Saturday, July 9, 2011

City Hopping


Vacation time! I drove to Chicago after work on Friday. The fastest way to the kid's apartment is up Lake Shore Drive, which is fine by me as I'm all about the views of the city. It was a beautiful day, the temperature along the water mild. People were out in droves exercising and enjoying the day. I thought, "I wish I were coming to spend the weekend here!" But it was OK, Shoshana and I were scheduled to fly out in the morning to NYC to visit my son Jonah who neither of us had seen in over a year.

Saturday dawned bright and fair. Flying out of Midway we got an excellent view of the city. The big buildings looked to me like a crystalline encrustation growing along the shore of the big lake. The fields of Michigan reminded me of a circuit board schematic, interrupted by the organic element of drainage. Later, over Appalachia the organic ruled and you could see how it all flows. Then, in our descent to Laguardia the schematic principle returned with the industrial warehouses as microprocessors and the semi trailers backed up to their doors the connections to the grid.

Every time that I've flown into or out of NY I've been on the wrong side of the plane to see the city (I had a window seat if you haven't already guessed), but not this time. I was just beginning to see what I thought might be the tip of lower Manhattan when the plane took a turn to the west and my heart sank. Then it turned back east and the Statue Of Liberty came into view. It was awesome. Another crystalline encrustation along the mouth of a river this time; an estuary full of ships and boats.

I'm pecking this out with my thumbs so I'll leave it at that. I wanted to post a couple pictures of the view from Jonah's fire escape, authentic Brooklyn, but there's no search dialouge box on this android, at least that I've found. I'll have to get back to you.

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