The Blog

WHEELS WHEN I WANT THEM
I joined Zipcar yesterday.

Available in Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., and, uh, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Zipcar allows you to rent cars by the hour or day by reserving by phone or over the Internet and then bringing your "Zipcard" to your car's designated parking spot, where you hold it up to the car's windshield to unlock the doors electronically. You never have to go to a rental agency or deal with any paperwork, and reservations can start at any time of day or night.

Becoming a Zipcar member involved paying a $50 annual membership fee and a $25 application fee, the latter of which covered the cost of a check on my driving record and insurance eligibility. I thought this process might take a few days, but in fact I had my Zipcard less than five hours after I applied on-line. If using the system is anywhere near as easy, I'll be impressed.

I reserved Jetta Jimbo (all Zipcar cars have names), which lives eight blocks from my apartment, so that Erica and I can take a little drive up into the Hudson Valley on Monday. Jimbo rents for $8.50 an hour or $65 a day, including gas, insurance, and 125 miles per 24-hour period. While that rental cost is about twice what I'd pay at the closest cheap traditional car-rental agency - the Enterprise in Bayonne, New Jersey - I won't have to spend an hour taking the PATH train and the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail to Bayonne, I won't have to conform to Enterprise's opening hours, and I'll no longer have to pretend I have personal car insurance when I waive the DOA and the DUI or whatever they're called. And, once again, Zipcar rates include gas.

We'll see how it turns out.

posted by Seth Weinstein at 23:46

A SIMPLE SCENE
It's time to revive this blog.

Since my last post almost two years ago, everything has gotten lumped into my Fosse tour blog. I have no more graceful segue back into this more general bulletin board of random thoughts than to say, simply, that I had a bizarre day that you indubitably want to hear about.

For the first time in months, I had an entire day off entirely to myself. With about 12 hours' notice, my girlfriend (Erica - read about her in the tour blog) had been whisked off to North Carolina on a 7:50 a.m. flight to build costumes for the Broadway-bound Little Women production, and so I was up early, faced with a beautiful day and no plans for how to spend it.

I knew the day would involve leaving the city and enjoying the dry, cool fall weather, because there's no telling how many gorgeous days remain before the cold sets in. It dawned on me that I hadn't been to Atlantic City this summer, and I thought a peaceful day on the boardwalk, some time exploring the town, a meandering walk out to the suburbs, and a couple of gratuitous hours of cards might fit the bill. And so, without much thought, I found myself on the 7:30 Academy bus to Atlantic City.

An hour into the ride, I noticed all the bright fall leaf colors on the trees lining the Garden State Parkway, and I suddenly realized that I had no desire at all to be in Atlantic City. What I really wanted to do was take a commuter train somewhere and explore a little town I'd never been to, getting lost among the leaves in a stumbled-upon park rather than viewing them from an air-conditioned bus. The trouble, of course, was that this was an express bus and, short of faking a need to hurl somewhere around Asbury Park, there was no way to reverse direction.

The bus dropped me off at the Tropicana casino. I figured I had to justify the trip somehow, and so I played about an hour of blackjack and Spanish 21, won $100, and headed straight back to New York City, reading The Mole People on the bus.

I grabbed lunch at a wonderful Chinese takeout place on the north side of 38th Street between Seventh and Eighth - I'm not sure whether it has a name, but it's always packed with Chinese people, and they serve three items over rice for $3.75 - and headed straight to the Long Island Rail Road side of Penn Station. I looked at the big board, where they list all the stations and the time of the next departure to each, and decided that a place called Copiague sounded pretty. I'd never heard of it, and there was a train leaving for it in nine minutes.

Copiague didn't have much of a town center. It did, however, have about a dozen Polish restaurants (as of 2000, the 21,922-person town was 6.4% Polish). I was full from my Chinese lunch, but I couldn't resist popping into a Polish deli, which featured a couple dozen kinds of kielbasa and equally numerous varieties of cheese, and buying a cheese blintz for dessert. It was among the best I've ever had - sweet and warm, with a firm crust that kept the filling in place but could be bit into easily.

