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Summer Is Upon Us And So Is the Cannonball Express

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Gulf Coast beach, Anna Maria Island, north of Longboat Key, Florida, USA
Anna Maria Island’s Sandy Seclusion Getaway from: Miami Past the industrial fruit juice-making town of Bradenton, you’ll find a clutch of beautiful hidden beaches and stoplight-free Anna Maria Island. Here, days are spent sunbathing on soft sand, sipping chilly cocktails on the boardwalk, and tucking into fresh seafood on the deck of a waterfront restaurant.Robert Harding World Imagery / A—Alamy
By Bijan Stephen

Summer, it seems, is upon us—already I can feel the promise of pizza and beer and floating face up in large bodies of water; the weather, obligingly, is shifting. Here in New York we’ve a grand tradition of getting away from our hellishly hot and humid city, which seems to have waged an ironic Cold War (in scope and attendant promise of Mutually Assured Destruction) on her citizens.

Soon, droves of New Yorkers will migrate north in a regular seasonal movement—like pink-footed geese (Anser brachyrhynchus) with expense accounts—to the Hamptons, a rarified enclave of seaside hamlets on the South Fork of Long Island. (Some do, in fact, fly.)

For those who don’t or can’t fly and refuse to take the Jitney, there’s a new, super speedy way to migrate. Gothamist reports:

Somewhere between the Jitney and a personal jet (but definitely closer to the Jitney) comes the Cannonball Express—which is the actual name of the [Long Island Rail Road] express train to the Hamptons and Montauk. The train will return [May 23rd] with its Extra Pampering Services.

I’m not sure what these pampering services are, but the prices aren’t so bad—$47 to go to East, and $39.75 to go west. Fly, sweet geese, fly. #SummersComing.

 

 

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Write to Bijan Stephen at bijan.stephen@gmail.com