While I was back East, I decided to break my Tri-State habits and actually make the 2.5-hour drive upstate to Binghamton, New York.
Making the journey there doesn’t particularly feel like traveling, but more like going to another home. The drive up route 17 is more than familiar to me, having memorized the speed traps on the journey where cops like to hide, as the road winds through the rolling hills of rural greenery with exits every 15 miles or so.
Upon reaching my destination, Binghamton was a lot smaller than I had remembered. Getting around places was easier than I expected. Some of this probably has to do with the fact that I was visiting during summer, rather than my college years in the dead of winter when it gets dark at 4:30 and you take outdoor study breaks where you have to slip over ice on the crumbled sidewalks and catch yourself falling,g or accidentally step in a huge pile of snow that you must clear off your insulated boots before tracking it into a sheltered establishment. Nevertheless, there are just a few general landmarks or destinations in Binghamton that everyone has in their minds and has memorized the routes to get there, rather than being in a city where you get confused with your range of options.
It was nice going to a place I had not been in a while and knew where everything was more or less, the food stores and the cinema savers and the on-ramps and cafes and ways to wherever. Not a bad thing to know where to drop my friend off at work, where to fill up on the cheapest gas and where to park for the Salvation Army. A good comfort in missing a place and then going back to see all the people you care to see and still having an ever-lasting place in the general social sphere of those who remain and return to this place.
The houses in Binghamton look as ever uncared for and rusted as usual. I passed my old apartment building on Walnut and Main and it looked like it had not been updated at all, and even appeared like this entire boxy three-story structure was even tilting to a side.
Of course, there is always going the laundromat for endless entertainment.
