<p>So I live on long island...what is the easiest way to go to and from campus...what do a lot of students do?</p>
<p>You drive up – figure five hours from LI – using the driving directions on Colgate’s website. After you’ve done this a few times, you do into autopilot and it’s pretty easy. At first, it seems endless, but by trip #3 or 4, you’ll hardly even notice it. You get to listen to a lot of good music on the way, and you’ll find one or two places to stop and take a break along the way. Stick the old “Colgate” decal on the back window and you get to sneer at anyone from Cornell going the same way. </p>
<p>The NY Thruway route is the better maintained route which is safer in blizzards, but takes longer by at least an hour. The Route 17 “back” route is a bit quicker and has the advantage of coming up through rural farm country and rolling hills which I find appealing (you turn off at Deposit, if I remember correctly). There’s also a long interstate route which passes through northern New Jersey and swiings north, but you still have to get off onto rural routes for quite a ways. All routes are going to take roughly the same amount of time without an enormous difference in either one. Colgate’s website has all the usual driving directions you’ll need. By Senior year, it will be ingrained in your brain so much that 40 years later you could do it while only half-awake. I’ve done it in raging blizzards. Pouring rain. Tsunamis, even. Well, not that. </p>
<p>You may find other students to “car pool” with on some trips up and back. You might ask around at some point. Taking the bus is not much fun, the train is impossible, and flying can be done (to Syracuse) but by the time you get to the airport, etc., etc., it’s generally as fast to drive. No car? Good chance to inform Dad you “need” a car to save them from hauling you back and forth. Think rain, snow, and rural roads if you do that.</p>
<p>Is there a ride board? Or something on line?</p>
<p>A lot of kids are from the LI/NYC metro area so you will find a ride eventually. Just keep asking around. :)</p>
<p>Uh oh I don’t have a car and will not have one for college! I guess I will have to ask around…? My friend goes to Hamilton and she takes the amtrack…anyone have any info on that?</p>
<p>At least when I was at Colgate, there were Colgate-run buses for students living in the NYC area/Long Island and maybe also New Jersey? I don’t think they had one for first-year arrival, but for all of the vacations. I never took it but had friends that did.</p>
<p>The Wendy’s in Deposit was our usual stop for food.</p>
<p>You will find rides back and forth with others who have their car up, but by second year a car is handy for shopping trips, jaunts to Cazenovia and when you live in the apartments or town, to Wegmans in Syracuse.</p>