Toodles, poodles

It’s so unfair that I have to leave both NY and the US at the same time.

These cute things help hold the Hilton steady

When I first started the blog, I mostly saw it as a way to keep people informed of where I was and what I was doing. I thought I’d update it every few days with an ‘I’m at -foo- doing -bar-’ and not much else, since the few travel blogs I’ve looked at are much the same: here I am at A, met person B, look at panoramic vista photo C. It turned out for me that the blog was a way to distill the stuff that happened during the day, in effect, to help me memorise it, to remember the stuff that happened earlier in the day. It hasn’t worked perfectly, but there was so much happening on most days that sitting down and thinking about it really helped. And like I said earlier, for every thing in the blog there’s two or three that I encounter during the day. At least.

Spraypaint artist. Big on the west coast, not so common on the east

The other big advantage for me was having various people suggest random cool things to do, which is a decent feat given the breadth of the travels.

Anyway, I’ve got to get out of the room as sign-out is approaching. I’ve repacked everything and have a couple of hours walking around time before heading off to JFK.

Think I might get me some Korean dumplings…

In the thick of it

New Yorkers love public chess more than most Americans

When they say NY is a city that never sleeps, I think they mean that it won’t let you sleep. So last night I’m in a dorm of 12. No worries, I’ve never had a problem in a large dorm before. Calling it an early night at 11, I wander in and the light’s already off. Creep in to bed with eyes almost cramping shut. Some guy then comes in, turns lights on, rustles around, mostly closes the windows and turns off the AC before getting into bed. Fine. Let’s try to sleep now. Nope, there’s a truck reversing outside that sounds a lot like my alarm back home. Normally I’m fine with traffic sounds and sirens, but it’s dead quiet except for this single reversing truck. It finally stops reversing. Next port of call, the couple come into the dorm and spend 20-30 minutes giggling, surreptitiously drinking, and taking flash photos. Gave them the benefit of the doubt at first for settling in time, but eventually cracked it and politely told them to shut the fuck up. Right. Time for sleep? Nope, I’ve got my second wind now and can’t shut my eyes. Fuck. And woken before 7 in the morning by another cretin who can’t even try to be quiet.

Some people like their bikes extra-fresh!

Wander out into the upper west side for a last explore before heading to the other hostel, generally to eat up time, but also a bit of a farewell to the area. Went a bit further north and ran into Columbia University with it’s stock assortment of stately university buildings. Not much else exciting on that trip, so came back, got my heavy bags, and headed downtown to the Chelsea Star Ho[s]tel. I only have two more carries of my heavy bags, once to JFK, and once home. Trust me, they’re heavy and unwieldy enough that I’ve been counting.

New York has a surprising amount of green space

Anyway, arrived at the Chelsea and no, they don’t book in until 3pm. Fuck, that’s when I’ll be in queue at Jon Stewart. But they will hold the bags, though I’m a bit loathe to leave my laptop + passport backpack in plain view at reception, I figure fuck it, it’s survived 88 days so far, and I’m fooling myself if I think I’m going to carry it around for the next half a day. The guy on the desk was one of these fellows who answers every question with “um, just give me a minute”. I departed asking “do you have a water fountain?” and he replied as above. Not giving him a minute, I proffered the position of myself removing my entity from reception and finding perhaps some merchant of quenching liquids elsewhere. He was happy with this suggestion.

Seats you can swivel around next to the Hudson

Wandered up the mile and a half to the converted warehouse that is the Daily Show studio, and the area is sort of a light industrial backwater of Manhattan. Well, I say backwater, but it still has things like twin 40-storey towers and whatnot. But little interesting to discuss. Still far too early to queue, I headed along to the Hudson river and wandered for a while up the shoreline. I lay for possibly the last time in soft, thick, green grass. Yes, it exists. It doesn’t have to be harsh, yellow, and interspersed with dirt patched. Soft green grass. It’s actually springy. It’s like walking on sponges instead of hay bales. Passed a few burned-out piers that the residents seem to love having around before heading back for an early spot in the queue.

