You've probably seen the Facebook memes but it really is a thing, especially among people who are not from New York State. There was a sizable Jersey contingent on my dorm floor and one day one of those guys asked me where I was from. When I told him I was from upstate, he said, oh I know a guy from upstate. When I asked him where, he said "White Plains".
White Plains is 30 miles north of New York City, and 184 miles south of my hometown at the edge of the Adirondack Mountains (it's worth noting that that town is in turn more than 130 miles south of the Canadian border, just for complete geographical perspective).
I've lived Upstate my entire life -- sure, there was a 6-year stay in Vermont, but that was just across the lake and I came back to "this side" frequently. Certainly the Vermont folks always treated me like a New Yorker. And there were The Years of Which We Do Not Speak, my 3-year exile to Ohio, but I am resolute in pretending that never happened. But for the most part, you could draw a rectangle on the map that's about 10 or 15 miles wide and about 50 miles long, and it would contain almost 50 years of my life. So I know about as much about Upstate NY as I know about anything.
For 50 years, there has been an infallible indicator of someone's Upstate knowledge: Exit 3 of the Northway. When I was a kid, we had this:
Before very long, however, the original project planned for exit 3, a crosstown interstate connector, was scrapped and even the sign came down... so that if you traveled north, you went directly from exit 2 to exit 4 with no indication of what happened to exit 3. Since then, it's been a secret code among upstaters: "Exit 3?" "There is no exit 3." Sure, it was a little embarrassing being seen by outsiders as the area that couldn't count, but I think we enjoyed sharing that little secret.
Until today. As I headed south from exit 12, I hit a big traffic snarl around exit 6. I soon found that the source was a lane closure at exit 4... which in turn was related to the fact that Exit 3 Southbound opened for business today.
For several weeks now, construction has been underway on a brand-new exit, meant to make access to the airport easier. Apparently the on-ramp was opened recently, but the change became real to Northway travelers today when the off-ramp opened.
The governor was there to make a fuss about how revolutionary this will be, how it will open our area to more travel (also spelled "$$$$$"). And of course there are obvious benefits, including the benefit of wrapping up the ongoing construction effort sometime soon. But our world is a little less unique...
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