Travels With Stu

I woke up early Sunday morning with a refreshed feeling and a new drive for life. I was re-energized checked out of my motel and ate the included breakfast (an apple and piece of bread) before heading back to downtown Albany. I headed towards SUNY Albany and its majestic building and parked my car nearby and started my walk around the city. I walked up to the Capitol Building which looked as if it came from Prague, instead of NY State, but saw that I couldn’t enter the building for a tour. I walked past the Capitol and made my way to a plaza with around twelve large government buildings and modern architecture paralleling each other. It reminded me of Chicago’s Millenium Park and its modern architecture, but the weather wasn’t as warm had it been in Chicago during my summer road trip.

I made it to the end of the plaza and saw a bridge to another building, the New York State Museum. I entered, inquired about the entry fee and was told that the museum was free. I got all giddy, but then ended up talking with a woman at the informational desk for five minutes too long and made my way into the museum. The Museum had three floors each displaying different parts of New York State. There was a section dedicated to the history to the state of New York, a floor dedicated to the wonderful city of New York, upstate New York and something dealing with transportation on the top floor. I was in somewhat of a hurry because I had to see all of Albany and make my way to Cooperstown before heading back to Long Island so I didn’t spend all that much time in the museum.

I left the museum and made my way to Liberty Park where I walked around for a couple hours admiring the trees and landscape and taking a hundred photos of nature which cannot in any way explain the feelings I have when I walk around a park, but instead come out extremely dull. I don’t know how to place the feelings I have when I walk around a park or in any natural areas in a photograph, but I try to capture these feelings every time I take pictures and I am always criticized for my dull pictures. I found a river in the park and walked along the river for awhile before exiting the park and heading back downtown.

After a 30 minute walk back downtown I found my car where I left it without a ticket and made my way to the Miss Albany Diner - a classic American diner. I got a book from the library at Kenyon on American diners and their origination just because it was the first book on a reading list in my “Road Trip USA” book, and I read through it in a day before graduating. I didn’t think much of the book, but it gave me a greater appreciation for diners, but that wasn’t that difficult to do because I didn’t have any appreciation for diners prior.

I had corn beef hash, orange juice and eggs for one of the greatest meals in my life and talked with this middle-aged man from Ohio who was now living in Albany, and I spoke to him about Kenyon and re-hashed my Ohio memories. I didn’t have that much time to stick around, but I spent a solid 45 minutes at the diner, drinking one OJ because there weren’t any refills, and was lectured about the diner and its history and its local favorite dishes by its owner. It was a really charming experience and I left Albany feeling that it would definitely be a place to return sometime in the future.

It was already past noon and I had to still make my way to Cooperstown so I hopped back in my car full and ready to go, and drove 80 miles through the country and into these back roads that seemed to lead to nowhere. Highways turned into small state roads, and then onto town roads and there was a 30 minute span where I didn’t see any sign of human life. There were trees on my left and right, and I saw mountains in the distance, and there was NOTHING ahead of me. I couldn’t imagine that I was heading anywhere other than towards nothingness and there were many times when I thought my GPS was playing games on me and then I finally saw a sign for batting cages as I regained hope for my trip.

I drove for what seemed another 30 minutes and passed along an extremely large Lake on my right and thought that I was heading into oblivion. I didn’t think I was heading the right way for one moment and then out of nowhere I saw a small town and people bustling around the streets. To my complete surprise I had found Cooperstown and was stunned that anybody actually visited this town located in an area more remote than Gambier, Ohio where Kenyon was located. At least in Gambier, there was a nearby “city” in Mt. Vernon, but there was nothing surrounding Cooperstown and thought that had I gone to school in a place like Cooperstown, going to Gambier would have seemed like living in London, and London would’ve been out of this universe.

I parked my car on the side of Main St. and quickly headed over to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I’m 22 years old and I’ve been a die-hard baseball/Yankees fan for as long as I can remember, but I had never visited Cooperstown - the holy grail of baseball cities. I felt that my fanhood hadn’t been complete because I hadn’t been to Cooperstown, but I was amazed that a bunch of my friends came all the way to the middle of nowhere to get to Cooperstown. I bought a ticket to the Hall of Fame and realized that my camera’s battery had died and had to leave the HOF for the nearby convenient store, the only convenient store in town, and bought the cheapest batteries I had ever seen in my life. I placed them in my camera and saw that they weren’t even powerful enough to turn the camera on so I asked the cashier if I could get the more reliable Duracell batteries, and even though there was a few dollar difference between the batteries I had purchased and the Duracell’s, the elderly man behind the cashier gave me the new Duracell’s for no extra cost.

I made my way back into the HOF and entered this room where I took a seat and prepared to watch a video. The video shown at the HOF was 10 minutes of pure entertainment for any baseball fan. Whether follies or great plays or memorable moments I sat back in a grandstand setting with another 40 people and watched the movie. After the movie was over and I was feeling all baseball sentimental I made my way into the different museum exhibits and explored Cooperstown for a couple hours before it closed down. I left Cooperstown thinking about how much I missed playing baseball every Spring and remembering how large a part of my life it used to be before I started traveling, and writing and entering my college life. Baseball was my life for over a decade and it’s sad to think how it’s now gone after growing up with it every day.

I loved the museum and jumped back into my car before remembering that I hadn’t seen the first baseball field -Doubleday Field. I hopped out of my car and followed a father and his child head into the stadium and I followed them inside. I took a few photos and headed back to my car.

I didn’t know anything about Otsego Lake, but LP suggested I stop by the Lake so I entered the park that surrounds the Lake and parked my car at a beach. The day was reaching its end and daylight wasn’t going to be around for much longer, plus I thought the Park rangers would have asked me to leave but no one gave me any problems and I parked my car near a beach and walked along the lake for a few minutes before heading back to my car and heading deeper into the forest. I found another parking lot and decided to walk further into the woods and go on a nature hike.

I’ve had so much on my mind and so many stressful things bothering me for the past few months and walking through those woods brought back many memories for me. I spent an afternoon walking with Suz around a park nearby Kenyon - Mohican State Park - and it was really a phenomenal day/afternoon for me, but fortunately I don’t make the association between parks/Suz and I’m able to just enjoy the Park for what it is. I entered deeper and deeper into the park and felt so at ease in my mind. I can’t explain this feeling in pictures and will never be able to in writing or in any other medium other than in my mind, but I’m so glad that I can feel that sense of freedom in nature on my walks or when I run, and even when things bother me as they have in ways for the past few months, a walk around a park or forest makes my life so much better. Perhaps that’s why I’m not the biggest fan of cities and may never be. There was something ideallic about this walk and as I got deeper and deeper into the forest I realized that I was still capable of pursuing my deepest interests and move on in my life when things are bothering me. I realized it was getting too dark and I quickly followed the path back to my car and hopped in and made my way back home.

I stopped a few minutes into the drive, and headed back to Cooperstown for dinner. I didn’t know how long it would take to get back to Long Island but I decided it’d be best for me to stop for some dinner before the long haul back. I ate at a pubbish/diner restaurant and got a grilled chicken sandwich and watched the Jets get destroyed before making my 220 mile drive back home.

The trip itself was long, intense, but a ton of fun and I loved almost every second of it except the driving parts, and paying for gas. That was the most notable part of the trip, having to pay for my first tank of gas. I saw so much and learned a ton of new things about New York and everything else and it’s unfortunate that I haven’t been able to take another road trip since this one, but hopefully I’ll make one soon.