Righto, will do!

So with about two and a half hours before doors open for the Daily Show audience, there was already about thirty people in line. By the time the suggested arrival time came along, the queue was completely full. I might add that two and a half hours is a long time to be standing in the one spot, especially when you’re tired of your ipod and you’ve finished chatting to the person next to you. Eventually the doors opened and yes, another airport-style security point. This time, however, I found a new trick – my baseball hat makes a nice cup shape that holds all the metal shit in my pockets and on my belt, allowing me to deconstellate well before reaching the scanner. If only I’d found this trick earlier! Still, I can use it once more tomorrow.

Burnt-out docks on the Hudson

But into the set of the Daily Show where the wait continued and finally the comedian came out around 6pm to get us riled up. Can’t remember his name, but he was very quick and great off the cuff. Good stuff. Then Stewart came out, fielded a few questions to build rapport, and it was on with the show (July 14 episode if you must know). It was a good show, though the guest was a bit ‘filler’, and it’s pretty clear Stewart adores his job. Halfway through the episode I realised that I should have asked in question time for Stewart to do his GW Bush impression. Dammit, now I have to come back to NY to ask him next time…

Inside a giant wine bottle sculpture

So remember what I said about NY not letting you sleep? Well fuggedaboutit. I reached the Chelsea Star to book in and the guy on the desk was cluey and alert to the fact I’m enormous and had real problems with the idea of me fitting in their dorm beds. From the sounds of it, they also have 6′ beds. I knew that this might be a possibility, and didn’t really have an alternative at this late stage, so I was ready to grin and bear it. He started pushing a suite, usually for $289 but he could give me a massive discount. No can do, haven’t the money, I’ll just grin and bear it. Out of interest, how much could I have the room for? $55 plus taxes. Ya feckin’ what? Um… I might just do that. Win-win. They have an empty suite and will get some more dollars, and I get to sleep. So here I am in a suite with three queen size beds (plus a foldaway!) and an airconditioner that no-one else will turn off, in the heart of downtown (30th & 8th). I get to sleep. On the last night in NY, I finally get to sleep. Finally. I love you New York, it’s like a goodbye kiss.

My stalwart companions throughout the trip

A final note. The photo here shows the companions that have been with me pretty much every step of the way. The shoes were my backup shoes, but I learned in SF that my Converse All-Stars were not made for walking around for seven hours. The baseball cap was from Perth back home, and has been with me every day except the first day I got horribly sunburned. It was a solid blue when I started, and sweat and the desert sun faded it that way. When not in use it gets tucked into the belt at the small of my back. The sunnies were the best of a bad bunch from Venice Beach, though I’ve grown to love them. The phone was a shitty phone, really shitty, from a T-Mobile store next to UCLA. The case to the left of it is the camera case, the camera being with me every day but of course not in shot. The ipod wasn’t with me all the time – when I had the car it was replaced by the set of keys. The wallet is obvious. The belt was from Mexico to replace the belt that was too big for my thinning waistline, which is now thickening from all the guzzling I’ve been doing in New York. There’s scorpion patterns woven into it, because I’m classy that way. This is the stuff that would be with me every day, my standard loadout. My travelling kit. The bonus is that everything is on the belt or in pockets – my hands are free and I don’t have to juggle anything.

I suppose I should wander out one last time into the New York night. Tomorrow night at this time I’ll be halfway to my LA stopover.

Forty-forty-forty-eight hours to go-o-o…

It's awfully dark down there...

