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Posts Tagged ‘Travel’

For the past few weeks prior to Christmas — I’d been working on five drawings of the grand­children of Mr. Robert Leffler, my father-in-law out in Tucson, Arizona. We’d even gotten in touch with La Paloma Art Gallery in Tucson so that mats would be cut and waiting when we got there. You just can’t transport art properly on the airlines. If we’d framed them the glass would need replacing at the very least. Stuff gets tossed around. Sue bought two heavy plastic frames and and we nested and taped them together with the drawings carefully placed in a tracing pad between the two. From there, they would be my carry-on luggage along with my camera, extra memory cards and a battery charger.

Initially we were set to fly on the afternoon of Christmas Day. Turned out that our flight from PHL on US Airways was canceled due to a shortage of flight crew. So Sue went to work resched­uling from this to that… and back again. It wasn’t too much fun. We got up at about 2:45 AM and I brewed the coffee. We left in the dark. It was rainy. The night before I’d finally cleared a snow drift and plow in with the VW Beetle and the driver’s side window regulator broke in the pouring rain. Murphy’s Law. So — Trash bags were taped over the window and the rain stayed out. Thank goodness we were taking the van to the airport. We parked and dragged all the luggage into the United terminal at PHL. Two connecting flights and we were finally in Tucson.

The entire reason for our going West was to attend and document Mr. Leffler’s 80^th Birthday Celebration that was held on the afternoon of Saturday, December 27, 2009. Good thing that I had the art and the camera because our luggage was nowhere to be seen. The morning of the party — Sue, the girls, Lauren and myself all had to go shopping at 7:30 AM or so — otherwise… I’d have been in the same t-shirt and jeans that I traveled in. As would all of the group that departed from Philly. So — We had clothes. Late Sunday night, the day after the party, they found our bags and brought them to the house in Tucson. You pay $20 each for 4 bags from point A to point B and they lose them. Will we be compen­sated by the airlines for the loss of the bags and needing to go buy clothes? Who knows?

The first thing that I did on return was to jump onto the computer here to “process” the Olympus Raw Format “ORF” files in Photoshop CS3 Extended and convert them into uncom­pressed Tiff Images (2.26 Gigabytes). Then I made full size Jpegs, half size Jpegs and quarter size Jpegs and burned all materials onto a data DVD and onto 3 CD-Roms for distri­b­ution and safekeeping. As of yesterday afternoon all were ready to ship. That’s good. In case the extended family is inter­ested in them — I’ll pop them into a NextGen Gallery and post them here very soon. For now I have to work on a website.

The VW Beetle is now in the shop to fix that broken window that I mentioned and the parts won’t be in until Friday. So I’ll be right here working I suppose. Lots to do. Got to go change over the laundry and get another load of wash in. I’ll be back and corre­sponding again soon — but nose to the grind­stone on that website for now.

My Dear Wife Susan and I attended a wedding on Long Island in Westbury this past Thursday afternoon. Debbie, one of Sue’s best friends from High School, had her son Brian getting married to Anna and we were lucky enough to be invited. It was all very, very, nice. Next morning we met Sue’s brother Alan and Debbie for a bite to eat at a local diner in Carle Place. Then we started out on the road. Sue and I were going to go to the furthest point away from Manhattan and the Boroughs on Long Island — Montauk Point. We stopped briefly in Rockville Centre where Sue Leffler had grown up, to photo­graph additional reference for drawing and painting. Then off to the east. It just kept getting more open and cleaner the further you were from New York City. Getting there was very straight­forward out Montauk Highway through Amagansett and the Hamptons to the town of Montauk. Really not a bad drive at all. If only there was a way to circumvent the very busy urban areas on the way in. Aircraft would most likely be the best choice eastward.

What a beautiful place! Their thousand dollar fine for littering has certainly paid off. It was truly spotless. Not what I’d pictured in my mind’s eye at all — this was just as if we’d been trans­ported to the New England coast. Really nice and a bit rustic with Apple Orchards and fields of Sunflowers swaying in the wind. Quite picturesque. I loved it. We had nice fresh seafood to eat and Sue was able to get Lobster. Sue was unfor­tu­nately a bit under the weather with a cold and we sought relief at the only game in town “Montauk Medical Group” where Dr. Knott runs his business. Once diagnosed and prescribed medicine we went over to White’s Department Store where they also fill prescrip­tions in their Pharmacy in the back. Leaving a couple scripts to be filled we went across the street and had brunch on Saturday. Out on the overlook you can see across the scrub plant dune cover to sandbars that close off a large pond of salt water which is appar­ently flooded on a regular basis. Certain areas there have full tree canopy covering the road and a few times we saw the sun penetrating the foliage and illumi­nating the sea mist with focused beams of light. We call that “God Light”.

The only negative aspect of this trip was that Sue didn’t feel partic­u­larly well — she did take care of that — and that we had such a short visit with the end of Long Island.  I’d say that I’m pretty certain that we’ll go back to see it again. If not physi­cally, my mind will surely go back. I shot these images all in a few quick bursts and I was surprised that the weather had turned out as nicely as it had. Initial forecasts had it raining Thursday with additional showers and temper­a­tures fifteen degrees below normal. It just all blew out of here on Saturday night. All night long a rumble punctuated sleep as a cold front blew through and building trim, awnings and windows shook. Couldn’t have asked for nicer weather. On the way back we stopped at the famous “Lunch” restaurant where you can get a “Lobster Roll”. I never had a Lobster Roll and was picturing something similar to a spring roll or an egg roll. It is a toasted hot dog bun filled to the brim with “Lobster Salad”. Lots of pink claw meat. Sue had that and I had New England Style Clam Chowder. I also saw that they cook Puffers (blowfish) there for the tasty bit of meat within. A really nice trip. Sue has yet to get over her ailment and I’m coughing as well now. It will pass.

Memories like this trip sustain one through the gray skies of winter.