EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in New York
Distance - 125 miles
Time - 2 1/2 hours
Wednesday was a nice calm day with family, we mostly hung around the house cooking and talking about cooking :) Uncle Steve was cleaning up his beautiful old 60s Firebird to get ready to sell it and I was more than happy to help with taking photos.
Before dinner I drove into Syracuse to the Upstate Hospital area to see my friend Camille! We met in college during the month-long intensive winter EMT course when I was a sophomore working as a TA and she was taking the class. We both volunteered on the on-campus EMT squad for the next three years together, and since we were both pre-med we ended up taking a lot of the same classes. Now she's a super impressive third year med student at SUNY Upstate Medical University, still amazing and friendly with the no-nonsense attitude and crazy good memory for details that made her such a great friend and EMT partner in college. She's currently rotating through Surgery, but had a bit of a break to come over to the coffee shop where I'd installed myself to say hi and talk for the better part of an hour. She's one of those people whose smile always makes my day, her extra-long arms make her hugs all the better, and her way of telling stories about her life as a med student almost made me start longing for an MCAT prep book ;) I couldn't believe how far we've both come in pursuing our dreams of working in medicine, even on very different pathways.
The cafe I was in, Cafe Kubal, was a fun little spot in itself. It's just a block over from the hospital, situated right in the heart of a busy, pedestrian-traffic heavy area of the University. It's one of the newer types of coffee houses that have been popping up, focusing on pour-over coffee made cup by cup, weighed out on scales to customize the strength of your evening java and ensure the right ratio of freshly ground beans to exactly boiling-temp water. You stand there feeling a little pretentious about it, particularly when you're like me and can't usually tell the difference from what you got from the Mr. Coffee on your counter that morning, but it's a lot of fun to watch and does make the whole thing feel a bit special. I decided to skip the coffee altogether and got the ginger lime green tea, highly recommended as long as you're pretty fond of ginger. The shop is attached to a fair trade clothing boutique that I didn't explore but looked nice, and inside the coffee shop you have a nice selection of comfy old armchairs and couches, benches, wooden kitchen chairs, and even chairs pieced together seemingly from 2x4's and cushioned in burlap coffee sacks (surprisingly not totally uncomfortable, just heavy and kind of a pain to move around). Overall it was a nice place to hang out for a few hours, I could easily see why it's a favorite among the area students.
Camille had to go back to work and it was starting to get dark out so I went home and had a last dinner with Steve, Gale, and Sue, then got back in the car to drive out to Albany to see my cousin Melissa, her husband Eric, and their 3 year old son, James. Thankfully the three of them are night owl's, particularly Melissa, so my 10pm arrival after a lovely night time drive on the winding back highways wasn't a problem, everyone was still awake. I've stayed with them a number of times over the years since I was a student and Melissa would drive out in her Mini Cooper to pick me up and bring me back to NY for a long weekend, and I always feel so comfortable and welcome in their home.
The next morning Eric had to work, but Melissa and I slept in. We got moving, did some house chores, and got James to his nursery school that he goes to twice a week. We had tried to think of things to do with the child-free time, but ended up back at the house making hummus and talking about recipes from her Game of Thrones cookbook (so many of my friends have read this series, I feel like I need to just sit down and get through them if only to be able to understand what they're talking about!). After we picked up James we took him to the mall to play in an entire area dedicated to inflatable bouncy castles and slides (!), then headed home to start dinner. Eric's mother, Jane, came over and the three of us were sitting in James' room playing with his Lego's (while he ignored us and played with his cars) when Eric came home. Jane's family is Scottish so she and I always have a great time talking about our various travels there - a lot of laughter and bad jokes about kilts often ensues.
My last day in Albany (Friday) included even more fun playtime with James (he's currently very into the Legos, his car set, and a whole stack of books that he will gladly have you read over and over). We were on our way to visit the cemetery but made a quick and welcome detour when Eric had a break in his day to show us around his work at EMPAC - the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center. Located on the RPI campus, it's a bit of a departure from the expected at an engineering and technical school, but it does draw performers from all over the world - everything from traditional lectures and musical performances to decidedly experimental works combining various forms of media, technology, and levels of audience interaction. The sign we passed warning that the lobby for one of the smaller theaters was going to be filled with smoke and haze for several hours the next afternoon didn't seem all that unusual to the people working there. Some performances are one time works, others are ongoing for lengths of time; the main theater is also used for some school events like freshman orientation but it did seem like the building operates fairly independently from the university. I was so glad that I got to see it, and even more grateful for the insider tour with the lead video engineer! James is clearly a favorite there, nearly everyone we passed said hi to him and when we were sitting down to lunch he even got an extra cookie from a fan ;) The cafe there has excellent food if you're ever in the area and looking for lunch - Melissa and I had the venison stew and split a mis-named but delicious Monte Cristo sandwich. Traditionally I believe it's a fried ham and cheese sandwich, this was a turkey and ham sandwich on french toast, but it was salty-sweet at its most indulgent and delicious.
The Firebird
Such a fun car!
Modeling for the craigslist photos
Aunt Sue, Aunt Gale, and Uncle Steve
Camille! From MHC EMTs to pursuing new medical adventures ;)
James with the Lego tower on wheels that I had way too much fun building
James and Melissa on our way to visit Eric
Inside one of the studio spaces, covered in sound-reflecting tiles. The room is totally isolated from the main building, with an insulating air layer around the whole thing, suspended and supported on springs.
The ceiling of the main theater
The room is so well controlled acoustically that when all of the sound deadening curtains are down and they are trying to make the room completely silent, you can actually hear the projector fan from inside the main lighting booth until they turn it off. That's pretty quiet in a room this huge!
The view from outside of the back of the building. It's built into a hill, so the front of the building on the 7th floor is level with the main campus area.
After an amazing dinner of steak and breakfast-style homefried potatoes, Melissa made little apple crumbles for dessert while we talked and watched movies on their super comfy couch.
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