I spent three hours winding my way through Amityville and Massapequa. Most of the walk was through residential neighborhoods with modest-sized houses newly festooned with Halloween decorations. Children were riding bikes and skateboards or walking dogs. Sometimes streets led me past little parks, such as the small, tranquil garden dedicated to the memory of Peter O'Neill Jr., who died in the World Trade Center attack.

Oak Street, the peaceful street leading through Copiague and Amityville, suddenly turned into the broad, mall-lined Sunrise Highway, so I quickly crossed to the north side of the LIRR tracks. Here I stumbled into Massapequa Park, and this was the view I'd been in search of all day: I paused on a bridge made of wooden slats. On the south side of the bridge, swans, geese, and mallards swam in a sparkling lake. On the north side, only the treetops remained illuminated by the setting sun: bright, crisp, orange leaves gradually giving way to shaded red and green leaves below. The only sounds were the honking of the geese and ducks, the rumble of the bridge when the occasional biker rode across, and the chugging of the trains.

A simple scene, but a poignant one. For the first time since I moved to New York City eight years ago and adamantly proclaimed I'd never live outside of Hell's Kitchen, the tiniest part of me envisioned a home someplace where you can throw a stick for a large golden retriever, and while he's fetching it you can carve a pumpkin on your front porch with your kids as the apple pie bakes inside.

And with that in mind, I walked to Seaford, boarded the 6:29 train back to the city, and sat in the first car so as to enjoy the pink sunset ahead from the front of the train.

posted by Seth Weinstein at 01:03

TOP BILLING
I got a call the other day from someone at RCN, my cable company. I'm in their automatic-credit-card-payment program, and she said that due to some kind of data loss I'd have to go to the RCN Web site and re-enter my credit-card details. I resisted the urge to ask her how such data could possibly not be backed up, and I resisted the stronger urge to ask them to stop adding shopping channels and give us back WGN and add the Game Show Network. (I recently figured out how to program my bedroom TV to skip channel 6, QVC; channel 8, the RCN channel, which broadcasts useful information such as the new customer-service hours at RCN offices; and channel 10, which used to be the wonderful Chicago channel WGN but is now the Home Shopping Network. So now, when I flip, it goes from 5 to 7 to 9 to 11, which are actual channels with actual programming that actual people might find it worth while to actually watch. Very handy.)

So off I went to www.rcn.com, expecting the home page to have some prominent big button on it saying, "Click here to re-enter your credit-card information because we screwed up our data!" Of course, I found nothing there or in the labyrinthine depths of the site, so I called the customer-service department.

In that call I learned the real reason they had gotten in touch with me: because my account was several weeks past due as a result of the expiration of my old credit card. Now, I had submitted new credit-card information months ago (10 September according to my expertly filed notes), and the process I'd gone through to submit such information had rivaled that of obtaining a Russian visa. I'd called RCN in March or April, and they'd promised to mail me a Change of Credit Card Details Information Form, or whatever it's called - of course they wouldn't take the information over the phone, let alone on the Web. The form had never come, and I'd had better things to worry about, like whether I'd need a transit visa for Brooklyn so that I could take the subway to JFK Airport to go to Scandinavia.

So, back from Scandinavia a few months later, I called them again, and I asked them to fax the form. They swore to do that right away, and when it didn't come by the next day, I called once more, asking them to fax and mail it. This time they finally did fax it, and I completed it and faxed it back immediately. Then I spent much time out of the city, and, since my RCN bills are supposedly paid automatically by credit card, I rarely open them. I actually did open my most recent one, which stated, as always, that I am "currently enrolled in our automatic credit card withdrawl (sic) program" and that the bill would be paid per my instructions.

Thus, I explained to the customer-service person that I had already given them my new information. When I said that I'd be happy to re-submit it but couldn't find the form on the Web site, she said, "Just give it to me over the phone."

