The week that started in the dirty big city and ended with clean mountain air

Monday (7) Ok I have to verify with Strava it was 7 miles but I think it was.  My memory is hazy at best for somethings.



View of Lady Liberty from the East River Greenway,
Manhattan Bridge in the foreground Brooklyn Bridge in the mid-ground.
And yes it really was that hazy and smoggy.

I'm in NYC Mon - Thur of this week and Monday I was fortunate enough to get out in time to take a walk from my hotel at 38th and Lex to Battery Park then find the Wall St. Station and get on the #5 Uptown or is it Downtown subway back up to GCT at 42nd and Lex.  Who the hell knew this girl who never learned to cross the street until she was damn near 20 would be navigating NYC in her future?



Freedom Tower

 

Let's jump back to crossing the street.  I grew up on back roads, I'd say dirt, but in Wisconsin, there were very few dirt roads, much like New Hampshire, the dirt were closed in mud and winter seasons.  My road RR2 in WI was paved, only by necessity because there was a large dairy farm.  Crossing the street was never anything we ever thought twice about.  Of course, you looked, but you had no idea what you were looking for other than a lost cow!

I just thought this was so beautiful

Going away to college taught me about crosswalks and pedestrian walkways and well all sorts of things, but my mother reads this so we won't get into that... mostly about why you had to look both ways to cross the street, to dodge vehicles, which rarely stop, unlike cows who sort of are as stunned as you are that something living is in your path.  All quite unique experiences for me, I'm sure some of the folks I went to college with were amazed at my nativity.  I'm quite certain my second roommate Lisa was, I'll always remember meeting her for the first time, in the Quad, she had a shirt on "I used to be Snow White but I drifted" and I didn't understand. I wonder if she even remembers that.  She had drifted quite often by then, me, not so much...

Da Brooklyn Bridge

It certainly is fun when we old folks reflect on the distant past, isn't it?

Crappy beer, nice view.

Tuesday (0) Of course the crappy air and the 7-mile walk did me in a bit...  fucking pleurisy.  I have now learned a couple Ibuprofen 4 - 5 hours apart stops the pain.  If you have never had pleurisy, imagine trying to breathe normally and having pain taking a normal breath.  Then imagine taking a deep breath, like perhaps to sigh or yawn and the feeling of a serrated knife heavily poking through and dragging up one side of your ribs or the feeling of a sort of dull knife stabbing your breastbone as you take a deep breath.  This is the best I can do to explain it. I take the Ibuprofen, it makes breathing more tolerable and frankly ME more tolerable.

And some parts of the East River Greenway you get to get up close and personal with the East Side Highway....

It was going to be 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. in meetings.  hence the long walk the day before.  The most I'd get was taking the long route to the toilet.

It was actually a bit cooler by the water.

The hotel has two great bars, because of the rain the rooftop was closed (my waitress from Monday night remembered me - not sure why I'm a dorky looking tourist?) so I went to the lower bar.  Better beer, but loud and full of children looking to hook up.  Ugh...  fortunately my reading glasses and dark beer and playing WWF on my cell phone kept them at bay?  The bartender asked about my shirt "So where is the Clamdigger?"  I said Westerly RI at the beach.  He said Misquamicut, I'm from RI.  Awesome!  So we talked RI, he is from there, I'm a transplant.  Which was made clear by who I root for in baseball?  The Tigers.  He roots for the Sox and anyone who beats the Yankees.  I guess I should have said the Cubbies, but Cathy doesn't read this so she won't be any the wiser.

Wednesday (3)  Mostly walking around NY Botanical Gardens (NYBG).  Our team outing for this year.  Clearly a very exciting thing for people living a very urban lifestyle.  I was really curious about the history of the 250 acres of gardens in the Bronx.  From what I could gather from the literature it is over 125 years old (founded 1891) and founded based on a Columbia botanist visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens near London.   Olmstead, who designed Central Park as well as my current home park of Wilcox park, also worked on the design of the NYBG.  The mission is the protection of plants through direct and applied research (Pfizer has a laboratory there), as well as teaching the public about plants, and maintaining and protecting the gardens. 

All in all, it was interesting, more than just rock and trees, some very unique trees for sure.  Snake Pine and Dwarf Sequoia.  I found it really interesting the Docent kept mentioning that people come here to figure out what to install in the landscape of what I'm assuming is their second home somewhere not in NYC.

Additionally paintings inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's visit to Hawai'i, as well as some plantings in the greenhouse (I missed the botanical exhibit because I get lost very easily and was engaged in conversation with a colleague on her foster daughter who came with foster dogs (they were NOT going to let Sophie be separated from her pups - can I get a tearful awwwww), the rest of her kids (not sure when they stop being foster daughter and son and become daughter and son - she and her husband are amazing for the number of children, 12 I think, they nurture and sent into adulthood, two of them were biological)  biking, running, camping, Vermont, canoeing, we had LOTS to catch up on!

After a team dinner, I took a walk the long way back to the hotel thinking I might get a beer but decided I'd walk instead when all of a sudden I hear my name "BETH LAZOR-SMITH" as I'm contemplating walking to Bryant Park.  OMG, it was a very drunk co-worker with a slightly less drunk co-worker.  How fun is that?  They were on their way to the train to go home.  Hugs chatting and then OMG I'm going to miss my train and ZOOOOM they were gone.  That was fun.

