thereafter amidst
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The day before we were scheduled to head back to NYC from Pittsburgh, Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself had decided to leave the car parked at the AirBNB we were staying in and we headed out on foot for a bit of a celebratory bar crawl on one of the “main streets” in Dormont, where we had just signed a lease. I’m pretty serious about not operating a vehicle while impaired by alcohol, at least at this stage of my life.
We visited a drinking establishment that specialized in mead and cider, where I enjoyed the hell out of a sour cherry juice infused glass of mead. I felt like a Viking.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our revelry continued into the evening hours, and since it was a full moon I couldn’t resist cracking out a few shots. We headed back to the AirBNB and packed our stuff up for the trip back to “Home Sweet Hell.”
As mentioned in the past, the drive between Pittsburgh and NYC encompasses roughly 400 miles. The highways post speed limits that are largely 70 mph, but in practice traffic is moving quite a bit faster than that. It’s an all day drive, when you factor in bathroom breaks and meals. You don’t find yourself in any sort of traffic nightmare until you’re about 40-50 miles from the Hudson River in New Jersey as it’s mostly a rural route. This is one of those drives where the highway exits are spaced out 30-50 miles from each other.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At one of the “rest” stops we took, I spotted this construction vehicle and instantly regretted the choice I made in buying a Toyota instead of a TerraMac. Look at that thing! Gah. Zombie deterrent of the highest order, Bro.
At any rate, we arrived back in NYC safe and sound, and began to really tear into the remaining work and packing up we needed to do to escape New York. I ended up throwing out about half of the material goods I’ve accumulated over the decades spent here in NYC, judging everything against a rubric of “do I really want to pay a mover to drive this thing 400 miles west.” A lot of personal archaeological finds occurred during this process. I found the letter that my high school girlfriend sent me to announce our break up, several yarmulkes which came into my possession at family weddings and Bar Mitzvah‘s, and all the other minutiae of life which I had been holding onto for decades.
November would end up being a very busy month, in terms of “have to’s.” Multiple runs to the scrap yard to dispose of electronics and metallic items we weren’t going to take with us, then there was a bunch of paper which went to a different scrap yard, all that sort of stuff. The camera was with me for all of this, but seldom did I hit the shutter.
So much to do…
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The Newtown Pentacle 
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