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If you're the ferry commander,
do you just walk into your boss's office one day and say, 'Hey, I'm
tired of the same back and forth route, today I'm going to cut loose
and take this baby up the Hudson River,'?
For as many times as I've seen the Staten
Island Ferry cross under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, I've never
once set foot on the ark-like ship. The closest I ever came was one
time when I met the restaurant ladies at American Park Restaurant in
Battery Park. I admit that I was so labored to park I considered
putting my car on the Staten Island Ferry and picking it up later when the ship came
back after dinner in the upper room.
Anyway, these are a few of the things I
would do if, say, I were the transportation writer of a major daily
newspaper in a large metropolitan area somewhere in New Jersey.
1 - Take a roundtrip ride on the Staten
Island ferry.
On a rare occasion we'd catch a glimpse of
the ferry cruising up the Hudson River to lower Manhattan across
from our offices at Harborside in Jersey City, N.J. We figured they
were practice runs for crew and captain or maintenance check. I
mean, if you're the ferry commander do you just walk into your
boss's office one day and say, hey, I'm tired of the same back and
forth route, today I'm going to cut loose and take this baby up the
Hudson River. I'd be just as happy to take a roundtrip on that ship
from the battery to the island and back. I wonder how long a trip
that would be. Does it really cost a nickel?
2 - Take an Amtrak trip on a sleeper car.
It would be
like in the old 1940s movies, or something like the Orient Express
where you have a private room and sleep as the countryside passes
by. Perhaps a trip to New Orleans, or Chicago or someplace the train
trip takes overnight to get to and then you wake up and have
breakfast on the train.
3 - Take the Metroliner or Acela to
Washington or Boston, or both.
4 - Walk across the George Washington
Bridge. Preferably in daylight.
5 - Traverse the old Morris Canal across New
Jersey.
Or as many parts of the Canal as are
traversable - including
Lafayette Village and perhaps a good long look at the Clifton nature
center that includes a part of the canal.
6 - Fly over my house in a private plane a
la Sky King.
That's with me as a passenger.
7 - Take an authorized tour of the PATH
operations.
Go someplace where the tours never go. I'll find out
where the cars go when they are out of service. Do they go through a
PATH car-sized car wash? Where do they pull up when they get
cleaned? What do they - the engineers and conductors - do when it's
not rush hour?
 8 - Share the poopdeck with
a New York Ferry skipper
as he crosses the Hudson River from New Jersey to Manhattan to
New Jersey to Manhattan to New Jersey over and over again.
9 - Travel to the top of the tallest
building in New Jersey
and see if I can see Highpoint - then go to
the top of Highpoint and see if I could see the Goldman Sachs
building in Jersey City.
10 - Take a Jersey back road to a fly-fishing-only
hole
that's stocked exclusively for fly fishing & watch the
fishermen work their flies.
Maybe I'll need to wait until after I retire
to tick off the items in this bucket list.
© 2006 by Anthony Buccino
Travels With Tonoose
Cherry
Blossom Press
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