… I wanna be sedated. Seriously. I’ve regained my mental acuity and emotional stability from a few nights in a bed of reasonable size, but the sleep quality still wasn’t enough for refreshment. Physical tiredness looks to be the go for the remainder of the trip. Offset that against this current hostel being the biggest I’ve seen to date and it’s full of teenagers. Seriously. Some are early teenagers. There’s some teen event on or something. And they’re running around playing tag and shit. I’m in a dorm of 12, but the bed is of a decent size and there’s a little more space between bunks and the aircon isn’t spraying directly across someone’s bed so it’s likely to be left on overnight. I may get a reasonable sleep. Sorry if I’m boring you all with this, but sleep figures very strongly in my Maslow at the moment.

They've invented the artificial lap!

Since the last post I’ve not done much but wander out, eat, wander back, and cringe at all the pounding of little feet in the hostel. There was a comedy show in the lounge below this one which was very iffy. More painful race-based stuff in lieu of talent. Another guy who’d ripped off old 60s single-panel comics for his material. I don’t mind people who reuse stuff as long as they let you know that they’re not being original with the relevant material. Of the people who aren’t teens in the hostel, we seem to be having a British Invasion, though there’s still the ever-present smattering of French, German and Australian tongues spread about.

...and the solar-powered trashcan!

So, the real reason I’m posting again is to provide some odd info about the blog. In the admin pages it tells me what people searched for in google to find the page. Here is a selection of the search terms, in the order they appear in the list:

• encaustic sculpture
• marbeling and the uncanny valley
• shoe foot paws costume
• austin luxury homes
• yellow girder
• how big is a 6 man tent
• small town police vehicles
• dick wolf
• where to find gold teeth in winston sale
• “best restaurant in fort stockton”
• hand shower pipe
• dull penis
• naked “women’s bath”
• balloon clown cleveland

Tomorrow I’m juggling hostels so I can’t do anything big in the morning, and in the afternoon it’s (hopefully) off to Jon Stewart for my last night in the US. Here’s hoping he punctuates my trip well…

I will do Science to it!

Hrm... so... you want some money?

You think I’d've learned by now: never assume your internet access will last when travelling. Last night the hostel’s internet failed (not assigning IP addresses) and so I thought that the bus has wifi because it’s so cool, and sure enough I get on the bus and it fails (bus uplink not working). Lucky for me I had a vague idea of where hostel #1 was, around the corner from the hell hostel I stayed in previously. Now I’m here and on the internet again, but it only seems to be stable if I’m constantly pinging an external site.

Essentially yesterday was a long arvo at a science museum. Yes, I know I said that I was into credit now and only free things count, but I claim the $30 expenditure was on science, which feels like home to me, so therefore counts as ‘accommodation’! Yes, that’ll do.

Boats in the evening

So a nice sunny walk along the river was in order with a shirt concealing my sunburned shoulders, watching people sun themselves and boat about and a windsurfer looking frustrated in the still conditions. The walk was so picturesque that I had to repeat it in the evening on the way back, trying not to get hit by the joggers and bikers that claim that path for themselves. I’ll never understand jogging, pounding your knees until you’re sweaty in an attempt to be unable to hear your ipod properly. Weirdos.

The arteries of a dog

I’d selected the museum of science as there was no modern art museum on offer in Boston. While musing what to do, the hostel had a mural of various things around town and I saw the museum listed there. Fondly remembering the Exploratorium back in SF (where fondly remembering = barring up over), I set out with far more time available. The Museum of Science in Boston was a bit weird. It was part museum exhibits and part hands-on exhibits, whereas the Exploratorium was all hands-on.

Petrified lightning. Hardcore.

There was still lots of cool stuff to see and do, with the exception that once again there were too many kiddliewinks in the way. Damn things. Someone should create some kind of playground with lots of hands-on things to do to keep them out of the way. Saw a 3-D show on bugs narrated by Judi Dench where the heroine gets eaten by the hero. I’ve never really understood getting famous actors to voice-act. “Shall we see the 20 minute featurette ‘Bugs!‘?” -> “Nah, not really interested” -> “Judi Dench is narrating. She’s a Dame, you know?” -> “Fukken SIGN ME UP! In like FLYNN!”

