelmed in scale, this next place was so tiny, and crammed to the rafters with over-sized furniture, that we had to take turns going into the display areas. There wasn't enough room in there to change your mind, much less turn around, so we all backed out the same way we had walked in, for fear of knocking things over so that the Queen of Hearts would shout, "Off with their heads!" We were glad to get out of there and return to the normal-sized world, although it was a shame to leave the Cheshire Cat behind.

The hard work of browsing was starting to take its toll on us, so we pulled into Del's Ice Cream, a locally famous snack shop farther up the road. They serve a variety of grill favorites, as well as different kinds of frozen treats, and we had some drinks and ice cream to bolster our flagging stamina. They have a lovely patio with picnic tables and umbrellas, where people may enjoy their selections al fresco, but after we got there, it seemed that other people preferred to eat standing up way out in the parking lot, while staring at us with that "deer in the headlights" kind of look that we've come to expect. Everywhere we all go, we tend to clear a room and this was no different, although it's the first time I can remember that happening even in the great outdoors. It's almost like they didn't even believe we were really the Olympic 6-person chocolate sprinkle relay team or something.

Thus refreshed, we headed back down Route 9 to wander around the quaint shopping areas in scenic Rhinebeck, home of the fabled fairgrounds, where they host a wide array of events that draw crowds from far and near. We were pleasantly surprised to see the classic car show happening while we were there, with literally hundreds of beautifully restored and exquisitely detailed vintage cars of every size, shape and color, all visible from the road and stretching across the field like a shiny metal rainbow. It was breathtaking. Even more fun was seeing many of the cars driving around town (we had spotted several of them in the diner parking lot when we arrived) or parked at incongruous places, like CVS or Blockbuster, when by rights, they should have been in front of a millinery shop or around the back of a speak-easy. For custom car buffs, this was truly Valhalla, and a whole day walking around these beauties in the fairgrounds would have been the nectar of the gods. We were thinking it was a good thing that the day turned out so lovely, after an inauspicious start, or the car show would have been a huge wash-out. It probably would have been nothing but fish riding bicycles, and I'm sure no one wants to see that.

Visitors to historic Rhinebeck, as we know thanks to Bill's scrupulous research, are encouraged to visit the Rhinebeck Hardware Company, in a quaint storefront on a side street, and a throwback to an earlier era in American commerce. We had seen their sign on a previous visit, and were looking forward to checking out the store in person. Not so fast! Apparently the sign and the storefront are all that's left of the hardware business, since the building has been sub-divided into a beauty salon and butcher, neither of which we were interested in seeing. Instead, we availed ourselves of a few consignment shops nearby, which had an assortment of merchandise that was interesting but pricey. It was a good thing we were already set for souvenirs, because we didn't find much to tickle our fancy, and I had already satisfied my quota of bicycle-riding fish for one day.

By then it was getting late, and our friends had a long drive home (they had resigned themselves to the idea that the laws of time and physics are immutable, no matter how they might wish otherwise) so once again, we promised to get together again soon, and went our separate ways. In those halcyon days gone by, we would have looked forward to stopping for dinner at Denny's in Fishkill on our way home, but they spoiled that for us in January, when we discovered to our horror that Denny's had closed, and this time, we noticed the building had re-opened as a Japanese restaurant instead. No thank you very much not! Our journey back here was uneventful, which is always our favorite way to travel, and we arrived at home safe and sound, tired but happy. In spite of a long day full of driving, shopping and just generally schlepping around, Bill was kind enough to whip up one of his signature pizzas for dinner, which is a specialty of the house from our very own master of the genre. This just goes to prove that you don't need to be Italian to make good pizza, any more than a fish needs a bicycle, and that's not just another load of carp. Or as they say in Latin: "Carpe diem!"

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