Best Deal

My wife and I have a disparity of vacation preferences.  She seems perfectly content at home, willing to go to our kids' homes hours away when somebody else gets her there, and mostly stays inside their places when there.  I have more of a preference to escape to the new, willing to burden myself a bit to do this.  When at the kids, I zip around SF's Muni System, walk the neighborhoods, occasionally book a tour that I go on myself.  At my son's, I walk the blocks near his inner city house and drive around to different places. Hop-on Hop-off buses get a ticket, even though few stops see me exit to explore up close.  I seek the window seat on planes and buses.  New places interest me, even if they are daily stops to those who live there.

Day Trips, typically three, usually occupy my semi-annual agenda, mostly fulfilled by driving somewhere alone or using my free SEPTA Senior Pass to get me to a place I've not visited before.  It's time to get away again, though with a hotel.  Couples time.  The Good Old Summertime.  

My wife and I had our discussion, mostly her setting boundaries.  Our last two multiday road trips did not go well.  Cruises to the Maritimes would fill her need to minimize effort and my need to explore new places.  All filled up by the time we explored cruise options online.  As much as I like National Parks, flights of significant distance followed by a rental car for the multi-hour connection of hub to park fell outside the parameters, before we even get into the park and its requirements for driving and light hiking.

We settled on a three-night excursion within five hours of home.  Electric maps have made that easy.  In five hours, as our distance driving is never shared, I can cover about 250 miles.  Draw a radius from my home address.  I've already visited most of the places inside that circle during my working years.  Only Long Island as a tourist and the Capital Region of NY remain novel.  I looked at both.  Long Island is closer and has more to do.  Generous responders on FB's Visit All 50 States and r/long island of Reddit assured me that a senior couple would have things to do there beyond attending a Bar Mitzvah or funeral within my extended family.  Historical sites, wineries, landscapes, ferries, and gawking at old and new money.  Good for a few days.  For all the antagonisms of social media, sometimes the groups function as communities of helpful people instead of the more typical arena model.

When to go?  I picked dates.  My doctor picked the same dates for a periodic procedure that has gotten a little overdue.  I picked later dates, a time that significantly lowered the hotel prices for the places that seemed most suitable geographically.

Now dates in place, recovery from medical procedure anticipated, alternate dates adjustable by a day or two if hotel rates come down in a different three-night stay, it's time to find a place to stay.  Long Island is the largest island in the continental USA.  It takes hours to drive its length.  It might also take an hour to get past the two boroughs of NYC that comprise its western portion, which I would prefer to avoid this vacation.  I don't want to access beaches, at least not as a swimmer or basker.  Still, the tourism that I seek stretches hours, from the gilded, repurposed mansions at the western and northern extreme to Montauk at the southern and western extreme, would require some driving.  If I stayed in the middle, which seems to be near the island's airport, I would still have an hour to get to the end of the North and South Forks.  Where the forks separate, a town called Riverhead, might serve as a base.  Hotel prices for that convenience come at more of a premium than I am willing to spend.

By now, I've gotten experienced at selecting hotels and airline reservations through online travel sites, though I always check directly with the hotels and carriers to see if they pass some of what they save by avoiding the travel site fee  back to the vacationer.  It usually doesn't.  For accommodations, unless an overnight rest before the next day's flight when a simple bed will do, I have my preferred amenities.  I like the place I choose to have a pool if I am staying more than one day, preferably indoor.  Most hotel stays I enter it.  In warm places, outdoor usually suffices, but I've been to SC in their shoulder season where the outdoor option proved chilly.  Wi-Fi in room has become a must.  For all the legitimate critiques of global connections' downsides, I have learned to ration how I use this, yet still feel deprived without it.  Even on cruises, I purchase a minimal internet package.  For an American hotel, I ask the travel sites to eliminate places that have a surcharge.  I also need parking, whether driving with my own car or a rental.  It's one hassle that I find objectionable.  Within reason, I am willing to pay for assured garage space in a big city, but most of the places I select in recent years occupy enclaves of a few hotels in proximity of a shopping center.  This serves me well.  And exercise on schedule borders as a must.  Most places have small work-out areas with a treadmill whose settings options surpass what I use at home.  Breakfast buffet does not appear on my screens.  They are convenient, usually adequate.  I often prefer to drive to a local breakfast place with a menu, sit there with my wife as we choose eggs or pancakes.  I take the anticipated price of eating at a diner into account.

That still leaves a significant number of options.  Then sort by price.  Mostly, I cannot assess location.  For Long Island, I know that the airport and Brookhaven National Labs are in the middle, Stony Brook where I almost attended school sits in the north, the Hamptons, which I cannot afford lie to the south, and Riverhead where the forks branch is closest to the optimal location.  I'll drive a bit more with my own car for a lower prices.  

