Minutes on a day in New York… Colts, Ground Zero and Spiderman…

Firstly… I have to say I think today is possibly the coldest day I’ve experienced… at least on a par with when I went to Niagara falls… really really cold… today, I woke up at the reasonably early hour of about 9am after still getting around about 14 hours sleep I was understandably quite refreshed, I decided to catch the subway into the city… not knowing exactly all of the things that I wanted to look at in New York or even if I did know what I was looking for, then where these places might be would have still alluded me without a map.. I got a map. Good thinking… anyway, I got the no.1 train right to the end of its track which is at south dock or south pier or south… something… anyway, it stops where you catch the ferry to Staten Island. I looked at the map and saw that there was nothing on Staten island that I particularly wanted to look at, so I decided to head out along the waterfront where you could see in the distance – the statue of liberty… took photos, walked some more… got cold… found a sign that said “world trade center site” and thought that I’d go have a look…

The world trade centre site is an interesting experience… I, personally, found it very emotional… (But I find most things emotional, so no real surprise there…) anyway, I took a few photos, then got around to the part where the memorials and photos and things are… and my eyes started leaking. They had a list of most of the names of the people that had died… it’s a big list… they had pictures drawn by children saying that they miss their mommy or daddy and they had… you know… flowers and stuff… I don’t know whether it was one particular part of the memorial… but… yeah, I got very emotional… good thing it was so cold that I had my scarf wrapped around my head several times and all that could be seen between that and my beanie would have been my red watery eyes… could have just been from the cold… yeah sure… anyway. *coughs* From there I went across the road to the church – forget which one it is now… more old gravestones, and some more memorial stuff on 911… from there went and found a shop that sells stationary things and got some blank DVD disks so those of you who I said I’d send some photos to can expect them to arrive some time in the next … say… 6 – 8 weeks… I’ll get to them eventually. Don’t worry.

From there… I went half way along Brooklyn bridge (I figured if I don’t need to go to Brooklyn, then I mean, the bridge is symmetrical, its going to look the same from the other side… so from half way along you can see heaps of stuff (some of you might know it as the bridge on Fantastic 4 where the Thing pulls the fire engine back from the edge etc, or more importantly where Jessica Alba strips off to her underwear…) including the empire state building which looks really tall… and looking up at the suspension wires you can maybe see where the inspiration for Spider Man came from too… the cables look awfully like a spiders web… .It’s really quite cool…

Anyway, I was pretty cold by then so I decided to start heading along Broadway towards whatever might be the next subway station… past quite a few dodgy looking shops, and heaps of gangsters… some of them were pretty scary, but most of them just made me laugh… I just love the way they talk (y’all). On the way I got what is currently my favorite drink from dunkin’ donuts – their white hot chocolate, and a blueberry (my favorite berry) donut. Was all good, and before long I found myself at the subway…

Overall it was a very good day, planning on starting maybe at times square tomorrow and heading south towards 34th street where I have to pick up my ticket for tomorrow nights hockey game… I think there’s probably easily a days worth of stuff to do within those 10 or so blocks… I may come back tomorrow a little financially drained… we’ll see… it would have to be something pretty amazing, cause whatever I buy from here means I need to get another suitcase as well… which sucks…

Oh, and apparently the cold loosens your shoelaces…

The day ended downstairs in the Hostel (which I think may at one point have been an asylum or hospital or something… ) in the TV room watching Super Bowl XLI, which the Colts came from behind a very early start by the Bears to win 29 – 17. Good game… really interesting to watch it in America where people actually have some idea of what’s going on, and can actually get into it a bit more… pretty funny. Once again, met some nice people… this time I didn’t get their names – one girl who’s just moved here from the west coast and is an environmental engineer with the Govt… she’d been to new Orleans with the recovery team… all sorts of places… really interesting… and then I met Kendal in the hall way afterwards… in fact it was one of those situations where every time I walked out of my room she was there, or she’d walk out of hers and I was walking past… funny… after the 3rd time we were laughing, after the 5th she introduced herself… she’s just moved here from another state and is going to school… staying here until she finds an apartment… Like I said… gotta love hostels!

Bed time… there’s an old (slightly scary) Argentinean man in the bunk below me who I’m SURE is going to snore tonight… piss me off… anyway… I’m gone.

More later…





Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense. - Carl Sagan