It takes balls to work with electricity

Also saw a show in the planetarium on the Mars rovers that NASA sent up and performed beyond expectations, but the show that really took the cake was the electric show. The bloke running it had his little red lab coat and went through the usual ain’t-it-cool stuff with small Van der Graaf generators and volunteer’s hair, but he inexpertly built the show up through using the Jacob’s ladder and Tesla coils to using one of the largest Van der Graaf generators in the world†. Big, loud zaps. He got into a birdcage and raised it up so it was being zapped so as to demonstrate the skin effect, the generator zapping the cage with 500kV with him putting his hands on the inside of the metal. For dramatic effect he licked his finger and put it opposite the spot on the bar the zaps were striking.

A little bit of me for everyone!

Apart from the shows there were a great variety of themes on display and it took a while to try everything. Favourites were the perceptual illusions and the light benches. Perception and attention have always been a favourite of mine, though my theory is rusty, because I’m always interested in seeing how we perceive the stuff that’s out there, and how we can fool our detectoring devices, not to mention seeing just how many clauses a sentence can hold. But there was stuff on birds, gears, mathematical modelling, playground physics, weather, reproduction and genetics, computer history, desert life, looking for clues like an archaeoligist, music, fluid dynamics, and a passel of stuff that I can’t bring to mind just now. Probably have photos, though.

I want one of these tornado machines

Effect of loud sound on fluid

The evening was spent choring after a brief mental debate of going out drinking with no money and very tired versus smelling like a back-country bull for the next few days. Fought with the crappy internet connection and called it a night. Today has mostly been a travelling day after scoffing a last-minute cup of clam chowder. Nummy. I never did find Gareth’s much-promoted bucket of battered hotdogs. Managed to get the front seat up the top of the bus and I can tell you that it’s kinda scary when you see a low bridge approaching. Add that to the interstate being tree-lined all the way and it wasn’t the most interesting of trips.

So I can be a sneaky bastard if I put my mind to it!

Now I’m ensconced in the HI hostel in NY and am about to head out for food. It’s huge. And like the one in Boston, I’m on the bloody top floor with no elevator, heavy bags and slightly stuffed knees. Tomorrow is my last full day in the US and unfortunately I’ve got to swap hostels in the middle of it. Weird to think that after all this time I’ll be boarding a plane in 48 hours.

No worries.

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† When Americans say ‘the world’, you never know if they mean ‘the Earth’ or ‘the USA’

Sunny day, everything’s a-okay

I found a new way to be woken today, and it didn’t involve any of the other five guys in the room. The trick is to have your chest heated by the sun streaming in through the closed window†. So wakeup time was around 7:15 and I’ve learned to close the shades. Out of the tiny room into the tiny shower, but at least they all work.

An awesome fountain

Just out and about exploring Boston today. The first thing that strikes you is that it’s a wealthy city. Everything is so well kept, but it’s allowed to look natural rather than clipped to hell as per LA greenery. The other thing that strikes you is how small it is. There’s a wall map of it in the hostel kitchen and eight miles will take you from the docks to the outer suburbs. The hostel is all of a mile and a half from the centre of town and it’s a lazy walk through avenues to get there. The avenue I walked down had two statues per block and most of them were literary or civil rights figures with a small smattering of military. A curious reversal of the usual mix. This avenue opened out into Boston Common, full of people soaking in the gentle summer sun, eating expensive snack food.

Given my previous mixup of John Thomas and John Hancock, it's curious to note Hancock's rather phallic monument

There’s all sorts of historical markers and they’re very proud of their activities in the 17th and 18th century. There’s a few ‘burying grounds’ around, not cemeteries, not graveyards, but ‘burying ground’. The paths made for the tourists go willy-nilly over the graves and it’s kind of weird. Blokes in period costume wander around waxing lyrical about the denizens of the burying grounds, which is just as well since the headstones are worn to indecipherability.