Later that day I got a very urgent-looking piece of mail saying that RCN was going to suspend my service if my bill wasn't paid by 22 November. Let's hope they've gotten it right by now.
posted by Seth Weinstein at 18:06

NARROWS-MINDED
Following up on a thought from a previous blog entry, I took the scenic drive from Boiling Springs up Routes 74 and 75 to the Lewistown Narrows on Thursday. The Narrows are indeed pretty, though trees block the view of the Juniata River on the south side, and concrete walls block falling rocks on the north side but detract from the beauty of the place. It's not immediately apparent why the road is so dangerous: It's not actually that curvy, and there are a zillion "Do not pass" signs. I guess it might be different in the dark, or if you are drunk, or if you aren't convinced after 30 warnings that overtaking a truck on a blind curve might not be the most sensible of actions.

More impressive than the Narrows themselves were the two mountain passes that Route 74 traverses on the way from Carlisle to Port Royal. Each was reached by a series of steep hairpin curves, and each rewarded me with fine views of the surrounding countryside - especially with the leaves close to reaching the vivid shades of red, orange, and yellow that make autumn so picturesque in the Northeast.

Here's an intriguing mix of modern transportation and tradition: After my scrumptious meal at Miller's Smorgasbord (ham marinated in cider! Dried corn! Shoofly pie!), just east of Lancaster, I found myself heading toward the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania on busy Route 896. Having pulled into the left-turn lane, while waiting for the light to change, I noticed that directly behind me was that hallmark of Amish culture: a horse and carriage.

Sadly, the museum was about to close as I arrived, but I peered through the windows at the mid-20th-century locomotives that once plied the rails of Pennsylvania. I may knock American train travel as being unreliable, impersonal, and overpriced (it is), but train travel in general is undoubtedly the greatest mode of transportation.
posted by Seth Weinstein at 00:43

THE APPLE OF MY 'ISLE
Let it be said, for the record, that Sun Crisp apples (perhaps the name is properly lowercased and/or hyphenated) purchased from the farmers' market in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, are no doubt the best apples I've ever had.
posted by Seth Weinstein at 01:24

DRIVING ME BATTY
Working in central Pennsylvania for the past six weeks, I've had the opportunity to drive a lot. I hadn't driven much since moving to New York City six years ago - in fact, most of my recent driving experience has been in tiny, new rental cars in countries where you drive on the left. So it was with newfound, refreshing respect that I found myself behind the wheel of the Allenberry Playhouse's 1991 Buick, a big clunker of a vehicle that still handles superbly after 255,000 miles.

I've noticed a couple of curiosities with respect to driving in and around New York City.

The first concerns the parking tariffs at Manhattan Plaza (42nd Street at Dyer Avenue), which are among the lowest in the city. One deal makes it only $8 (including the 2397.685% parking tax, or whatever it is) if you enter on Sunday through Wednesday after 5:00 p.m. and exit by 8:00 the next morning. Stay any longer and the regular rates apply: $19 for 24 hours, or a bit less for partial days. So to park from Sunday night through 7:30 Wednesday morning, which a few cast members and I have done for the past several weeks, costs $57 if you leave the car there continuously, but we save $11 - that's a serving of chirashi sushi at some of the cheaper places! - by taking the car out Monday morning at 7:45, driving it around the block, and re-entering the garage. The same guy always collects my payment. He hasn't yet caught on to the fact that I exit and re-enter within five minutes, but he's friendly, and if this habit ever resumes (this is my last week at Allenberry) I might eventually be able to dispense with the charade of actually moving the car, and instead just pay on Monday and then walk over to the machine and punch the button for a new ticket.

Second, and more frightening: I've noticed, as one might, that there are people who enter toll plazas without E-ZPass. In case you're not familiar, E-ZPass is a little device, called a transponder, that you stick on your windshield to be read by an electronic thingy at a toll plaza. It means that you can pay tolls with a credit card and, more important, drive through a toll plaza without stopping. In Massachusetts it's called Fast Lane, which is a much better name, but apparently (according to my good friend James Marino) E-ZPass was so christened because they originally planned to make it possible to use the device to pay for parking, fast food, and other items where a "lane" does not apply. Also, quoth James, "The concept of E-ZPass is completely meaningless to anyone from California" - toll-free driving is undoubtedly one of the great virtues of the West Coast. E-ZPass would be instantly understood, however, by Singaporeans, who have used transponders to enter that city's downtown area during peak hours for years. One can only wonder why it took so long to introduce the idea in the USA.

