The whirlwind better known as the last 5 days.

Friday was the 4th of July (Yeah we’re not British!).  My parents threw a cookout.  Jen and I went along with Harry and Bellana.  My sister and her husband went along with the imminently arriving baby D (every time my phone rings I expect it to be some one telling me I am an uncle).  Larry and Nawal came along too.  Prior to the cookout my father took me and the Driscolls on a bit of an excursion.  He has a friend who has wild turkeys and geese living in his yard.  They are wild but used to people so we could get right up close to them. 

The kids were a little skitish but did a great job.  First we saw the turkeys and they were really cool.

Then it was the geese.  They were behind a fence so Harry relaxed a little and started acting goofy for the camera.

After the bird watching trip we settled in for an old fashioned 4th of July cookout complete with disgusting amounts of fantastic food thanks to Ken and my father.  The kids were fantastic.  We spent the whole day at my parent’s house and they were so good.  They didn’t have any of their toys or games with them so they kept themselves (and the rest of us) amused.  The highlight being extended games of hide and go seek with the grown ups doing their best to help whoever was hiding.  We also learned that Bellana and Harry are both closet Wheel of Fortune fans.  Who knew?

Later that night we went to Salem high school in Salem, NH for some fireworks.  It was the first time the kids saw a fireworks show from up close.  They were a little nervous about the noise, but once the show started they were completely absorbed.  It was great to watch them watching the fireworks.  The only downside was that the show lasted a whopping 15 minutes.  It was over as soon as it started.

On Saturday morning Jen and I dropped the kids off at their father’s house and headed Northwest.  The destination was the Rush show at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in Saratoga Springs, NY.  We travelled North into New Hampshire and then west across Vermont into upstate New York.

This was one of those times when getting there was half the fun.  We stopped wherever it suited us.  We had the whole day to make what was basically a four hour drive.  We learned some interesting things that day.  First and foremost was that we both love Vermont.  Who knew?  Everywhere we went there was something worth looking at.  The views were spectacular the entire way across the state (almost all of it on route 4).

We stopped at the Quechee Gorge which was probably the most impressive view of the day.  I took a bunch of pictures but none of them even come close to capturing how cool it looked.

The next stop was the town of Woodstock, VT.  It was excatly what I had always envisioned the perfect little New England town to be.  Almost as if it was preseved through history.  That sounds odd and probably doesn’t make sense to anyone but me, but that’s how I feel.  At first we were happy to just drive through the town, but Jen spotted a covered bridge and we stopped to check it out.

After the bridge we did some walking around the town just enjoying the sites.

The second thing we learned on Saturday was that, while Vermont was wonderful, New York was crappy.  Where the empty spaces between the towns in Vermont were somehow appealing, the similar stretches of New York were just depressing.  Our hotel reservations were screwed up.  We booked a non-smoking suite, which in New York seems to mean a smoking suite.  We ended up getting a really crappy non-smoking room that put us both off quite a bit.  Fortunately Saratoga Springs seemed like a nice town.  It was like a very artsy college town.  I liked it.  However, after the show when we tried to get something to eat it became apparent that people around there can be extremely stupid.  Two different places did something stupid enough while taking our order that we left.  Even the SPAC was a mess.  The venue itself was gorgeous and the show was amazing, but getting in and out was just terrible. 

Now having said that… it was a Rush show, and for me a Rush show is like Christmas and Easter and my birthday all rolled into one experience.  They were really on that night.  The crowd was seriously lame.  We were in the last row of the 2nd deck so we got to stand for the whole show, but we were pretty much the only ones in site.  There was a Rush Forum meetup prior to the show but we missed it do to the traffic idiocy.  Still, it was more than worth it to see Geddy, Alex, and Neil blow the doors off the joint.

Jen was nice enough to sneak a camera into the venue so I actually have real pictures instead of the usual camera phone fare.

The day after the show was Sunday and we had planned a little upstate site seeing for the day.  I wanted to visit Fort Ticonderoga.  I had been to Revolutionary War battle sites.  I had been to a Civil War battle site.  I had even sort of been to a War of 1812 battle site (the White House… it counts!).  I had never been to a French and Indian War battle site.  Fort Ticonderoga fits that bill as well as being a Revolutionary War site too.  We had also hoped to take a dip in Lake George, but we stayed at the hotel a little too long and the traffic was a little too heavy so we skipped it.  Sort of.

Sunday just about completely redeemed the State of New York.  We took highway 9N through the mountains and it was spectacular.  The road was windy and full of steep inclines and drops so it took some concentration to drive, but everywhere you looked there was perfect scenery.  At one point we pulled over and spent some time just staring at Lake George and wondering at how beautiful the view was.

