New York Fever...

As fortune would have it...I got sick while in New York.   Asthma came and paid me a visit and I turned into a giant, heaving, sweaty creep wherever I went...so the heaving was the only thing different from the usual.  But as I type this, with the help of an absolute saint I am on the mend.  Hopefully the rest of us remain healthy for our last leg of the Dodge Eastern Seaboard Tour 09...Washington D.C.  

I gotta say I really want to go back to New York real super soon.  There are so many other places I want to go see and so many restaurants I want to try.  I love the busy environment.  I found New Yorkers to be, on the whole, tons nicer than they have the reputation to be.  Again, I think it’s the crammed environment.  People aren’t rude here...they’re just honest.  I find that refreshing.  There’s just no time or space to beat around the bush with empty niceties.  

The memories that will stick with me are many.  I’ll never forget that the first thing Chase did when we got to Central Park was to demand a picture of herself along with a very militant statue of Che Gueverra.  I wish I had that picture.  Unfortunately my iphone froze up at that golden moment.  

I'll never forget how eerily quiet Wallstreet was with the blocked off streets and barracaded and NYPD-guarded building entrances. Wall street seems to be in a strange state of recoil...and maybe it was my imagination but I could feel the low morale just seeping out of the buildings out onto everything around.  Right across is a statue of Washington commemorating where he was sworn in.  I wonder if Washington ever looked up and imagined what it all would be like in the future.  Probably not.

I’ll never forget seeing the Chrysler Building at night.  And the Empire State Building with its colored tiers.  I loved watching Charlie's face light up along with the rest of the signs in Times Square.  I'll never forget watching Chase hail a cab, totally beating me to the punch.  And I'll never forget the plunging sensation in my gut every time Chase impulsively dove into a revolving door- always at the very last minute and always before we told her it was safe to go.  And, of course, Lady Liberty.  We were on a three hour boat tour that went completely around Manhattan when we saw the Statue of Liberty.  

We had an old tour guide with a Casey Cassem-type voice narrating facts that nobody could really hear over the boat engine.  Decked out in a captain’s uniform, he’d drone on and on with his yuckity yuck voice walking around the boat with his wireless microphone, but overtime someone stood up out of their folding chair to take a picture or stretch (it was a three hour boat ride) he’d walk over to the stander, turn off his microphone and become the nastiest SOB on planet.  Apparently, if one person on the boat stands, then everyone on the boat will want to stand.  And then nobody will be able to see- even though everything we were looking at was typically at skyscraper height. No standing.  After every threat, the guide would turn his microphone back on and resume his yuckity yuck narration.  By the end of the three hour tour I felt as if I just might know what it felt like to be an immigrant coming to America, from desperate flight of tyranny... laying eyes on New York Harbor for the first time, weeping with gratitude that the tour...er... voyage was over.  What is that inscription on the pedestal of Lady Liberty again?  

“Give me your tired tourists, your poor in pulmonary health...your huddled masses yearning to break free from angry tour guides.”  

It’s something like that, I’m paraphrasing a bit...  

A real quick cool note:  The hotel we stayed at is right next to the United Nations Building.  All the various Embassies surround it.  Every morning as we set out we'd pass by a baker's dozen worth of Asian reporters with their microphones and cameras pointed right at this unmarked side door across the street.  Every microphone and camera was vigilantly aimed at the door like a firing squad.  Every night when we were dragging ourselves back...they'd still be there...on complete reporter red alert.  Finally, last night, as we were grabbing some supplies from the convenience shop right across the street from this sight, someone came out of the door, and all the reporters and cameramen came to life, pushing and shoving and crowding and dogging the one guy coming out.  I even heard a woman squeel- as if she got trampled.  Well we finally learned what the hub-bub was over.  The guy the reporters were waiting on?  Oh nothing, he was just the representative from NORTH KOREA!  World politics at work...

My last New York memory is this - as our Cabbie was pulling over in front of Penn Station to drop us off, another taxi edged in alongside in an attempt to steal our curb space.  Our cabbie muttered, “Mutherfucker” and lurched our cab forward to cut the other taxi off.  Our cab’s side mirror knocked the other cab’s mirror.  Our guy won the curb space.  Our cabbie then jumped out of his cab and started yelling at the other cabbie, who ended up stopping right behind us.  The yelling continued as our cabbie unloaded our luggage and very pleasantly thanked us for the fare.  As we walked away I heard the other cabbie yell to our cabbie, “I’ll have your head!!!”  Ah, New York.  I’m going to miss you.