New York -- Awesome as Always
July 2007

As I blog this, the Official Family of Sir Charles is on the Magical Anniversary History Tour in San Diego. Honestly, I don't know how it could possibly be 20 years since we committed to going Aloha and breathing together and all that. More about that in a later, in a laid-back West Coast post.


I need to relate the travels of the Eldest Progeny and I to Gotham a couple weeks ago. It was our annual father-daughter get-away-for-a-few-summer-days thing. So if you don't want to read about that, please fell free to go over to twitter.com and read about how some guy resqueezed his meticulously bottom-up squeezed toothpaste tube to repair the damage done by his middle-squeezing girlfriend. We've all been there.

Eldest Progeny always smiles widely when she is in New York, emerging from Penn Station after a great no-taxi trip from JFK. The airport, you know.

A mini family reunion awaited us in the big city. Here we find official dad of Sir Charles; his brother, the awesome golfer and perennial club champion Uncle Dave; and Official Cousin Tim, a young guy just out of college loving it working in the ad industry somewhere in the Village. Plus all their significant-in-varying-degrees-of-significance other female companions. Tim's friend Kate is a public school elementary teacher, which is something that I for one admire greatly. The mere thought of trying to do that in Manhattan intimidates the living daylights out of me, so kudos to Kate and good luck with that. Here are all of us posing at Washington Square in front of that arch where Harry dropped off Sally in that excellent flick When Harry Met Sally.

In this park you may encounter some dude doing the most amazing hacky sack tricks ever. The guy can talk about stuff while he is doing all this, and it is in such conversation that you find he is the second highest ranked footbagger in the world. I do not know how anyone can be sicker than this guy. No sir.

Progeny the Eldest has a bag for her school stuff that makes her look like a Trotskyite or Che Guevara or something. Our adorable little communist.

There is a bakery in the Village that is said to have the "best cupcakes anywhere". A line of folks who are starved enough for these apparently awesome cupcakes to wait patiently for them goes way out the door. I could have added this to the list of things I am lacking understanding of from last post, because, I mean, cupcakes? You're standing in line for cupcakes? Eldest is good at looking perplexed for a blog photo.

In the Village there is a place to get something called bubble tea.

This is something I had never heard of. Bubble tea is iced and has tapioca berries in the bottom which you suck up in a large calibre straw.

Why did nobody ever tell me about bubble tea? Love that stuff. Oh. My.

Our hotel is an interesting old timey place. Art deco, I believe. Look at the art deco-y flourishes in the masonry of this inconspicuous wall.

The elevator has a button that I have not seen before. It would be really nice if there were buttons like these all over the places where people need help.

It was lucky that I was there during the NYC triathlon, a chance to meet up with some friends and spectate. Here I found Don of the Mauna Kea altitude sickness, near-carbonic acid overload, ranger buttering-up post. His significant other, the awesome Lia, fixed a batch of smashing muffins. I was lucky enough to have had one and I can tell you that I am sure they were far higher on the Dandy Scale than the "best cupcakes anywhere".

Someone, I won't say who, thought Lia was my daughter. That is pretty funny, except for I think that, at least theoretically, I am indeed old enough. Zounds!

One of the racers was the excellent moray-spotting snorkeler Erica who can also run a mighty fast tri. There were similarly amazing results from Tracy, Basil, and Jeannine, also of the Stern Curacao team, major fast division. Tracy and Basil are also really good at ordering a perfectly incredible sushi dinner. Erica knows dim sum. Thank heavens for the sophisticated New York Asian food orderers!!

Speaking of the Doug Stern kids, here's friend Judy who was kind enough to meet us at Lalo's for creme brulee.

Broadway was fun as always. We saw Forbidden Broadway, the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Rent. I will not go to Les Miz anymore. Sorry, but I have seen this about 11 times. So even though "she's back", we did not avail ourselves of the opportunity to see the famous whirling stage set again, much to the chagrin of a certain 14-year-old.

The next few things are pictures of us doing touristy things in NYC. You can skip this if you want. I hope you don't consider these things a waste of your browser cache. I guess you can empty it if so. I just realized it took my whole San Diego vacation to write this. With that much time, it probably should have been better. Geez, hopefully you went to twitter when I suggested it 10 paragraphs and 8 days ago.

Here is proof that we completed the subway-bus Manhattan to Laguardia double. No cabs for us adventurous types. You might have read somewhere in here that Your Humble Bloggist digs public transportation. Oh yeah.

So that was our short visit to the Land of Doug Stern. Still stinks that he's gone. I was doing some deep water running in the ocean the other day and I had a question I think only he could have answered. Well, thanks as always for reading. I'm working on a tale of house pet crickets and other odds and ends for the next post, so come back soon. And go make sure your toothpaste tube hasn't been messed up.

PS When I spell checked this, "Zounds" survived, while "Geez" did not. I thought you might be interested to know that. I don't know why.