I wandered through the streets a bit more and ran into a most bizarre protest. A few blokes spruiking for Lyndon LaRouche. I normally leave these folks alone, but as I passed their sandwich board I couldn’t help but double over laughing. “Britain gave you Hitler” it proclaimed, and then a line about Obama’s healthcare plan. One of the blokes came over and asked why I was laughing and I explained, asking him how Britain gave us Hitler – his answer was that it was British Imperialism that bankrolled him.

Little cushions to aid you sitting on the steps

I asked how on earth could he distill decades of european politics into ‘britain gave you hitler’ and how on earth this is related to the british healthcare system they were reviling and he gave me some literature – LaRouche’s recent webcast transcript. I read it on and off throughout the day with just a critical eye, not a political one. It’s so full of misdirections, misrepresentions and outright lies I’m amazed he has followers. In the speech he mentions Britain as the enemy a lot (he occasionally says he means the style of economics, but keeps attacking the people with a particular penchant for Prince Philip like he’s some kind of nefarious mastermind), and says that Obama’s healthcare plan is exactly the same as the events of the holocaust. Not ‘will lead to’ or a bit of hyperbole, but actually specifies it’s exactly the same.

I'm a bit scared to contemplate just what these guys do

Not knowing the details of Obama’s healthcare plan I can’t defend or attack it, but the LaRouche literature can only be considered slanderous. Hell, he calls Obama, Blair, Prince Phil and Her Madge all to be Nazis. And he means it. The guy is a total loon. I did try to find the spruikers later in the day because I just wanted to point out that character assassination was not the same as addressing the issue, but I couldn’t find them.

The Tea Party museum is, ah, under renovations

Much of the rest of the day was just wandering through the streets, through the thronging central market and out along the harbourfront. There’s a Tall Ships race that’s in port at the moment, and droves of people crowding around to see them. I went to the site of the Tea Party museum, but it was out of commission. There were a few tall ships around that were sorta fun to look at, but just sitting by the harbour watching boats in general was kinda meditative. Reminded me of Sydney a bit, without the bluffs.

Americans love their big flags

I ended up wandering back through town and had dinner at a rather average Chinese place and found that wandering around for six hours in the gentle Boston sun had given me mild sunburn on my shoulders. Damn. The other thing I realised was that I am now out of money. I have enough for food and accommodation, but I’m working on credit now. Damn. Only four more days to go, I guess. The other, other thing I realised is that the two alternate hostels I was trying to book when I’m back in NY don’t have vacancies. I may have to return to a Jazz hostel, of which there are several. Damn.

ADDENDUM: Hahahahah! I found that I could do one night at one alternate hostel, and the other night at the other! I’d rather take the risk on two new hostels than go back to the jazz hostels and sleep on their crappy short mattresses again.

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† ‘closed window’ doesn’t sound so poetic, does it?

Shipping up to Boston

Golly, that really is the short bus

After leaving the hostel of nice staff but nasty facilities it was off to find the bus to Boston. The company called Megabus runs buses every 15 minutes going to cities around New York. You’d think they’d have a terminal or at least a cutting or something. No, they have a small tin sign and several guys in high visibility vests. Still, can’t argue – for $14 I get a four and a half hour busride in a doubledecker bus with wifi web access and mains power. Not full internet (for the sysadmins out there) but web only (which is all everyone else cares about). Tired of seeing trees by the side of the road, my entertainment was in my lap.

gawd...

Getting in to Boston I once again had that wonderful moment where you’ve just walked out of your transport hub and have no idea whatsoever of how the city fits around it. I knew where I had to walk, and headed off to the hostel a mile away leaving mental breadcrumbs behind me. One thing I love about getting to a new city is the feeling of it’s grid forming around you as you explore it. It was at this point I realised that my sullen funk of the past few days wasn’t from living out of a bag, it was from the lack of sleep.

They made a statue of me in my younger days, but they screwed up the nose...

