Road to Dobbs Ferry

     The road to Dobbs Ferry was long and winding. It was our intention from the start to visit Mark Stern and his wife, Hua-Yi; they had invited us to their home the year before when we visited New York City after Simone's wedding but commitments around town didn't afford us time to go there. 

     We first met Mark and Hua-Yi when they came to visit her family in Penghu and stopped off in Taichung before returning to the States. In June 2016, we met again in Downtown Brooklyn, had lunch in Junior's, and walked around Ft. Greene Park. 
    Mark was introduced to me on Facebook by Richard Singer, a mutual friend; they had gone to junior high and The Bronx High School of Science together. Richard and I were labor activists; Wobblies in NYC IWW GMB. Richard knew of Mark and our parallel histories-we were both high school teachers, recent retirees, married to women from Taiwan, parents, and open-minded progressives- and we were destined to meet. 
     In one way, however, we were quite different; he was a die-hard Yankee fan and I grew up liking the Dodgers; I guess that's normal since he's from The Bronx and I'm from Brooklyn. The Yankees were in a playoff with the Astros for the American League championship and the Dodgers had beaten the Cubs. I was hoping the Yankees would win so we could see a Dodger-Yankee World Series, but it was not to be. We watched the sixth playoff  game which the Yankees lost, but, fortunately, we had left town before they were eliminated; it would not have been a pretty picture.                

     Besides the wedding and baby shower in Pittsburgh, the only plan set in stone was our plane reservations. We left our time flexible in Pittsburgh around Simone and Renna's work schedules and, later, Renna and Alex's honeymoon trip. But our plans for the New York City leg of the journey was dictated by the changing schedules of the folk we hoped to see there.

     Originally,  I had decided we would spend one night in Hicksville, Long Island, near my Mom's cemetery and two nights in Marine Park, Brooklyn. My plan was to drive to Mark Stern in Dobbs Ferry and to see Jim Drieu and Selma near Hartford, CT but Stern said a Wed.-Thurs. visit was not good because his wife had to work and wouldn't be there.  We agreed to take Amtrak to NYC instead of driving and visit Kaplan saving Stern for the weekend as he wished. Stern even offered to drive us from Dobbs Ferry to Hicksville on Sunday but we couldn't cancel the reservation. 

On the road from Pittsburgh,
our favorite Amish treats

        That's when things got interesting. Six days before leaving for New York, Kaplan wrote  that he couldn't see us on Wednesday; something came up, so  I made reservations for Tuesday. When I told Simone and Leona, they were upset that I'd cut our stay in Pittsburgh short, so I changed the Amtrak tickets again to Thursday giving us one less day in NYC, three night with Kaplan. We would have to take Amtrak, the subway, Metro North, and the LIRR to get around town. The last straw was when Kaplan wrote he couldn't see us on Sunday and Monday evenings, either, though he didn't mention why we couldn't sleep over as planned.  I decided it was better to rent a car and not take Manhattan.  
     I had done very little research into the attractions near Dobbs Ferry; Mark said there was a lovely restaurant they wanted to treat us to on the Hudson River shore, and we could see the autumn foliage from there. That was all we knew. The GPS sent us across the crowded George Washington Bridge up the Henry Hudson  and Saw Mill River Parkways instead of over the new Tappen Zee Bridge, perhaps because the east bound southern span wasn't open to traffic yet; the west bound north span had opened just two months before. The old bridge was falling apart. 

     The Stern's home, in the rolling hills of the Hudson Valley, is a delightful wooden two-story colonial up a dead end. We felt safe leaving most of our luggage in our rental car. The first evening was our treat as the Sterns introduced us to Piccola Trattoria on nearby Cedar Street. Mark shared the fruit from the native paw paw tree growing in his backyard. It tasted like Taiwan shikya. We then returned to watch the Yankee Astro playoff.  The next day, Mark had plans to show us the lovely Rockefeller State Park 

Preserve and we took off to drive there when, in Tarrytown, I saw a sign for Washington Irving's residence. We knew we would be near Sleepy Hollow; I had mentioned a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" enactment there that we would miss by a few week, but the home of the author of "The Headless Horseman" and "Rip Van Winkle" had slipped his mind, too. Right there, we drove in and were treated to Sunnyside. The grounds reflected the Romantic movement in mid-19th century America and was quite charming. Situated along the Hudson with the Metro North train passing by, it was surprisingly uncrowded that Friday morning, but we had missed the tour. No problem. We strolled around the grounds and I even dared to enter the home through a left-open door for a private view. They were looking for me and I told them but declined to follow in my footsteps. 

The furnished rooms of Sunnyside, home   of Washington Irving.

We drove through Sleepy Hollow, the town renamed to capitalize on the notoriety from "The Headless Horseman" on our way to Rockefeller State Park Preserve. 32 miles (51 km) of carriage trails in the 1,552-acre (6.28 km) park, including  a 24-acre (97,000 m) Swan Lake, all once privately owned by the notorious oil tycoon.

     The park is quite a remarkable place; on a  perfectly dry sunny 74 degree day in late October! The dry fresh air made me miss the northeast. There is nothing like this in Taiwan.Unfortunately, because of the unusually warm weather, the autumn leaves had not changed colors yet; we missed seeing the park tree leaves in their glorious gold, orange, and red foliage. It was so wonderful to relax and stroll around. The stress of planning the New York leg of our trip melted away thanks to Mark Stern and Hua-Yi. They had something special planned for the evening: dinner at Half Moon. 

     From our table, we had a clear view of Manhattan 15 miles to the south and the Tappen Zee Bridge 5 miles north. The food in the Half Moon was scrumptious. We sat as the dusk turned to evening relaxing with friends who were so hospitable; we felt like we had known the Sterns for years. We wanted to stay but we had to be on our way. There was one last treat before we headed to Brooklyn for Saturday evening Szchuan dinner with Leona's library friends. 

The old Metro-North Station in Dobbs Ferry had been turned into a restaurant called Hudson Social. After a homemade breakfast of pancakes and coffee, we rested in Mark and Hua-Yi's home. They had some errands to do. Their son, Daniel, had a Mandarin class to attend and Mark went to exercise. When everyone was ready, Leona and I packed our luggage back into the car and followed them back to One High Street riverside to the newly remodeled Waterfront park. It was a perfect welcome back to New York away from the big city lights of Manhattan. Our stay in Dobbs Ferry made it clear to us that we had made the right choice, spending time with the right people, in our ever-changing New York itinerary.