New York City

Location: Manhattan, New York
Local time: 1:10 pm

I noticed I forgot to mention the distance traveled from Lexington, KY, to Manassas, VA. That leg of the trip was 531 miles, and brought the running total up to 1,747.1.



I have been in New York City since Sunday, May 8. I haven't done a lot of touristy stuff here, instead I've spent my time primarily hanging out with friends and taking it easy. Pretty soon after I arrived we went up to Foxwoods to see Jerry Seinfeld live. He's no Louis CK, but it was still great to see him live finally.

On Wednesday, May 18, I went to the True Chip Till Death awards to see Shrimps performing throughout the evening. Here they are with Bud Melvin giving the night a happy ending:



It feels like it's been raining here non-stop since I arrived, so once a nice day finally came we went to Central Park for a bit.




This past weekend saw more chip music action at Blip Festival and a show on Sunday featuring the one and only Brady Leo. Also I unwittingly donated $20 to some kind of Brooklyn animal shelter. The less said about that the better.

Yesterday I went down to the World Trade Center site. This is the first view I got when I came out of the subway station:



That's One World Trade Center under construction. More pictures of it and the construction:






There is also a memorial but the line to get in was out the door and I didn't feel like standing around in a line for hours. I did get a good look at this outside though:



I'm not sure how much longer I want to stay in New York City. Though I love to walk around and people-watch, it's a bit overwhelming at times because there is no escaping people. Sometimes I don't want to be around crowds and have to dodge people left and right when walking down the sidewalk. I find myself wanting to stay in sometimes just to get some (relative) peace and quiet. The question is not if I'm leaving here, but when.


May 8 miles: 264

Total miles to date: 2,011.1

DC

From Lexington, KY, I headed to Manassas, VA, to hang out with the one and only Dan Fisk. I got there the evening of Friday, May 6. Saturday we went to do some sightseeing stuff. Our first stop was the NRA museum in Fairfax, VA.

Even though I took a lot of pictures at the NRA museum, I could have easily taken three times as many. There was just so much interesting history and craftsmanship on display. It was a bit overwhelming.

Hermann Göring's shotgun:



Yikes.

There was a glass-top table full of weird little things. It was like a steampunk's wet dream.




The weird thing labeled 23 was apparently used to test the strength of powder.


The thing in the middle of this photo was used to light tinder, if I recall correctly. Note the combination brass knuckles/dagger/gun to the left. Awesome.


Here is my favorite of these oddities. You set a "timer" using a sundial, and at the specified time the magnifying glass focused the sun's rays on the powder, setting off the gun. Do want.


One of my favorite parts of the NRA museum, and something I was hoping they'd have, the T48!


Check out this engraving work. Amazing.


I have many more pictures from the NRA museum. If I get ambitious enough to go through them at some point I'll post more. These should be enough for now.

From the NRA museum we went into DC and got something to eat, then our next stop was the National Cathedral. I'm not into the whole religion thing, but it's an impressive building. The gargoyles and grotesques are particularly interesting, but many were hard to see. I wished I had binoculars with me.








Me, on the 7th floor:

Dan:

View from the 7th floor. You can see the Capitol, Washington Monument, and Jefferson Memorial.

Here you can see some of the gargoyles and grotesques from the 7th floor.



Next stop: New York City!

The ponies

This morning I went with my Mom to Keeneland to watch the racehorses do their morning workouts. They're impressive to see up close.



It's a beautiful place.

















Equally impressive was how those little jockeys are able to control the horses, particularly when the two aren't quite agreeing on what to do next.

Days 2&3

Location: Lexington, KY
Local time: 1:06 pm

I left Lawrence around 7 am on May 2nd and headed east to my Mom's place in Lexington, Kentucky. The drive through Missouri was uneventful, but soon after I crossed into Illinois it started raining and didn't stop for the rest of the drive. Parts of Illinois were flooded nearly up to the level of the highway surface. I saw a lot of fresh roadkill in Indiana. My guess is they were driven to find higher ground by all the water. But then again I'm just an unemployed bum so what do I know.

I made it to Lexington around 7 pm yesterday and will be here until Friday. One thing I noticed (too late in the process, unfortunately) when I was packing up the car in Denver was that I have way too much stuff to bring in the car. One of my projects while I'm here in Lexington will be to whittle down my stuff and leave the excess here. The primary target is my clothes. I want to cut the amount I have with me in half.

Another lesson I've learned the hard way is that the roof cargo carrier on my car is not totally waterproof. Considering the amount of rain and road spray I drove through yesterday I have to say it did well. Nothing in it was soaked, and I have time here to dry things off. No permanent damage was done. I'll just make sure to wrap stuff in garbage bags or the like before loading it in there.

I'm going to use this blog for more than just an account of where I've been and what I'm doing. I'd also like to write about some of the things I'm thinking about, whatever they may be. Hopefully I'll have a chance to do a bit of that while I'm here. It's not like I have a job to go to.

May 2 miles: 640
May 3 miles: 0

Total miles to date: 1,216.1

Beginning

Location: Lawrence, KS
Local time: 8:05 pm

Despite my best intentions to get out of Denver on April 30th I grossly underestimated the amount of time it would take to pack everything up, move it to storage, and pack up the car. I left Denver this morning at about 7:15 Denver time. It was an easy and relatively uneventful day of driving.

I'm staying in Lawrence, Kansas, tonight. I'm exhausted from all the packing and moving, much of which I scrambled to do on Saturday after partying pretty hard the night before. It was an amazing night...definitely one I'll remember for a long time. I can't think of a better way to leave Denver (even if it didn't end up being my last night in Denver after all). Now I need some rest.

Miles today: 576.1