Admittedly, I am tired of constantly having to hunt accommodation (though internet really helps) but I’m not tired of living out of a bag or of travelling. Looking back on the days in the Jazz hostel, I saw how the sleep debt I had accumulated slowly enough to not be noticed easily until the last days, how insidious it was at masking it’s own effects. Here I was exploring a new city, and a fucking awesome one at that. Yes, I am tired. Yes, I don’t like looking for accommodation. But no, I could keep on visiting new cities. There’s something really special about watching a new city unfold before your explorations of it.

Tiny room... but the BED FITS

So I booked into the hostel, made it up through the veritable maze of passageways to the tiny room. Three bunks. The remaining floorspace was about the same as the space of two bunks, if that. Clambered up onto my bunk and yes, it’s long enough. The room will be hot, but I won’t be pinioned by the bunk and I won’t have to keep juggling a doubled-up thin pillow. Wandered out for food and a bit more exploring, ate at a thai place thirty yards away (meh, student cafeteria style food) and went window shopping in a nearby shopping centre. And bought more books, including a copy of The Princess Bride for myself. Hey, these books were half the price that they’d be back home.

I never thought I'd see allotment gardens in the US

When I signed in, the guy at the desk told me about a drinking group heading out to drink at the tall ships that are in dock at the moment. Despite being tired as hell, I thought I better get some socialising done because I did woefully little of it in New York due to mental fatigue. When I came back there was half an hour before departure so I lay down to rest my eyes for a few minutes… and missed the group by a few minutes. Having no idea where they went or how to get there, I figured I needed to stay awake a bit longer – it was 8pm and I tend to sleep for at most seven hours. So I headed out again in search of a movie theatre and found a few interesting things along the way.

Fenway Park in the middle of a (yawn) baseball game

I ended up seeing Pixar’s Up! which started a little late for me, and it’s another feather in their cap. It’s a very sweet story that’s based around exploring the theme of realising your dreams. It doesn’t have as much raw comedy as other Pixar films but it’s still very much worth watching, and probably on the big screen. It had extra poign† for me since Boston is the last stop of my travels across the US and I’ve been wanting to cross the US on and off for the past fifteen years. Anyway, it’s getting close to 2 am so I’d better sign off and go find adventure in a bed that fits…

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† If something is poignant, it stands to reason that it must contain some poign. Mind you, I heard a curator on the radio pronounce the ‘g’. Ouch.

Suffer the big children

I should not be able to look down at the top of a mattress

It’s not the living out of a bag that’s been getting me down. It’s that this hostel uses child-sized mattresses. It wasn’t until I pulled the mattress to the floor last night to avoid being compressed by the bedhead that I realised just how short the mattress was. Only a six foot mattress, and my legs were sticking over the end past the ankle. This is what I’ve been sleeping on for the past ten days, and I’m surprised that I lasted as long as I did. All the beds here are the same size, and over the days I’ve heard others in my dorms complain about the size of the beds. They’re also so narrow they’re only 3-4 inches wider than my shoulders.

Instead of being called Jazz Hostels, they should be called The Last Resort. The staff have been friendly and the rooms cleaned every day, but when you can’t sleep at a place that is supposed to be just a place to sleep, something is wrong. Hell, even the pair of short English girls complained about the bedding. This is the tenth hostel I’ve stayed in over the past few months – and I’ve stayed in places with doughy mattresses, with chronic wankers on wobbly bunks, with heat waves, with nightclubs pounding music underneath – and it’s the first that’s pushing me to go to the review websites and leave a few poor reviews. It’s really taken the shine off the second half of my NY visit, and I was too mentally fatigued to notice why.

Talking about heat, when I moved the mattress this morning, there was a warm patch under it. Yes, there is heat coming through the floor. In summer. No wonder we’ve had to run the airconditioner at night.

There’s a Hostel International just down the road, and I think I’ll try that when I come back to NY just before I fly out. So how about suffering the big children?

