Sunday, May 29, 2005
February 20, 2005 - The Gates
Perhaps you noticed there were no Fresh Pond photos today. That's because we (minus Cassady) were in NYC today, Sunday, February 20, 2005, to see The Gates in Central Park. And then there's our attempt to go down on Saturday. We arrive at the bus terminal for the ride to NYC at around 8:30am... to find a line of nearly a thousand people, or more, with the same idea! We waited about two hours. It didn't look like there would be enough buses until after noon. So we bailed and returned home. Next morning we are at the bus terminal by 7:15am. And there are only 50+ people ahead of us. The bus we got left a bit before 8, NYC about 12:30pm. Short subway ride, and an 8 block walk to Central Park.
Click a thumbnail photo to see the full size photo.
Wasn't The Odd Couple a TV program about two incompatible people living together in New York City?
I was a topiarian in my youth.
Its not often that you see a banner proclaiming mammal eats dinosaur hanging from a museum entrance.
There were people wearing all sorts of orange things. A rollerblader with orange wheels. A Dachshund with an orange sweater.
And we both noticed the not insignificant number of women wearing Blackglama mink coats. There must be a lot of money in this town.
Now, back home, writing these words, having uploaded the pictures, my feeling is one of having returned from a foreign country. And so many people. There must have been millions of them. A veritable seething mass! Central Park has probably never seen so many people in such a short time.
We cut across the park at one point and found a very hilly section with paths going every which way. Then the peculiar thought of living in NYC came over me--but only if living on the edge of Central Park were possible. That way every day for a walk would also be a mushroom hunting/photographing day. And Central Park, being much bigger than Fresh Pond, would likely have more varieties of trees and, consequently, more varieties of mushrooms. The idea lingers--but continues to weaken.
We have a late lunch/early dinner at En Plo. Remind me to have the FRIED Calamari next time (it was not bad whatever the alternate way of cooking was). Everything was quite good-especially the chocolate dessert at the end.
We returned to the park, briefly, to see a few more of the sights, heading straight across through some uneven terrain
where we could see some of the famously hard granite that keeps New York afloat.
including the building with the famous birds of prey who got kicked out of their home by Mary Tyler Moore and gang. 
We then head south, towards the bus station, for the ride home, but thinking, after some walking, that we are a LONG WAYS from there and decide to take a taxi. But are we on the right street for catching one? We go this way, then that way, 
ending up back at the park, and The Plaza Hotel, where we get a cab likkity-split!
We catch a 6:30pm bus back to Boston--with a driver from Chicago who has never driven from New York to Boston. We head north from the bus terminal and pass along the north side of Central Park. In the city lights we can make out a few of the gates waving gently in a breeze. We will never see them again, except via these photos, as the entire project will be removed in a week or so. We get lost once and go in a big circle somewhere in Harlem. We reach Boston after an uneventful ride--except for the few moments when one passenger thinks they left their purse at a rest stop, by 11pm. We take the subway, then a bus home, where we discover that our dog Cassady is happy, like always, to see us.
These photos were taken the next day, Monday, February 21, 2005, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the Fresh Pond Reservation, during a blizzard.
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