Kingston, New York - 3 miles in dinghy, 17 kilometres walked
Seeing strangers walking along highway ditches brings out strange behavior in people.
For our big day in Kingston, Dad and I decided to take in a movie at the local cinema. Problem was, there was no public transport here and cheap sailors don't pay for taxis so we had to walk. And it was raining like hell. We first rode the dinghy into town from the anchorage, dodging the debris field of floating sticks, weeds, and logs flushed down the Rondout Creek from the heavy rains, and after scoping out a few potential docking locations and ranking them for risk of theft, quality of dock, likelihood of having to pay, and accessiblity to downtown, we chose the empty dock at a waterfront restaurant that was not yet open for the day.
I punched our destination into Google Maps and it recommended a walking route. I don't know what criteria the AI uses for choosing these, but I heard it snicker a bit after we started our way along the proposed route, so I suspect it gives you the worst possible track for enjoyability and ease of walking, then it brags to its AI buddies about how it got humans to do yet another extraordinarily daft thing.
At first it was lovely - a quiet, wooded trail that ran parallel to a highway. But after a kilometer or two the trail ended, and we were stuck with no forward route other than the highway. Becuase we're way too manly to admit a mistake and backtrack, we forged ahead, choosing the right-hand shoulder of the highway, which was littered with all sorts of junk - candy wrappers, iron hooks, glass, mufflers, lug nuts, and we even saw a ninja turtle stuffed animal, now covered with muck and leaves. As we walked, it would rain for a while, then stop and get warm so we're remove our rainjackets. Then the rain would return. After one such wardrobe change we saw something whiz by us and land in the ditch. It was a hubcap, definitely an accident. We continued walking. Soon, a half can of Miller Light appeared in flight and pinged off the top of my head, followed by some down-pitching Doppler laughter. Fortunately I was wearing my Moosehead toque, saving me from a scalping, but we did start to wonder if we were being purposely targetted. We turned, and walked backwards to see where all these items were coming from. A half-eaten chocolate bar was tossed at us from the window of a scratched up Toyota Corolla. These highway scumbags were trying to hit us on purpose!
When we got a break in the traffic flow we ran across the highway, jumped the dividers, then continued walking alongside the oncoming lane, hoping we'd have a better chance of avoiding the trash missiles. We saw a Cybertruck approaching. As it neared we saw the driver's window lower then a hand appear, holding a bag of McDonald's garbage. I picked up a rotten banana and Dad grabbed a stick. The driver hurled the bag as the truck passed and I simultaneously chucked the banana, which went right in the window and splattered on his face and the Musky interior of the ferociously ugly vehicle. Dad grimaced at the driver then used the stick to bat away the bag and it exploded in a puff of Big Mac wrappers, abandoned fries, and the remnants of a strawberry shake.
The next vehicle was a Cadillac, driven by a sweet granny and grandpa. But even the oldies can be vicious. Granny leaned out the passenger side and first threw a grapefruit, then a loaded Depends underpants diaper at us. Gross! Dad clubbed the grapefruit with the stick bat and it exploded all over the both of us, but we like grapefruit so no biggie, especially since we happened to be wearing our rain gear in the on-again off-again showers. We wisely dodged the diaper and it bounced a couple of times then rolled into the opposite lane where a big truck drove over it, making a whopping squishing sound.
This sick game went on for a while and we were happy to finally make it to the exit and get the hell off this highway of unpleasantness.
We arrived at the cinema, which was inside a mall that was otherwise completely deserted except for one hairdresser and a whole bunch of mall walkers. Besides this, there were no stores left in the mall and every space was vacant. It was creepy and strange.
Since there was nothing to eat there and we had a bit of time before the movie we walked to the nearby Five Guys burger joint, but had to parkour through a small forest path and rock retaining wall to get there quickly. We ordered and were surprised to see the burgers were doubles and exceptionally greasy and the medium fries were enough for a hockey team. We ate as fast as we could then got back to the cinema just in time for the movie Sinners.
We didn't love it, but didn't hate it, and the movie seemed to either lack focus or was the first in the emerging Musical/Horror/Western/Romance/Historical Drama genre.
The rain was still falling so we checked Uber and got a price of over forty US bucks to get back to the docks. Stuff that. We walked back, through a busy commerical corridor, and along the way Dad picked up a shirt at the Salvation Army Thrift Store (which earned a wink from Mini-Ana who was still sitting on my shoulder) and I picked up a nice tap and die set and some drill bits from Harbour Freight (which earned a sad frown from Mini-Ana, but then I explained to her it was required for the SeaLight deck light which would make our boat even more fabulous, and she was okay with that).
After our very long walk we made it back to the dinghy, returned to SeaLight, hung our clothing on every available surface of the boat, turned on the fans and heater, had jalapeno chips and wine for supper as we were still full from the burgers, played cards, then crashed out.
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