This brings us to Fort Ticonderoga on the Southern shore of Lake Champlain.  The fort was initially built by the French.  During the French and Indian War it  withstood an attack by the British and then fell during a second battle.  During the American Revolution it was taken by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys in a battle where no shots were fired.  Henry Knox made a famous journey from the fort to Boston so that General George Washington and the Continental Army could use the fort’s cannon to bombard the British ships in Boston Harbor.  Also, Benedict Arnold (before trading his fame as an American hero for his shame as a treasonous British traitor) used the fort to build a navy (something he probably had no business even thinking about) and attack the British at the Northern end of Lake Champlain.  Later the British managed to retake the fort but then gave it back when they were soundly defeated at Saratoga.

When you throw in the fact that the French fought with the Americans during the Revolution it makes it hard to figure out who the bad guys should be.  The English?  Well no, we were still English when they drove the French out in the 1750s… even though they were the bad guys in the 1770s.  The French were the bad guys in the 1750s but the good guys in the 1770s.  So who are the bad guys?

Anyway… the fort itself was really cool if you are a history geek like I am.  We saw a cannon firing demonstration but on by folks dressed as French soldiers… so I guess that answers that, huh?  There was also a ceremony going on dedicating an educational display that included speeches by a New York State Representative, as well as a guy who we think may have been the French ambassador to the United States.  We missed his introduction, but he was referred to as Ambassador by the other speakers.  For the last 100 years or so the fort has been privately owned by the Pell family.  One of the earlier Mrs. Pells had a garden built on the property.  We spent some time there too.

After finishing up at the fort it was time to head home.  There was, however, one more cool thing to experience on the way back.  We initially took route 74 back from Ticonderoga.  What made that interesting is that it crosses Lake Champlain… via ferry.  The road ends at the water’s edge on the New York side of the lake and picks up again at water’s edge on the Vermont side with a seven minute ferry ride in between.  It was kinda cool.

After another perfect scenic drive through Vermont and into New Hampshire we made it back to civilization and our happy home… and immediately went out again.  We were meeting my brother and his wife and their eagerly anticipated Baby P.  The next night would bring us another Rush concert and this time John was joining us.  We needed to get him his ticket and what better place to do that (or anything else) than Kimball’s?  Even better, Mary had never experienced the joys of Kimball’s ice cream.  What more excuse do you need?  So we hung out with John and Mary and Baby P for a while and then headed home.  Before we knew it it was very late so we packed it in for the night.

Which leads to Monday.  Rush at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT.  Another multi-hour drive!  Jen and I both went to work that morning but I took the afternoon off.  My plan was to head home, change, have lunch, and then pick up Jen at work and head South.  Traffic changed all of that.  I ended up having to go straight to Jen’s office.  We had also planned to make the two hour drive to the show, go to the Rush Forum meet up, prog rock ourselves silly for about three hours, and then make the two hour drive home.  Our lack of sleep the night before convinced Jen to book us a room at the casino.  Our room in New York was drab and awful.  Our room in Connecticuit was swanky.  It was the cheapest room available and it was practically a luxury suite. 

We went into the casino and my high rolling fiance broke even at the black jack table.  She actually stayed on 13 once and won.  She kicks every flavor of ass imaginable.  The meet up was nice.  We’re starting to develop friendships with people we only see at Rush shows.  It’s an interesting little community and we’re both happy to be apart of it.

The show was awesome of course.  The band was probably a little better at Saratoga.  There was the occasional bit of mix weirdness, and a few brief moments of sloppy play, but otherwise it was another stand out show.  The down side was the lame crowd.  We actually had people ask us to sit down, and we were in the cheap seats.  The people in the front few rows looked like they had some place better to be.  It was a little embarassing.  On the whole though, another brilliant performance. 

Mohegan security is somewhat nazi-esque so we stuck with the camera phone for this one.  We were close enough for that to almost be enough.

I had taken a vacation day on Tuesday but Jen still had to work so we got up at the crack of dawn, checked out of the swanky room, had the valey bring us our car (yup), and headed back North.  I made it in one hour and 59 minutes.  Not too shabby for rush hour.  From there I went home and flaked, then went back N. Andover to meet Jen for lunch.  From there I headed to the basement and started putting together my pseudo-recording studio.  (8 tracks… an ADAT and a nice little Mackie 16 channel board) When Jen came home we went to dinner together and then just hung out for a while before going to bed.

Five days, two trips, two concerts, tons of site seeing, black jack, and probably most importantly – Kimballs. 

What a fantastic time!

Now we just have to wait patiently for the Rush concert in Manchester, NH on Friday.

Is it Friday yet?