On-line “chat” and conversations with technicians on Tuesday failed to resuscitate our phone service and gave us no hope that it was likely to happen.
So now what? I hate telephones but they are a necessity and it seemed to me our choices were limited.
Signing up with a new service or finding a person we could speak with face-to-face.
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We decided to locate a dealer and found one in Cohoes, 30 miles away. Luckily Grant’s GPS was working.
Not that we couldn’t have found the place using a map but we weren’t in the mood for messing about.
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This being an impromptu trip, I hadn’t even considered the route. In fact, I was confused!
Searching for a dealer, I had found 3, the nearest one being in Troy and I thought that’s where we were going.
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Grant had been to Troy before and preferred to avoid it, but the navigator chose to send us there regardless as Cohoes is just the other side of the Hudson.
The piece of paper with the address was on my desk at home, but Grant said he had programmed in what I had told him so I sat like a good passenger and waited to see where we’d end up.
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Soon, we came to a large body of water.
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Tomhannock Reservoir.
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And more bends and ups and downs…
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Splashes of gold still remain.
From a high point, a view of our destination.
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We went down toward the Hudson,
Troy has seen better times.
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Across the Hudson from Troy,
the City of Cohoes.
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The workers who created Spindle City and Silliman Church which once stood here are commemorated in this mural overlooking Silliman Park.
In the 19th century, this was the hub of cotton textile production. 500,000 spindles created half of all printed cloth in the world.
By 1920 100 mills were in operation.
One cannot help thinking that those were better times.
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Cohoes seemed not as depressed as the city across the river, but it reminded me of how much I do not want to be a city dweller.
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But where were the teaming crowds?
As we waited at the light, I saw a single pedestrian.
It felt quite odd.
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But the only person we wanted to see was here.
There was no queue outside, so whatever the problem was with our phone service, presumably it was not widespread.
We were able to park right in front, behind this car.
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Renovations next door were
supervised by this old lad.
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Even when the images are lousy, I am compelled to photograph animals.
Ideally, I stop to pet them, but generally it’s not possible.
Once when I was in England visiting my parents, I walked into their small town to do some shopping. On the way back, I noticed a cat and politely said hello.
It followed me home and I would have invited it in but my mother was hostile to cats which she said dug up her garden. She used to turn the hose on them. But not when I was there!
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What expectations did I have, entering the mobile phone shop? Let’s say they were not high, based on the previous day’s conversation.
A nice man greeted us politely and the thought crossed my mind that we were about to ruin the poor man’s day with an unsolvable problem.
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Memories came up of dealing with difficult passengers. All you wanted was for them to go away!
If I had had the facts straight, I found our later, I would not have been as pessimistic.
We quickly ran through the situation and turned our phones over to be scrutinized.
There was no obvious fault and Grant’s phone was found to be in working order. My phone was definitely not.
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One working phone was better than none, but the nice man offered a suggestion which would cost me $10. Perhaps a new sim card would put things right.
And it did.
Those problems I’d been told about, with the tower that had been “down” since November 16th?
Irrelevant.
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Much relieved, we retraced our route through curiously deserted streets.
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We climbed up out of the valley.
To a different world.
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Halfmoon water tower, not spaceship.
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Halfmoon is a town, founded in 1788.
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Grant dismissed the GPS.
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Time to enjoy the sky.
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Water towers now ubiquitous!
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That tower is in Schaghticoke.
After 5 years, I’m still trying to figure out how to pronounce some of the names here.
And it still grates to say Green Witch instead of Greenwich, which is how the name is spelled.
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From here we took a scenic route which turned out to be rather bumpy.
Arriving home, I suddenly felt as if I had hit a wall.
Maybe the bumpy road and two longish car journeys so close together. Taking pictures as we drive, I tend to twist and turn, in as much as one can in a car seat. I suppose it’s a bit tiring.
Not that I plan to let it stop me.
I follow your peregrinations daily. Any chance of a postcard??
Please do carry on twisting and turning!
Well, thanks to uncooperative phones, I’ve now seen what Cohoes looks like. Although I don’t like city life either, sometimes it’s nice to just take a quick drive through a city. And a city with so little traffic isn’t too bad, is it?
It would appear that some kind of zombie apocolypse has occured. Thankfully your ‘nice man’ was unaffected.