The Big Apple

On hearing of my grandmother's passing, I immediately bought some tickets back east for the Pirate and I and instead of the Grand Canyon we decided to spend a few days in The Big Apple. We spent the first few days in Connecticut and the family got introduced to the Pirate. From talking to the Pirate and my folks it seemed everyone was equally enchanted with the other. Being back east is always great! The people just seem less subdued by life and are definitely more quick to know. If they had big mountains I'd be living there right now! Course knowing about the ice in New Hampshire and Vermont is always intriguing.

Well after a few days we went down to New York and we stayed right downtown, 2 blocks from Times Square. We checked out all the big sites: Central Park, the Met, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Times Square, Wall St., the World Trade Center and of course Ground Zero. Ground Zero was infamously impressive. It was really tough when walking through the visitor center to keep the tears back. What a horrific tragedy. I remember exactly when I heard about it. Fortunately, it's an amusing story, that I feel horribly guilty about now. I had just started my first second semester of graduate school and my biophysics class had just started with Dr. Climatologist. He opened the class by saying, "I understand that having class today may be hard for some of you and I won't mind if any of you feel the need to leave." I knew the Dr. fairly well so I said something dumb like, "What's the deal man, eat something bad last night and you don't want to share your gas?" Well, maybe not that dumb, but something close maybe. He asked, "Haven't you heard?" "Heard what," I replied. Then I got the scoop. I think we had class, but I'm doubting anyone rememberd anything that was said. I honestly don't remember anything after being told except spending the rest of the day in the Student Union building watching the news. I really thought I'd moved on, but going to ground zero was really tough. Fortunately, I had the Pirate, and she makes everything in my world easier to deal with. We finished up our trip to New York and came back to Denver for a real busy last few days. It would've been awesome had she stayed longer, but I'm going to Belgium for New Years to hang out for three weeks. The Pirate says Belgium is boring. My reply is that, how can some place famous for so much beer be boring?. She shrugs. Instead we're going to spend most of the three weeks in Italy. The plan is Venice, Rome, Pompei, Florence, Piza, and Cinque Terra. We'll also spend a few days in Paris, one in Chamonix, France and one in Switzerland: Zurich being the most likely city. Lots of driving, but at least we'll have a lot of freedom to do whatever. I like a pretty loose schedule when I travel, so we'll hit as many as we can. Well, this has certainly helped me escape my election anxiety. Now I'll have to go home and find another way to divert myself for the next few hours. Peace.