A WHIRLWIND! That’s what it was. We arrived home last evening after four days on the great magnetic rock.
At noon yesterday, while on West 57th to meet friends from King Features, we happened to spy the building where Daughter #1 works. That tall one on the left.
We’d never seen it before so we took a rainy walk down there. D1 works in marketing, at Chanel, on the 44th floor.
Closer shot. I wasn’t trying to be artsy with the angles, this is just how things look through the GoPro. It was raining. The iron piggy’s GoPro is the only waterproof camera I own.
See the giant 9 on the pavement? Big as a car? That’s the address.
Day before yesterday, Monday, Ground Zero. We met up with our friends from Seattle, Jan and Connie. I guess you could say this one’s artsy, shooting people from behind, real stealthy-like.
Connie and the bride, observation deck, top of the new tower, One World Trade Center. This was after the zippy 23-mph elevator ride up to 1,254 feet. Visibility was zero, unless you looked down, then you could see a few rooftops far below.
Not much of a crowd. The elevator ride costs $65 a head. Most people hold out for a view. (Correction: I’m told it was $64 for two heads)
I accidentally got my own mug in this one while we were leaving.
A more pleasing mug to be sure, the little mop top. We saw her three days in a row. That makes my month.
Why buy toys? Bring home an 8-pack of paper towels, kids think it must be their birthday again.
In closing, gratuitous motorcycle porn. A 1930 Harley-Davidson VL, the big twin of its day. A local motorman of my acquaintance had the good fortune to learn its whereabouts, and to have the opportunity to snap it up. It sat in a barn in Connecticut since 1954. More than 60 years later, all it took was a carburetor rebuild, a little fiddling with the spark and—behold, she starts, runs and rides.
Don’t worry, he won’t restore it. He, too, thinks it would be a crime to erase all the history out of this one.
Tony DePaul, February 17, 2016, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Glad you found time to spend with family, especially the grand-daughter. The 1930 Harley is an interesting piece; over 60 years in storage and it comes to life (ala Woody Allen’s “Sleeper”).
I’ll have to get a photo of the license plate. The registration year, ’54, is stamped out of the plate, no paper stickers in those days. They had some kind of die that would remove metal in the shape of a 5 and a 4. And dig it, you didn’t throw away spark plugs in those days, the Harley plugs were rebuildable.
The elevator ride was not quite as expensive as you remember it. $32 per person. Now it sounds like a bargain.