My wife deferred the selection to me, after we reviewed the various options together.  I chose one near Brookhaven with the amenities I need and the ability to drive to places tourists to Long Island might like to go.  Best Deal?  Probably not.  This is one of those projects where the perfect undermines the good.  To be sure, I agreed to a surcharge for at-will cancellation.

Strangers Responding

I posted requests on Reddit's r/long island and FB's Visit all 50 States.  My wife accepted an abbreviated vacation this summer, with more arduous travel vetoed for now.  We opted to visit Long Island, a three hour car trip.  I had been to various parts many times, though always purposeful.  Weddings, Bar Mitzvah's, Funerals.  Visiting my grandfather's siblings, including an outing onto Rockaway Beach.  Stony Brook as a likely place I might attend.  Tourism only occurred one time when my daughter, who then lived in Queens, suggested Father-Daughter Bonding for Father's Day.  She drove me the full length of the Island's North Shore, a very pleasant afternoon, though a lot of time in the car between my round-trip drive home and the east-west dimension of America's largest island.

This time we go as pure tourists.  No intention of visiting anyone, though I know people who live there.  While residents of Metro NY flock to their beaches, I have suitable beaches readily accessible in my home state.  This time we go to get away from home, seek out places unique to the geography and culture of where we visit.  Museums, history, mansions, unique sites, wineries.  Sources for destinations on The Island abound.  YouTube videos, I Love NY, a variety of agencies to promote local tourism, Trip Advisor.  I looked at all of these.  From them I could stake out the Gilded Mansions repurposed for public use, the distribution of vineyards, enclaves of the nouveau riches of today that might still let a peasant couple gawk from not too close, historical lighthouses, ferry access when an escape might be needed.  Like much data, it comes as a mostly unsorted jumble.  So I asked people who had familiarity on social media platforms, each trusted from prior use.

People responded very quickly, about a dozen each on FB and Reddit.  It made it more of an annotated list, places to give priority when time is limited.  In this era of social media trolls, the generosity and candor of those who responded did not surprise me.  As much as I ration FB, the assigned days to sign on usually bring me to the Visit 50 States site.  I live in an obscure state that people want to cross off their list and in a multistate area where travelers want to check off 4-6 states on their road trip.  If somebody asks what to do nearby, I guide them.  Often they will post with traveler information, where they originate, ages of kids, elderly people in car with them, pets.  I can adapt suggestions to that.  What might a grade schooler like to visit, maybe where kids go on our local school class trips?  Have they ever been on a subway.  Ever seen Amish or Hasidim who live in isolated enclaves?  My familiarity can be very helpful, something a generic YouTube or vlog cannot easily duplicate.  That insight I offered to posters' queries about where I live now and in the past was reciprocated to me that afternoon.  

Reddit, at least when used in my judicious way, has never displayed the toxicity of FB, nor the incessant insertion of advertising or news feeds chosen by an algorithm to make me irate enough to stay logged on.  I ration which days I access and mostly what I access.  People share my interest in Judaism and Jewish cooking.  Many have less experience than me, so I try to be as helpful as possible to people going to the synagogue for the first time or seeking resources to learn more about Judaism.  I have had inquiries about a potholes on the roadways and a library misadventure.  My questions got many informative responses from civil engineers and librarians, as did my request to enhance my few days on Long Island.

If there is a message from this experience, both as benevolent contributor and reciepient, social media need not be the electronic cesspool that users so often encounter, one dominated by trolls and conflict entrepreneurs.  There is business model that capitalizes on exploiting pushing people's buttons, one where some regulation would enhance public experience.  Most users, though, when give the chance, come to these platforms with a measure of good will.  We find people who seek information, reassurance,  guidance through a dilemma, or recovery from an untoward experience.  Strangers, whether with names on FB or avatars or Reddit, reach out when we can.  We want the other people to have good experiences when they visit our places, whether geographic or places of worship, or from the recipes that challenge them in their kitchens.  The users come through on this, creating the expanded communities where people benefit each other.  Nothing demeaning, nothing malicious.  

To get to these generous people, though, you sometimes have to wade through and set aside some of the odious posters, more on FB than Reddit.  Like many people, I read about the downsides of these platforms.  Anti-Semitism, neonazism shielded by anonymity, attacks of people's appearance at vulnerable times in their lives.  I experience very little of this, though enough to exit all platforms for six months, to ration my presence on my return, and to write off of few platforms as places to not enter.  But as a selective tool, people can connect to some very fine people ranging from HS friends who share lives in retirement, experts in various subjects, the people who root for the same teams as you, and people who you will never meet who serve as gracious advisors.  It's a challenge to stay selective and not get rattled by the people you'd rather avoid.  I haven't since my judidious return, and won't meet any of them either.