The Garden of the Blind

Last week, I went on yet another trip. It is interesting how I can go to the same places over and over again and yet have vastly different experiences each time. This was my third trip to eastern Pennsylvania where I took a one day side trip to the New York City area. The last time I went, everything went swimmingly, in spite of some snow on the morning of a 2 hour drive. This time, in spite of relatively sunny weather, we were bogged down in traffic and a general problem with too many travelers and not enough places to go. Certainly there were many things that could have gone wrong that didn’t, and yet a lot of things worked out well anyway.

• The flight from Cincinnati to Scranton was over booked, but I got an exit row (when you’re my size, the extra leg room is a huge deal).
• The guy I was going to NYC with lost his credit card to a hungry ATM, delaying us for an hour and a half, but we (theoretically) missed the worst of New York traffic.
• We hit stop an go traffic on the Cross-Bronx Expressway, but I always wanted to spend an evening breathing stinky NYC traffic air (sorry, not every cloud has a silver lining).
• We got to the hotel at 9:00, but I had the best night sleep of the trip that night.
• We hit stop and go traffic again on the CBE, but we were able to finish our work at our afternoon contractor appointment (our fourth stop of the day).
• We got in late to our hotel that night too, but they had great cookies out.
• I had to get up at 4:15 EDT to catch my flight, but I did catch the other guy who had that flight so that I could get a ride to the airport.
• I had a 15 minute layover in Cincinnati (that’s usually not long enough if your plane is at the next gate over, much less a bus ride away), but I caught my next flight even though I only had a standby ticket (more amazing is that my luggage caught the flight too).
• The guy in front of my on my last flight leaned his seat back, but I had an empty seat next to me and my knees crossed, effectively keeping his seat in place.

I also made a lot of progress on my new Sudoku program. I demonstrated its adaptability by creating a checker Sudoku puzzle, which is harder than a standard 9x9 puzzle. Enjoy!