A 3 Day Weekend East for a Family Reunion at the Mohunk Mountain House by FREX, MallRIDE, SkyRide, DIA Subway, Continental Airlines, Olympia Trails, Metro-North Hudson & Port Jervis Lines, NJT’s Northeast Corridor, AirTrain Newark, and the Colorado Springs Shuttle – Part 1

The rediculous title of this post is of the rediculous number of modes of transit I took during this weekend trip, the only modes ridden twice and backtracking was the round-trip flights on Continental Airlines and the Denver Airport Subway. Well as soon as I had settled into Colorado I had to fly back east again to attend a family reunion at the Mohunk Mountain House.

June 11-12, 2010 Another Red Eye East & A Sleepy Hudson Line Ride Up to Poughkeepsie: I began leaving Friday after work (I’m doing research on infrastructure in the Rocky Mountain West for the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project) and walked downtown to Colorado & Cascade for the last FREX departure at 5:15, it arrived just a tiny bit late, and yet again wasn’t empty but not crowded enough to require a seat mate. The ride up to Denver in drizzle was uneventful except for the fact I noticed the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Baily Curcus Train parked on the siding in Colorado Springs right next to campus, I later found out it had been parked there all week, but I had some how not noticed enough to photograph it. It had been drizzeling all day but I had no worries about my flight being canceled. I got to Denver around 7 and decided to get off at the Civic Center just to be different, I debated wondering around the Denver Art Museum for an hour (its open until 10pm on Fridays but decided it wasn’t worth the $8 price of admission), unfortunately it was pouring, so I took the 16 Street Mallride into downtown and had dinner at a Japanese noodle shop, and decided there was so reason to be stuck in downtown Denver in the rain and got back on the free Mallride to Market Street Station for the SkyRide out to DIA. I check-in and unfortunately Continental has wised up and now charges non-elites for exit rows so I couldn’t do my usual maneuver with them. I then went through the one open security checkpoint at the southern end of the Jeppeson Terminal, along with lots of janitors that were on their way to work cleaning the concourses of DIA. None of them took there shoes off, I almost decided not too but that would be pressing my luck. I noticed lots of flights were late on the monitors because of the weather and had to first go to concourse A to photograph a Lufthansa A340 waiting to depart, now 4 and a half hours late:

Also Found This United B777, parked on the A concourse, it’s there because it’s an international arrival, and all international passengers must be handled through the A Gates:
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There lots of delays here’s the line for Frontier’s Customer Service:

I then went over to the B-concourse Contental now uses, they used to be much more conveniently located in A, but with there marrying up with United there now on a far away, extreme end of Concourse B. My flights the only one except for the other few red-eyes to the east on-time:

I went for a long walk an explored every nook and cranny of the large concourse, which was crowded with all the delay flights, not my usual feel of my late night departures from DIA. Unfortunately my arriving B737 was late too and finally arrived from Houston at 11:30pm, we were supposed to depart at 11:59pm, but at that point they had just begun boarding we finally departed at about 12:40am and I didn’t sleep all that well because of a crying baby behind me. It was a retrofitted Continental plane with 75 channels of Direct TV, that they wanted $6 for, I didn’t buy, but did thumb around enough to notice that it’s all the New York Local Channels for the networks (just like JetBlue and Frontier-although Denver would be more appropriate).
We finally arrived at our gate at Newark at 6:10, and I ran out to the front of Terminal C to see the 6:25 Olympia Trails bus pull-up, I got on and bought my ticket, we arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 6:55, I ran inside hoping I might have a shot at the 7:00am Adirondack Trailways Bus to New Pultz but had no chance because of the combined fact that I didn’t have a ticket and have only cached a bus in the Port Authority Bus Terminal once before and don’t know how to navigate it quickly. The line at the ticket window was long too, had I had a ticket I would probably have made it. With this missed connection it was time for plan B, the 7:47 Hudson Line train to Poughkeepsie. I had a nice walk through deserted time square across to Grand Central and got on my train nice and early settling into Shorliner #6152 aptly named Poughkeepsie.
Here was the track information board:

The ride was quite uneventful on this express, we made no stops after 125 Street until Croton-Harmon and than ALL stops to Poughkeepsie, including the hikers stops at Breakneck Ridge and Manitou. These stops require passengers to disembark at their low-level platforms from the rear cap car via the last door of the train. The train was in pull mode by our Genesis P32AC-DM (that I never witnessed). I spent most of the ride going between dozing and doing what else but staring out at the Hudson, that looked a lot wider now than ever since there no rivers as wide as it in Colorado. We arrived into Poughkeepsie about 4 minutes early at 9:32
My family picked me up and I was off to spend three days and two nights at the luxery resort of Mohunk.
Now the Cost Per Mile of Travel Breakdown:
FREX: 72 Miles at 15¢ per mile for $11
Mallride: 1 mile for Free
SkyRide Route AF: 26 miles for $9 (I bought a round-trip for $18, regular fare is $10), 35¢ per mile
DIA Subway: 1/3 of a mile for Free
Continental Airlines Flight 229, 1605 miles for $150, so 9¢ per mile
Olympia Trails Bus: 16 miles for $15, so 93¢ per mile
Metro-North: 74 miles for 14.50 so 19¢ per mile

Well the Flight won again this time, but FREX and Metro-North weren’t far behind,
I’ll type up the second half of this trip hopefully soon!