As soon as the first wisp of possibility arose that I'd be using a car to get to and from Pennsylvania, I ordered an E-ZPass. And so it astonishes me, as I speed through the E-ZPass lanes, to see cars queued up for several minutes as drivers fork over cash tolls - which, incidentally, are often higher than the E-ZPass tolls. Many of the cars have plates from states in the Northeast. Now, I'm not the world's greatest economist, but it seems that a device that saves you time and money could do nothing but good. I can appreciate the fact that people might be put off by certain modern gadgets that have some kind of learning curve, such as, oh, computers and VCRs - but I confidently maintain that people who frequently drive on toll roads in the Northeast and don't have a transponder are deranged.

On a related note, I have an urge to drive U.S. Route 22 through the Lewistown Narrows, a supposedly spectacular stretch of highway that winds its way through a gorge along the Juniata River in Pennsylvania. The route has occupied a tiny morsel of my memory since the September 1995 issue of Reader's Digest listed the Narrows among the country's most dangerous highways. But a quick jaunt up there (it's not far from Allenberry) may be a fitting day trip for our closing week - and a prudent one, since the Narrows may lose some of their beauty (if gain in safety) when the road is widened during the coming years.
posted by Seth Weinstein at 01:35

LUST
I'm obsessed with the Kyocera 7135 Smartphone.

As with many objects of desire, the 7135 is something I just can't have...at least not yet: It won't be released until November at the earliest.

I don't buy electronic gizmos very often. My Sharp Wizard OZ-9500, an antique from 1994, continues to serve me reliably, and up until June 2002 I had analog mobile-phone service. (I tried Omnipoint when digital first came out, and after a year of dropped calls, I gave it up for the stronger analog signals.) Since June, when my cute Motorola StarTAC gave out and I started spending too much time away from New York City (read: exorbitant roaming charges), I've relied on public phones and Lonely Planet's Ekno service. I still have a dial-up Internet connection, and I cannot imagine ever paying for digital cable service, let alone TiVo. (All this said, however, a future blog entry may extol the virtues of E-ZPass, a device that I possess even though I don't own a car, and without which I would not dare enter the Manhattan-bound lanes of the Lincoln Tunnel.)

But back to the 7135, the only gizmo I've seen in years that's made me gasp, "I've got to get that!" It's a phone, PDA, and MP3 player all in one unit. It's got a bright screen that can display 65,000 colors. It can be used to browse the Internet and read and send e-mail. It uses the Palm operating system and can run any Palm-compatible software. I spend too much time reading the SmartphoneSource 7135 forum (I even registered and posted!), and I've thought quite a bit about what MP3 file I will create as my phone's ringer sound. Should it be something uniquely "me," such as a few bars from one of my musicals? Something soothing, such as a Mozart piano sonata? Something totally inconspicuous, such as a cough, that would alert only me to the fact that the sound is that of a ringing telephone? I'm even pretty sure that, with caller ID, I can have a different ringer for different callers.

So when this thing comes out, I shall be one of the first to get my hands on one. Until then, I'll be one of the few people still feeding the accounts of pay-phone service providers.
posted by Seth Weinstein at 11:52

A BLOG IS BORN
Lured, by positive feedback from my Scandinavia trip updates and a subsequent rant about the poor state of long-distance train service in the United States, into a belief that some people appreciate my rather dreary, deceptively droll discourse, and inspired by the exquisite blog of my favorite copy editor, Bill Walsh (who maintains the best copy-editing site on the Web), I hereby dare and deign to devise a blog of my own. I make no promises regarding any degree of quality, lucidity, or pith, but I do estimate that the vast majority of entries will be the result of a deliberation whose duration exceeds that of the elevator ride from my apartment building's lobby to my floor. (Assuming no interim stops, that's 28 to 32 seconds, depending on which elevator you board.)
posted by Seth Weinstein at 01:20