Day 14: Saturday, June 28, 2003

The motel room in Huntington was only available for one night. Considering the expense of it, I was not disappointed. I had picked this particular motel because it was near the Huntington Station on the LIRR. My original plan was to book a room for two nights, leave my bike parked at the motel for security (the Huntington station is a very busy one), and cab it to the railway station for my trip to Brooklyn.

On Saturday morning I developed an alternative plan. After checking out of the motel in Huntington, I rode to Cold Spring Harbor and located the Cold Spring Harbor Station for the LIRR. Cold Spring Harbor being a classier neighborhood, this station, which was not busy at all, looked like a safer place to park the bike. I found a shady spot, locked my helmet to the bike, and installed the half cover for protection from the sun and tree goop. The train ride to Brooklyn involved a transfer at Jamaica, LI, and took about an hour. The station at the end of the Brooklyn line is just about three blocks from Justin's apartment. With my late start, meandering to develop my plan and the hour train ride, it was after one o'clock by the time I got to Justin's place.

Justin and I went for coffee at Starbuck's, not his favorite coffee shop but it allowed me to log in via T-Mobile and do emails on my computer, which I had brought along on the train. In addition, I called my good friend from high school, Bob Galli, who now lives in New Jersey, on my cell phone to see if I could crash with him that evening. It turned out Bob was on his sailboat (a 26 footer) at Greenwood Lake in Northern New Jersey for the weekend. He invited me up for the evening, told me I could spend the night on his boat, and gave me some rough directions of how to get there.

Coffee in the belly, email and accommodation problems solved, Justin and I took an afternoon walk around Brooklyn. At my request, we walked to the Promenade where we could look across the East River toward Manhattan. The last time I came to New York City to visit Justin we took a walk on the Brooklyn Promenade on Saturday afternoon, September 8, 2001. I flew back to California on Sunday, September 9, 2001. Two days later the New York skyline changed forever.

After visiting the Promenade, we walked back to Justin's neighborhood. He was hungry, so we stopped at one of his favorite Italian restaurants, La Traviata on Montague Street, where I sipped a glass of wine while he ordered a small pizza. From our outdoor table we were able to watch the parade of humanity on the streets of Brooklyn.

New York is an interesting place; I'm beginning to see why Justin likes living there. His continued tenure in New York was recently assured when he again obtained employment. Earlier this year he had been laid off in a wave of corporate cost cutting by Premiere Radio Networks where he had worked for more than two years. I think it's getting tougher for young people recently out of college to establish a good career base. They are often the first to go when corporate profits take priority over staffing. Justin is smart, personable, a lively and productive employee with great writing skills, an all-A average and degree in political science from UCLA, but none of that seemed to matter. I paid his rent for several months so he could keep the apartment in Brooklyn. He steadfastly refused to consider leaving New York.

I took leave of Justin in late afternoon. He had arranged to attend a concert Saturday evening in Manhattan with a lady friend. It was time for Dad to get scarce. After my ride on the LIRR back to Cold Spring Harbor station, it was close to 7 PM. I uncovered and unlocked the bike, and prepared to hit the road to North Jersey. First, I took a quick side trip down Bungtown road through the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where I had attended several scientific meetings while a graduate student at Harvard. Jim Watson is still the President of the Laboratory, and I believe he still lives on the grounds. I thought I might just by chance see him and be able to say hi. It didn't happen. The Laboratory has expanded significantly with several new buildings since I was last there in the late 1970s. The older buildings and houses were still present, however, and the familiar feeling of rustic comfort and quaintness was still apparent. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, originally endowed by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie through his philanthropic Carnegie Institution of Washingon (history), has been a prominent center of communication among biological scientists for more than a half century and has likely been a catalyst in many of the key collaborations and developments in molecular biology, immunology, and neuroscience during that period.

Thereafter, I set off headed west on the Long Island Expressway. The traffic was horrific -- stop and go for most of the trip back to the Whitestone Bridge, due to construction work I think. I pulled over at one point to call Bob Galli and let him know I would be late. Once I reached the mainland, I quickly rode up I-95 the west on I-287 across the Tappan Zee Bridge. I left the freeway at Route 17 and quickly found a side road headed for West Milford, the closest town to Greenwood Lake. It was dark now, and I managed to get lost for an hour or more looking for the lake and the marina where Bob's boat was moored. I stopped several times to ask directions from locals, who all gave very clear directions and told me that once I went the way they said, I couldn't miss the marina. "You'll run right into it." Well, I passed the marina several times, apparently, and didn't see it. Finally, I happened to ask directions of a somewhat inebriated individual emerging from a quick mart at a gas station where I stopped to fill my tank. He didn't know the name of the marina, but asked, "Sailboats?" I said yes. He motioned with a drooping finger back up the road I had just come, and said, "Sailboats. Up there a little way. On the left." I did, and there down a hill, with no lights or sign, almost completely hidden from the roadway, was the marina with Bob's boat. By now it was almost midnight.

Bob and I went back up to town for a midnight dinner. The only restaurant open was a family diner, and I couldn't have the beer or glass of wine I had been craving. The food was hearty. We went back to the boat. Bob cracked out a fifth of Jim Beam, and we sat up until almost 4 AM sipping and talking about everything -- old times, new times, the world's problems. I'm trying to remember the last time I actually saw Bob. I think he came to visit San Francisco once back in the 1980s, and I saw him then. It must have been over 15 years. In any event, he hasn't changed a bit. Bob looks to me just as he did when we graduated together from Northville High School in 1962, and when he was Best Man at my wedding in 1966, except he has gained maybe 15 pounds. If I saw him walking down the street, I would recognize him immediately. The time I remember best was one summer in New England -- 1974 it was -- when Bob and his first wife Mary came from Michigan to Massachusetts in an old VW camper van. We all went up to Maine and camped in the woods, at a campsite near Grand Lake Stream, by a lake at the end of 20 miles of dirt logging roads right up near the Canadian border. We rented canoes and paddled around the lake. The black flies were swarming terribly, and one night we were huddled inside our mosquito nets trying not to get bit -- listening to the radio. That's when we heard Nixon deliver his resignation speech. It is one of the most beautiful nights in my memory.