FDR

Maybe George Bush should take a walk through the FDR Memorial in Washington and read some of the quotes, like this one, actually written in stone. We all might be better off...

The trip continues, although we're relying on trips to an internet café to check e-mail (which isn't working all that well due to our provider's site having problems right now) and to put up some photos.

We had eye exams this morning. I need new glasses and I'm getting them next week.

Here's a gratuitous pumpkin shot in honor of the October holiday coming up. It was taken in Washington's Eastern Market, nearby where Ken and I lived in DC way back when...

New York to Washington

We left Albany on Friday morning and stopped for lunch in Manhattan at the Sevilla restaurant in the West Village. It's a Spanish restaurant that we've gone to a few times over the years. The last time, however, was way back in 1985!

Our table at the Sevilla.

Saratoga

We spent Wednesday evening in Lake George and visited Fort William Henry (a log fort) on Thursday morning. Then we drove down through Luzerne and Corinth to Saratoga for lunch.

Fall colors in Lake George.

Saratoga is home to a thoroughbred race track and every August the town is ablaze with racing fever. It was a bit quieter yesterday...

A neon sign in a downtown Saratoga bar gives to a hint as to this city's obsession.

We had a nice lunch downtown and made our way back to Albany and Delmar for a last dinner with our friends here. This morning we hit the road again... Manhattan for lunch then Washington, DC, to meet friends we haven't seen in many years.

Saratoga Town Hall.

Again, travel may mean spotty posting, depending on internet availability, so do stay tuned for updates.

Fort Ticonderoga

The view of southern Lake Champlain from Fort Ticonderoga.

At the southern end of Lake Champlain stands the restored Fort Ticonderoga orgininally built by the French in 1755 to help guard the trade corridor from Québec to New York. The fort played a role in the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars and then fell into disrepair until it was restored in the 20th century.

Spanish-made cannon stand ready to defend the fort.

We left our friends' house in Delmar yesterday morning and drove up the Hudson River through Troy. We continued up route 4 along the river and the Champlain Barge Canal to Glens Falls. We were supposed to meet my mom for lunch, but we missed a turn and ended up an hour late. Luckily, she waited for us and we had a good lunch together.

Black cannon poke through the stone walls of the fort. (Note: for some reason, part of the photo is missing in this view - if that's the case for you, click on the picture and you can see the whole thing)

Next, we drove up to Lake George and on to Ticonderoga. The fort was nice, but not as impressive as I remember from my childhood. Still, it was a beautiful drive and the setting was quite pretty.

For my French speaking friends, this is one of many plaques in the fort dedicated to the original occupants.

We drove back down to Lake George Village and found a hotel with free wi-fi internet access (yippee!) and had dinner in a rib place that was pretty good. After dinner we took a walk along the lakefront and through the village and made it back to the room just before it began to rain. The rain lasted all night, but it's clearing now. We can see Prospect Mountain from our window and the top is obscured by fog.

Engraving on one of the small Howitzer cannon in the fort.

Today we're going to look around for postcards, tee-shirts and maybe check out Fort William Henry before heading back down to Albany.

Photo Du Jour

A yacht cruises down the Hudson River after passing under the Rip Van Winkle Bridge between Catskill and Hudson, NY.

The next few days will be travel days, so our posts may be spotty. Stay tuned for updates.

Delmar, NY : Police State ?

George Bush's culture of fear has really taken hold. It's come to this: Ken and I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood yesterday. The friends we're staying with live in a nice Delmar residential neighborhood with a beautiful mix of architectural styles and large mature trees.

This is a town where I spent much of my youth; I went to day care here, I went to elementary school here, I graduated from the local high school. My parents and grandparents are buried here.

Many of the houses in this neighborhood have elaborate halloween displays in their front yards. It was Columbus Day and many residents were out working in their yards, raking leaves and pruning.

A front yard halloween display in Delmar, NY. Perhaps there should be another headstone with the following inscription: "Here lies Freedom - Killed by Fear."

We took some photos of houses and holiday displays like this one (above). Suddenly two police cars drove up and parked in front of us. One officer got out and I said hi. He scowled and barked, "What are you doing?" I replied that we were taking a walk, not knowing what was going on. I mean, he could have said, "Excuse me sir, we've had a call and we're just checking it out." But no, he was agressive and rude.

He told us to step in front of the car and proceeded to interrogate us about our identities (asking for ID) and then ran us through a police check. I told him I was visiting my friends on such-and-such a street and that I had grown up in this very neighborhood. He said that someone called them because they saw two men taking photos of houses. He said that this was a nice residential neighborhood where the people, you know (I don't know - he didn't finish the sentence). After about ten minutes consulting by radio with headquarters, he told us we checked out and we could go, but not to take any more pictures.

We were quite upset. I cannot believe there is a law against taking pictures on public streets in Delmar. We were not trespassing on anyone's property; we were in the public right of way admiring the elaborate holiday decorations in the yards. And, it must be said, we are just two average looking white guys in a average white neighborhood.

This experience kind of depressed me. Are people here so afraid that they call the police when someone they don't recognize walks down their street? Don't the police tell them that walking in a neighborhood is not a crime and to just calm down? This is not a gated community. It's a relatively affluent suburb of Albany with a population of well over 16,000 and it's part of a larger metropolitan area of over 700,000 people. We were two blocks from the little downtown, and we could see the Town Hall from the point where the police stopped us.

Amy H. talked about the fear in America in her blog last week. Now I've experienced it, too. This is not the same Delmar, nor the same America, that I grew up in. And it hasn't changed for the better.

New York State Wines

While in upstate New York we have, of course, been sampling the local wines. Back in the day, NYS wines were not considered to be any good. There was a lot of sweet stuff around and it was pretty awful.

Our current favorite white is this one from the Finger Lakes region of New York. It's dry and fruity and very tasty. This winemaker has been around for a lot of years and was one of the pioneers of New York State wines.

These days, however, wineries old and new have been improving their techniques and the resulting wines can be quite good. We've tried a number of them and have found three favorites so far.

I should say that our wine taste is very much influenced by French wines, particularly those in our region in the Loire Valley/Touraine. Whites are sauvignon blanc or chenin and reds are gamay or cabernet franc. These are light, fruity wines that are meant to be drunk young.

This is a Hudson Valley winery that we visited and toured on our way upstate from NYC. We tasted several of their wines, but this one was the best by far. It's a blend of several varietals and while it's alcohol level is at 13%, it's not too strong at all.

We do enjoy a good full-bodied red like a Bordeaux or Bourgogne of course, but most of what we drink is local to our region. While in California, we often bought French wines, although we did have our local favorites there, too. We found that many California reds were too bold for us and much too high in alcohol. Often those wines were 14 or 15 percent and while they paired well with certain foods, they were nonetheless very strong wines.

An old Finger Lakes favorite of mine, Walter Taylor's Bully Hill Vineyard always has something interesting to try. This chardonnay was dry and crisp in the French style; it may not have spent any time on oak since there was no hint of that buttery flavor that I really hate in a white wine.

Our local stuff in France is usually 11 or 12 percent and we find that those couple percentage points make a big difference in the "drinkability" of the wine. The NYS wines we've been trying are closer to the 11 to 12 percent range, they're fruity and drinkable at a young age, and we have been quite pleasantly surprised at how much we like them.