Thursday (1)  All day in meetings in an un-airconditioned office building.  A steam pipe explosion in the Flat Iron district (it's that crazy bad juju triangle building that cuts 5th avenue into 5th and Broadway, and it also looks like an iron).

Because everyone was getting edgy in the far to warm conference room the meeting ended about an hour early with the remaining topic to be discussed on a subsequent phone call and I got home 90 minutes before I expected I was going to be home...  Nice because I was exhausted and still had to pack for a long weekend in VT.  The weather was predicted to be crappy on Sunday, we went with the hope it wouldn't but prepared to come home if Sunday was a rainy mess.

Friday (4) We got up and out just before 8.  I was so not with it, and never really got with it.  Thankfully I had a list and it was pretty complete, something in me prompted me to find all the lists I had in a pile and make sure I had all the stuff in one list.  It sucks to forget stuff.

What you don't see is the cliff on the other side of the hammock, all the way down to the Waterbury Reservoir

Dave's buddy Bill met us up there and had the site next to us.  They went off for a ride and Jax and I took a hike, there was a cut off to make it a loop instead of an out and back.  I forget that VT parks have everything expertly labeled and that I only needed to look for the sign, not the low point where we should cross the river to pick up the cutover trail.

Very serious about something.

Jax enjoyed the three water crossings, ever since Mohawk he's pretty keen on calm rivers with lots of rocks, and he stopped and had some water from the river and I thought how nice it would be to just sit in it. I was hot and hoping this weekend wasn't going to turn into the last weekend we spent in VT.

Saturday (33 & 3)  My hip/butt started bugging me on Friday, I figured a nights rest and all would be fine.  Not so much.  It didn't hurt to bike so I did.  It hurt to walk for about 1/10 of a mile then it wasn't so bad.

About Mile 15 in my 33 mile ride, after the big climb (Strava elevation below somewhere)

The ride was good.  I was still very tired from the week but this was my opportunity to get out and ride in the cool of the morning instead of the heat of the afternoon, either I went first or Dave and Bill did.  Can't leave Jax alone, against the rules and also unfair to him.

Ingrate...  but the leaves may have been cooler.

The big climb and really only climb would be over in the first 12ish miles of the ride.  It was the steeper side of VT100 but I'd rather get it over with early in the ride than late in the ride.  The Strava elevation makes it look horrible, it wasn't that bad.  After the climb, I was afforded more opportunity to pay attention to the scenery and it was spectacular from that point forward.  I'm glad I didn't do the route clockwise.




As the day wore on I hobbled more and more and whatever it was would loosen up when I walked.  Jax and I checked out the A side of the camp and snoozed off and on all afternoon.  It was grand.

I love looking at the elevation profile on the small screen on Strava.  Makes me feel like such a bad ass!
 

Sunday (0) Total prediction of rain all day and looking at the radar for the whole of New England it was going to be a mess with bands of rain.  We had packed up mostly on Saturday night figuring it would be raining by the time Jax gets us up, about 6 a.m.  It wasn't but it was a miserable night sleep for me, I guess it is a pinched nerve in the piriformis area or because of a tight piriformis, kept me up most of the night and I tried to not keep Dave up.  I should have gone into Jax's bed.  He's graduated to the dinette bed, after a thorough review of all the Air Stream forums about the upholstery standing up to dogs. Of course, it was covered with a sheet and then a thick blanket on top of it, just in case this didn't include boxer nails.  Jax was pretty freaking stoked by a bed off the floor and windows!

Big Dog Bed
He really was thrilled to not be on the floor.

It took a good half an hour of hobbling back and forth in the trailer to get things moving enough to venture outside and help with the last of the packing up.  Fortunately, the rain wasn't due until 8 a.m., with the latest forecasts.   And at 8 it did rain, just as we were dumping and several people wanted to check out Spud.  It was a light rain and it didn't last more than 10 minutes and it's fun to talk RVs with people.



As a friend said "Boxers look like a cop pulling someone over in a 15 MPH school zone"

The drive back was littered with rain from a mist to a downpour and we got home to find it dry.  We live in a bizarre weather triangle where the weather seems to divide around us, it makes it difficult to plan things because it could be raining or snowing 10 miles away but fine where we are.  A good day to spend driving back and unpacking and laundry.  Well, Dave did most of that.  I alternately took painkillers every 2 hours and iced my hip/butt in hopes this would just go away.  Ha ha ha...



I just loved this image.  It isn't our camp site but it struck me as so beautiful and serene as Jax and I walked by.

Throwing myself down the basement stairs did cross my mind, but then that would be another chore for Dave, he'd get to clean up the mess so I decided to have a beer.

Yikes

Mileage:  Who the hell cares.

Knitting:  None, didn't bring it to NYC

Books: None... crazy right? I listened to the radio, it made me bonkers.  I started a book Monday morning.

While the week ended on a bit of a sour note with a pinched nerve, all in all I still have most of my humor and sanity, so we will call it a win.  Plus Dave doesn't have to explain to anyone why I was found in a bloody heap at the bottom of The Staircase.

Sincerely,
Beth, kinda scared about the century ride in NH, will the body that continues to betray me let me finish, and if it does will it unleash some version of hell on me the next day?  Tune in next week to see what I can try and find the humor or lesson in.