Reunion Trip

We left last Thursday for my college reunion in Rochester, NY. It is a 7-8 hour trip depending on traffic and stopping time. We made it in 7 1/2 hours, right on time. Now for those of you who are not familiar with New York State (and that may include those here in New England) I'll give you a short version of our trip. Rochester is in western New York State located just south of the NY Thruway between Buffalo and Syracuse. It may be considered "Up State" by many just because it is north of New York City. But I'll not get into that discussion here.

I've made the trip from the Albany area west to Rochester more times than I care to remember. I will tell you that it can be very boring. Pretty but boring. The longest leg seems to be from Schenectady to Utica. However, it has the Mohawk River/ Erie canal on the north side of the road. Some parts even have the railroad track following. Trains that you will see there are l o n g. We used to count the cars and often got over 100 in one train.

The river is quite wide and nowadays has lots of recreational boats. There are red and green buoys to show the safe areas to go. We saw several boats going down the river. The above picture is very common in this area. It is very nice to see so many active farms. In Canojaharie, we saw the Beech-Nut Foods plant. (Told you it was a bit boring) So, until we got to Utica we watched the river/canal come and disappear and then go under the thruway and back again.

After Utica, the exits are closer together and the trip seems to go faster then. You see such fun towns as Oneida, Chittanango, Canastota then Syracuse, Canandaigua, Weedsport, the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge and then finally, Rochester.

Finding your way around a city that you have only visited a few times in the last 28 years is fun. A GPS got us to our hotel on Main Street with out incident. There are lots of new one way streets and not the same way as before. Just to shake up the tourists.

We found our room and I took a picture from our room. You can see the main office of Eastman Kodak (Rochester's main claim to fame with Xerox - both of which are not doing well)


Here, you can see Brick Church where we were married, 50 years ago. Not the same congregation but the building is still there.


And here you can see Lake Ontario in a little strip at the top of the picture. All from our room.



The first night we had a great "Welcome" dinner at the hotel. Adjust your mind set. Go back in time 50 or so years, add gray hair, no hair, glasses etc. You get the picture. The food was great and the dessert was a huge piece of either chocolate or white cake. My friend and her husband split one of each.


All in all a good time was had by all and we then went upstairs to get ready for the next two days of gatherings.


B


www.bevsjewelry.com and www.bevsjewelry.1000markets.com

College Reunion

Tomorrow we take off for my college reunion. You may remember from previous posts that my husband and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary in July. So, you won't be surprised when I tell you it is my 50th college reunion from the University of Rochester.

I'm looking forward to seeing old friends. Reunions can be funny. You remember the funniest things and no one else does. For example, I was looking at some of the pictures I have of my 45th reunion. The funny thing is that I then had to go upstairs and remove some of the clothes I had set out to wear. The blue sweater and the striped cardigan were prominent in most of the pictures. (The ones I had set out) Now, my husband says that no one will remember. What do you think? Those people will have similar pictures even if they really don't remember exactly what I wore. Since I don't remember, do you think they will - with out looking at pictures?

I lived at home for my first two years. It was the first year of "integrating" the U of R campuses. (Men and Women) Ours was the first class to go all four years on the River (Men's) campus. We had a new 4 wing, 6 story Residence Hall. On the third floor they set aside 2 rooms for the "City Girls" I noticed in our '59 Memory Book (which we have already received) many of us have fond memories of being a City Girl. We could stay over night for $.35 (Notice computers don't have cent signs anymore?) It was $.50 if we didn't bring our own sheets. There was a small kitchen at the end of the hall. No microwaves of course.

Some nights the 6 beds were full and with bad weather or what ever I still wanted to stay overnight. I had made friends with the two girls across the hall (one was one of my bridesmaids) We put their two beds together and using empty orange juice cans to hold the inside legs together, the 3 of us slept crosswise on the two beds. The orange juice cans were necessary as the beds would slide apart otherwise. We called it "sleeping on the Rubicon" Good friends wouldn't you say?

Since I've retired and don't need to get dressed up to go to work, I haven't purchased many new clothes and what I have is not worn out, so, I'm going upstairs to see what else I have to wear. I need to get packing.

B


www.bevsjewelry.com and www.bevsjewelry.1000markets.com