nyc musings

I meant to post as soon as we got home from New York but I came down with a killer feel like crap cold/flu. So much for my healthy running streak. I started feeling feverish and terrible on the flight home and have been sick since. So sick in fact I would even label it ‘a man cold’, that’s just how crummy I feel.

But I can’t let any more time pass without making comment on our trip to NYC. Oh people, we had a great time. Ld and I saw all the typical sites: Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Times Square. Even took in a Broadway play. Oh, and the Brooklyn Bridge, we walked across. Very cool. Loved it all.

My all time favorite places visited, though, were the Metropolitan Museum of Art (including the Cloisters, Lacy! You were right) and strolling through Central Park. Those places were absolutely amazing and so aesthetically enriching, I kid you not. They were so wonderfully memorable that on dark days I will be able to pull up a memory and it will be enough. I won’t even have to be there, like Julia says in Orwell’s 1984 about the room she and Winston escape to, “it’s enough to know that it exists.”
Such beauty hung in the halls of one’s mind, that should get anyone through the day, eh?

I will carry with me forever the sights and sounds of NYC: the bright lights, honking horns, hordes of people and most all of them in a hurry, sirens blaring, the stench of cigarette smoke, steam rising from the ground, pigeons, street vendors, musicians playing in the subway, bagged garbage stacked onto the street, and so much more. What surprised me was that I didn’t feel shocked at anything I saw and that includes the homeless on the subway or the beggars or the ethnic diversity. In fact, when we ate at a highly recommended Mexican restaurant in Harlem all I could think of was that it reminded me of Benefield’s in Ripley (only on a much, much larger scale) So, I guess you could say if you’ve lived in Blythe, you’ve seen New York☺.

I loved it all and I loved seeing it with ld. He is essential to travel with as I’ve mentioned before his great skills in deciphering a map. He is also, umm, how shall I put it, interesting to travel with as he is game to see everything and walks purposely, sometimes leaving me 3 paces behind. But he always noticed if I fell too far behind and would turn around and clutch my hand tightly so I wouldn’t get lost in the crowd.

The only downside to traveling with ld (okay, the most exasperating thing!) is he likes to see his sights with music blaring in his ear and more than once he had to be reminded to ‘take the dang earphones out’ of his ears so I could talk to him. Seriously, this was quite an embarrassing problem.

I guarantee you would all cringe with chagrin if you had sat next to him on the subway with his Ipod blaring:

Ld: (speaking really really LOUD) HEY, SEE THAT GUY OVER THERE, THE ONE WITH THE ORANGE PANTS? DO YOU THINK THAT GUY NEXT TO HIM IS HIS GAY LOVER? PRETTY SURE THEY ARE GAY.

Me: (I put my finger to my lips and shoot him a stern look of reprimand) Shhh, they can hear you. Take. Out. Your. Earphones. NOW! And stop talking so (I’m blinking wildly for emphasis) loud!!

Oh, the mortification. You have no idea how unsettling it is to be out and about with such unpredictable outbursts. Imagine walking around Central Park trying to look nonchalantly mainstream when ld comments, (loudly, did I mention LOUDLY?) on a distinguished looking man who has just passed by:

Ld: WHY DO GUYS USE GRECIAN FORMULA ON THEIR HAIR? WHY DOES IT ALWAYS MAKE THEIR HAIR LOOK RED? HUH, WHY IS THAT?

Again, I try to shush him. Is it too much to just speak in normal tones?

Or try this horrific scenario. We are sitting on a double decker tour bus, Penee sitting next to me, ld behind. We are oohing and ahhing over the sites when I turn around and my earphone plugged in hubby looks me in the eye and pronounces solemnly and matter of factly (only it wasn’t subdued as he doesn’t realize he is shouting)

Ld: I’VE GOT GAS.

I smile weakly. For this very reason alone it was impossible for ld and I to look like anything other than what we were: a couple of eccentric country bumpkin old fart tourists. The ones who talk REALLY LOUD and don’t know it because they have earphones in their ears. But, I am here to tell you people, that once I got past that, once I accepted my inner tourist, I simply didn’t care.

It was a once in a lifetime trip. And ld, lest you think I have been too harsh in my poking fun, rest assured I can’t think of anyone, past or present, I would rather have made the journey with.

Thanks for taking me.