Invasion of the City Planners

Kingston NY, N41 55 W73 59

(6/14/05) We moved the boat from a marina to the city dock today. On the city side of the creek it's lots of fun. Shops and cafes. Libby was able to walk to a farmers market and buy fresh vegetables. All this time without posting blogs we were also unable to buy groceries. We ran out of fruit and vegetables long ago.

We also learned about local history that was totally new to us. In the 19th century there was a canal that connected Pennsylvania with the Hudson River. It was built to haul coal to New York City. The last part of the canal and the terminus was Rondout Creek. Therefore there were lots of businesses established there to serve the boats and boaters. What remains today is largely the remnants of 19th century glory. Sort of like Schenectady.

After supper we took a stroll around the town. We saw a group of civic leaders getting a tour of the waterfront area. I think the tour guide was the mayor of Kingston and the visiting leaders were from Vermont. That's because the visitors drove vans with Cabot Cheese logos painted on the side.

We first saw them at the visitor's center parking lot. It looked very funny because 15 well dressed people were standing in a parking lot looking around and pointing at various things in the parking lot. I mean how many things are there to point at in a parking lot. You can point to a painted line, a car, and a lamppost. Thereafter there's nothing different to point at. Yet here there were a dozen people excitedly pointing and gesturing at the parking lot. They looked like a gaggle of bird watchers released in an ornithological paradise.

We encountered the same group at the Maritime Museum and again later down by the creek where Libby and I were sitting eating ice cream. There was another parking lot here and as the group approached they started pointing again. Soon they were in the middle of the parking lot pointing and gesturing in every direction. Watching them made me giggly.

My theory is that they must be city planners and that parking lots just bring out their repressed city planning urges. Try the experiment yourself. If you know any city planners, arrange to take them to a parking lot and see if they feel compelled to point. If they do, let me know and I'll submit an article to The Journal of Bizarre Behavior.

By the way, I already have an article in that journal but not under my own name. Let me tell you the story. One night I went with my fire department buddies down to the Charlton Fire House where they held a three-hour safety course conducted by the local power company Niagara Mohawk. The instructor was a lineman who had responded to many emergency calls. The instructor told this story.

"One day in Albany we got a call about the smell of gas in a house. We responded right away. When we got there we asked the lady who answered the door how long the smell had been there. "Since yesterday," she said. "Yesterday!" we exclaimed, "Why didn't you call us earlier?" She replied, "Well when the smell first came my husband rushed upstairs to log onto the Internet to surf to find out what to do about a gas leak. I haven't heard from him since."

I loved that story and one day I posted it on the Risks Forum, a newsletter about computer-related risks. I got an email the next week from a man asking my permission to post that story to The Journal of Bizarre Behavior.