Julio’s Musings Around Columbia County, New York

A beautiful early fall weekend in Northern Virgina , Reston to be exact. A stroll along the perimeter of Lake Anne over to the Old Towne Center for a dinner of Tappas , then Macaroni Grill and a little Big Bowl with the Parents who were visiting for a wedding in Washington, DC over the weekend.
Reston Town Center, both New and Old are about all that makes Northern Virginia enticing to me.
Guess I am too much of a New Yorker. Well, at the same time as I was taking the parents around I was also boxing up the accumulations of 4 years in Northern Virginia as I ready for a move north back to the Big Apple. The pendulum has swung decidedly to New York City for the company I work for and I become another one that takes I-95 North approximately 265 miles to the Empire State Building without looking back.
Back to the land of subways and taxis and restaurants that just start hopping at 9pm instead of making last call from the kitchen. Back to a place where the car behind you honks before the light turns green just to make sure you are awake and ready to bolt the moment it does. Back to the land where asking for a coffee doesn’t result in a conversation about life (except at Starbucks that are all the same regardless except in China since I couldn’t speak Chinese).

Looking forward to watch the skyscrapers at the original World Trade Center start rising including 1 World Trade Center which just recently got above street level on its trek to 1,776 feet high.

It’s going to be good to be back.

[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares[/tags]

On Sunday August 31th, I took off solo from New York City on what I expected to be a 4 hour trek via I-95 to Reston, Viriginia 250+ miles south of the Big Apple.
With my Venti Starbucks coffee I was on the road if you can call the Brooklyn Queens Expressway a road at a few minutes to 7am.
Well the good news is the trek did take about 4 hours, traffic was light , no construction either and I pulled into the Reston Towne Center Starbucks for my free refill of venti coffee a few minutes ahead of 11am.
Nevertheless the trip was less than uneventful though I may be exaggerating somewhat. The road was filled with State Troopers with the worse on the 100 miles of Maryland that I had to traverse.
Though I came out of the trip unscathed there were two instances I thought I may have been caught though I was either at the speed limit or a few miles over (5 miles per hour or less over). In one instance, in the left lane I passed the Trooper waiting in the center median and he pulled out right after I passed. Though I thought he was after me, he quickly veered towards the far right lane and nabbed someone in the right lane though I was not able to ascertain from my previous views in the rearview mirror what that individual could have been guilty of. Approximately 30 minutes further south as I was driving the speed limit with someone following at a safe distance, the whirling lights flashed on the poor SOB behind me. Since neither that motorist or I were exceeding the speed limit, I was once again unclear of what infraction could have been committed. Both were too close for comfort so the remainder of the trip especially as I entered Virginia and its $1000+ speeding tickets was like the slow boat to nowhere.

I guess I can say I wish those troopers I luckily avoided on Sunday had something better to do but of course they don’t. Long summer weekends are the prime hunting season for this prey but this instance it seemed they were going to far and it was just viewed as a good revenue raising opportunity from unsuspecting and compliant out of towners taking advantage of the last summer fling.

[tabs]Julio Hernandez-Miyares, I-95[/tabs]