I ♥ NY…

That shop is so not what the name suggests

… but I’m getting tired of living out of a bag. Really tired. It’s time for home soon, and the last week or so of “sleeping” in a crappy bed has taken it’s toll. I need my sleep, and for the past few days I’ve been having trouble motivating myself to give a damn. Having to keep packing up is also getting tiresome. Irritating. I realised that the jig is up when I started preparing for the sojourn to Boston – at home I was very interested in visiting Boston, now I’m just seeing it as another hostel bed, probably crappy, another place where I can’t spread my stuff out because I’ll be off again soon.

Double park on the other side for street cleaning

Slowing down in the past weeks has been great, but I need to stop soon. Right now all I can think about is a good, solid night’s sleep. The interesting thing is that there’s no problem sleeping in hostel dorms. Other people aren’t the problem, it’s the crappy bedding. I’ve been so mentally tired the past few days that I’ve been sharing the dorm with some interesting people and only found out late last night… which was their last night. Tomorrow I head to Boston, so it’s a travelling day, but tonight I still think I might pull the mattress down to the floor because I need. that. sleep.

Boating on The Lake

Only really one new thing today which I’ll get to in a bit, but I did venture out to try and find one of Obama’s election posters for a friend back home. You know, the ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ ones with the portrait in three colours. Tried a number of stores, got a number of shrugs, and a number of redirections to shops I’d already tried. I’ve tried on and off since N’awlins and haven’t seen one anywhere. Gave up and headed into Central Park on a mission to find Strawberry Fields.

Taxis here have their license number bolted to the hood

After a lot of misdirected wanderings – maps of winding paths are less useful without a ‘you are here’ – I finally found the spot. I believe it’s called Strawberry Fields because it’s a series of fields not much bigger than a strawberry. It’s actually a pretty nice spot with mottled sunlight falling through the trees and lots of people reading propped up against a bole. Though designated a quiet zone, it’s packed with half a squillion people and tour guides chanting their tour banter. Central Park has all sorts of secluded areas – usually you know you’ve found one when you see a used condom† – but Strawberry Fields really is a special little spot despite the lingering crowds. They don’t tend to go on the grass anyway.

I guess they think we're backwards down under

The special moment of the day was catching up with Debbie who used to work at my mothers shop over 15 years ago, and I’ve not seen her in the intervening time. There was a lot of catch up and after seeing her I felt more invigorated than I have in days. She’s barely aged a day to look at, something I noted whilst scratching at my now balding head. Like most people back home she’s been having a rough time of it recently and the current task in life is simply trying to land on one’s feet. Indeed, there has been so much trouble recently that my housemates have declared the year the Annus Anus. Anyway, once caught up and chatted, she had to return to work and I headed on to the streets of New York again.

A seat for cheeky comfort

Not much new and headed back to the hostel to try and stuff everything back into that damned bag. It’s a good bag, it’s done right by me, but I’m tired of living out of it, which in turn is exacerbated by the long run of poor sleep. Six more days before my day-long flight home and my own bed.

Must remember to take Boston as it comes and not as an ordeal. Hopefully they’ll have a decent beer on offer…

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†This is pure hyperbole, I only ever found one. Unlike the rest of New York, Central Park is pretty much spotless.

And we’re walking…

Long walks today, a little shy of ten miles. Not much meat to any one thing I saw and I’m not up for writing much, so I’ll describe the route and post some photos.

Started with a subway ride to Grand Central Station, then across to the UN building in east Manhattan. Wandered inside for a bit (security checkpoint…) and they had the photo-of-the-year exhibition on. Not wanting to go further inside (due to requiring a tour which costs) I wandered back out to find the Aussie flag out front. Then I walked south to the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to stick to the path along the East River, but sometimes having to come back in a bit. Hit the bridge just as the battery in my camera died. Wandered over into Brooklyn, found a subway station and headed home. Google says about 8 miles, not including sidetracking.

