Well greetings from Washington Heights where me and my parents returned from a week at our house in Maine last night, with a side trip to Grand Manan, New Brunswick, the ferry to it, only form of public transportation I’ve ridden in the past week with our car in the car hold beneath. Driving back seemed safe and fine with some heavy traffic in rain going on I-495 around Boston and all of the LED variable signs on I-84 through Connecticut (we took that route instead of going down to the Wilber Cross/Merritt Parkway) but was basically dry, and ominous line of power crew cherry picker trucks kept going the other way to now help restore power on all of the down power lines still falling throughout the region. From there we took I-684 passing some of the nice bright but closed Metro-North Stations right along the line, to where it ends at the Hutchinson River Parkway, on the Hutch cones (but no advanced warning) closed off the road at the Cross County Parkway which we wanted to take anyway. This road was when it started getting a bit more dicey due to the fact all of the lampposts along the road were turned off. We took this road to the Saw Mill (obviously closed north of the interchange) and entered in the Henry Hudson Parkway at the Bronx Border, over the still tolled Henry Hudson Bridge, and onto the West Side Highway which was in a terribly flooded stage and scary driving down to 181 Street to go up to our apartment on high ground in Washington Heights.
Around 9:30am this morning with the eye of Hurricane Irene (reduced to a tropical storm) right over New York City and everything dry, the sun coming out, I went on a brief walk through the neighborhood.
First here is the entrance to the elevators down to 190th Street:
At first 181 Street looked open, the door to the elevator landing was opening:
But all the elevators inside the landing were Out of Order:
More closed subway photos to come, I’ll probably go on a bike ride tomorrow and get more. The weather sounds nice.