2015-07-26 40 -74

Location

A thickly wooded front garden in Ridgewood

Participants

OtherJack
Liz

Plans

My friend Liz likes to do stuff like sneaking onto roofs of buildings and exploring abandoned spaces. So we were determined to get a geohash in before her disappearance to 43,-89 for the rest of the year! Unfortunately, the one day we could both do it, it was too easy - right in someone's front garden about 5 minutes from a train station. But we still decided to go for it. We only had a short window of time between our schedules, so perhaps it was just as well.

Expedition

The original plan had been to meet at Penn Station, but NJ Transit was having electrical problems in the their Hudson River tunnel so we met at the PATH station in the Village instead. Rode across to Hoboken where we saw the elaborate old station and then got on our train to Ridgewood.

The most interesting thing on the ride was Paterson, NJ, which seemed like this little piece of Harlem or maybe the Bronx which had been stranded on the wrong side of the river. The architecture was gorgeous, about a hundred years old, very urban, and very underutilized. When writing this up I also learned that Paterson has this! I'll have to go back sometime.

At Ridgewood we only had something like 15 minutes before the return train, so we had to walk quickly. Some kind of farmers market was going on (and I was really hungry having skipped breakfast) but there was no time. It was a typical old upper middle class train suburb, reminded me a lot of places along the southern coast of 42,-87 back home.

We readily found the hash street and then the large hash yard, which hosted a bewildering tangle of small trees and shrubs. We picked our way through until the GPS said we were close enough, and then got out of there and half-ran back to the station, making it just in time. There was a cool ivy-covered building on the way.

At Hoboken we got the PATH back across to the city and went our separate ways. Liz had to see (host?) some friends in Brooklyn, while I finally got a couple slices of pizza in the Village. They did the job, but were otherwise undistinguished.