Preliminaries to a wedding

Wilcox Mansion minus something

Friday 30 August 2019 
I just searched my phone for photos from the drive to New York City on Thursday and found only one – a picture I took before we even left Buffalo. For a restoration project, they’re removing the columns from the front of the Wilcox Mansion, known to the U.S. Parks Service as the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site, and shrugging off the complaints of my passenger, I detoured down Delaware Avenue to see it on our way out of town. 
So on that evidence, it seems like the seven-hour trip was pretty uneventful when we weren’t fearing sudden death, most dramatically from a demon motorcyclist on the expressway leading to the George Washington Bridge, who roared loudly past us on the right and wove through the rest of the 80 mph traffic at what must have been 110+. We expected to see him splattered on the highway ahead, but apparently this was his lucky day.
We stopped for fresh corn outside Mount Morris (that unattended wooden cart should have been a picture), and made a couple other pit stops, but not for fuel. There was just one change of drivers, for a couple hours, and then I was behind the wheel the rest of the way to Whitestone, Queens. We arrived when the GPS said we should – a little after 9 p.m. Yes, it took a while to escape the clutches of home.
Today is all anticipation for the wedding on Saturday – Monica’s brother’s daughter Stephanie and her longtime boyfriend, Josh Gluck. The hair stylist made a home visit this morning for Monica and her mother. Monica currently is at a nail salon, her first visit to such a place in years and years.
Me, I’ve gotten the bugs washed off the car, gassed it up and made a visit to the local Target for a few essentials, such as seltzer and the new Taylor Swift CD.
Tonight there’s pre-wedding dinner with the happy couple avec famille at an Italian place in Long Island City, close enough to the East River that it might give us the view of Manhattan at dusk that I didn't dare to take while crossing the Whitestone Bridge last night.

The happy couple