NYC.

New York is extremely intense. I spent a couple days in Port Washington with Kaitlyn and her family getting the suburban experience. I took the train into Manhattan and walked around a bit, went to the Met very briefly and then the MOMA, walked back through the rain and visited the Library and St. Patrick's Cathedral, and had dinner with them on the upper east side. Now I am staying in Brooklyn getting the gritty urban view of it.

After the thunderstorm let up and I was able to leave the suburbs, I spent yesterday biking through New York, and let me tell you: I have nothing but wicked respect for the cyclists of this city. I first biked through some industrial districts in Queens and Brooklyn to get from the LIRR to Matt's apartment. I did this without a map - I got off the train, knowing which side of the tracks I needed to be on, rode around in a circle confused for a while, and then noticed a plane landing in La Guardia (to the north), which gave me my bearings.

After dropping my stuff here, I biked over the Williamsburg bridge into Manhattan to meet up with Dorothy on the upper west side. Cyclists in NYC run red lights, go the wrong way up streets... pretty much, the traffic lights are only a loose guide - and that goes for pedestrians as well. There will be areas of intense traffic, but much of the time there are also areas where there are no cars at all, and pedestrians swarm into the street, and riding becomes even less predictable.

NYC Critical Mass sucked. We had a good jazz funeral at the assembly beforehand to commemmorate the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, but when we left, we didn't even get a block away from Union Square before we were boxed in by the cops. We turned around and walked back to the square on the sidewalks as cops picked folks out of the crowd to give tickets to. The ride didn't even last two minutes. I regrouped somehow with a couple folks a bit south on Broadway, and we all agreed that it was fucking bogus.