As always, thumbnails are clickable. Note that the layout will be crap and I can’t be bothered playing to see if I can clean it up at this point.

A nice bouquet outside Grand Central

Grand Central. No one dancing...

Trump Tower. Ominous

The UN building, too large to get into one shot given the space nearby

Foucault's Pendulum in the UN building

They could have at least ironed the Aussie flag!

Looking northwards from where I first hit the East River

conEdison power station

You are fishing in THAT? Outflow from the power station

More 'you're fishing in THAT?' - highway runoff

Americans have a lot of guys who just hold signs for businesses

One way to solve your parking problems

Ran into a naming problem for this street, I see

Screw the pigeons, the patients come first!

Cute fountain with half-submerged seals

Cute little ampitheatre

Interesting use for an old fire escape

Brooklyn Bridge cabling

Museum day

Hayden Sphere in the background

Yesterday it was off to see some museums. The Natural History museum was first out of the gate, and I arrived there shorty after eating a dodgy ‘randy burger’, apparently some kind of roast chicken roll. They didn’t have falafel, y’see. The museum had a nice long line of people and the standard exhibits, though there was some cool and unusual stuff. The planetarium was in a giant sphere with a diameter of perhaps 30my, give or take, and this sphere was in a larger glass cube. This was the Hayden Sphere, and on a walkway around it was an exhibition of scales, starting from the known universe right down to a proton.

Science is cool!

Basically the scales were “If the Hayden Sphere is the size of the galaxy, then our star cluster is the size of this model”. It was a pretty graphic representation of scale, and the smallest scale was if the sphere were the size of an atom, a proton was the size of a full stop – too small to have a relevant model, so they just printed it on the info panel. I also wandered into the exhibit on Frogs which was kinda cool to see the vibrant poison dart frogs in person, but kinda boring to see the rest of the frogs sitting around looking bored. Not the most exciting exhibit ever.

The realgar might need some attention there...

In the minerals section there was a 34-ton lump of iron that was a meteorite, the largest on display anywhere. So heavy that it’s on supports driven into the bedrock under the museum. The cool thing about the mineral section was that they had lots of large specimens that you were able to touch and get a feel for. Bounced around a few dinosaur bones and reptiles, played in the several museum shops (always cool but pricey) and hightailed it out to see the Guggenheim. Delving into Central Park was a little weird. I knew the direction I wanted to go, but the graceful curving pathways all had star-picket fences stopping me from choosing my own route. Eventually I popped out near the Metropolitan Museum of Art and watched some lads breakdancing while munching on a knish. I’ve a newfound favourite food.

Yes, you can get a Lego set for the Guggenheim

I had to visit the Guggenheim, just because it’s weird. Unfortunately the feature was the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Sure he was an awesome architect and broke open the field; a visionary; a man with a tripartite name… but looking at exhibit after exhibit of blueprints is fucking dull unless you’re specifically interested in architecture. There were a few models of his crazier submissions, all marked ‘unrealised’, but for a passerby, just not worth it. Each model also had it’s own security guard telling you to sod off if you got too close. Surely it’d be cheaper to just repair any public damage than hire that many security guards? Or just a simple plexiglass box?

Bright new growth on offer at the Met

There were a few galleries off the side of the main rotunda that sometimes held works of other artists which was more interesting, but there wasn’t a lot. The building itself was more interesting than the exhibit, as the main rotunda is a continuous spiral ramp, intended not to break the flow of an exhibit like museums with boxy rooms do. One thing that was clear in Wright’s larger works was his absolute adoration of the circle – indeed, his career would have been much less stellar if circles had been heavily taxed or the compass hadn’t been invented or something…

The day was only marred by having to use a pointy stick and some aspirin to fight off a migraine in the evening. It’s been lurking there for a few days and wants to attack, but my stick is very pointy.

Skyline at the reservoir in Central Park during a jogger-free moment