Month: August 2023

Things I Know

I went to a Mets game on Friday with my son.  He treated me, and it’s a little bit of a sacrifice for him since he’s a Yankee fan.  We went last year too, but last year, he drove and parked in a garage a subway stop or two from the stadium.  This year, I drove and parked at Citifield.  I now know how Uncle Steve is paying for all those big player contracts.  Parking at Citifield now costs $40 for a game!

I’d kvetch about the food prices too, but food at the ballpark  has always been out of reason.

I couldn’t get over the price of parking, until we left Citifield, we went to JFK airport to pick up my daughter-in-law who was flying in from Florida.  Parking in the garages near the terminals is now $6 for the first half-hour, then $6 for each of the next three hours.  After that, you don’t want to know, and I don’t want to tell you.  Long-term parking is less costly, but I’m reluctant to call it cheaper, and if I fly on vacation from JFK, I hire a limo service to take me there and pick me up.  It’s cheaper and a lot more convenient.

But the end result is that short-term parking at JFK is now so expensive that an awful lot of people don’t want to park there.  I was going to say nobody wants to park there, but around noon on Saturday, the garages were roughly 80-percent full according to the airport’s website. 

Still, the cell phone lot (free) was filled to overflowing at 11:00 on Friday night, the pickup area at the American Airlines terminal was parked three deep, and people were (in parking parlance) standing on the shoulders of all the access roads to the airport.  I drove around for about 30 minutes.  Here’s a handy hint.  If you are picking up an arriving passenger at JFK airport, pick them up in the departing passenger area.  There are a lot fewer cars there.

Another suggestion is to sell your car to an arriving passenger and buy one from someone who’s departing! 

On an entirely different topic, did you see Donald Trump’s mugshot from the Fulton County Georgia jail?  When I saw it up on all the cable news networks Thursday night, it made me realize that Donald Trump is the villain called “The Master” on the BBC sci-fi show, and that we need Doctor Who now, more than we ever have before.

GPS

Roughly ten years ago, I was in Lake Tahoe CA.  I don’t remember where I wanted to go at the time, but I put the address in the GPS and headed off.  The GPS wanted me to drive up the west side of the lake.  I drove up the east side.  Admittedly, the east side was a little longer, but I had been to the west side and wanted to see what the other side was like.

It was then I first had the fantasy of not following what the GPS wanted me to do until the GPS abandoned its very calm voice and screamed at me.

This morning, I wanted to go to Manorville NY.  I know at least one way to get there from where I was but decided to ask the GPS.  Its answer was very strange.  It told me to switch between two major east-west roads by using a small side street when I could use a major local street to move between the two big highways both sooner and more quickly.  It told me to travel through a construction zone to avoid a major intersection on Sunrise Highway that didn’t have any problems.

So, I decided to move from the GPS’ chosen route to the one I know.  I headed north on the Seaford -Oyster Bay Expressway and east on the Long Island Expressway.  The GPS wanted me to get off my chosen route at every exit.  Finally, it stopped doing that.  I thought the GPS had gotten to a point where it agreed with the way I was going.  I was wrong.  The GPS never yelled at me, but it did stop talking to me.

When I reached the proper exit on the Long Island Expressway to take me to my destination (exit 69, if you must know), the GPS didn’t tell me to exit the expressway and head south.  It didn’t say anything at all.

Not my original goal, but it’ll do.