Books, Breads and Bikes: November 2019

"Teach a man to fish and he eventually breaks his fishing pole."

- Winston Churchill

Okay you don't need to google that, I'm pretty sure Winston Churchill never said it. I did however, break both of my fly rods this year. One broke mid-cast and the other broke during a messy release. Fortuitously both were under warranty and were able to be replaced, though I missed a couple months of fishing at the end of the summer.

During late June I participated in an informal fishing contest sponsored by a local fly fishing shop. Given ten days, participants caught as many different species within the area as possible. I was pretty far out of the winnings, but had fun and got a lot of fishing in.

The relative importance of participating was maintaining my schedule and routine during the competition, as if every day is an opportunity to wake up at 4 AM, drive to Wisconsin, fly fish for 12 hours, drive home, ride my bicycle to the YMCA, swim a half mile, catch the paper, do the puzzles, make dinner, have a beer, wash the dishes, do the next day's New York Times Crossword puzzle, fall asleep, wake up and go to work the next day without pretense.

I'm not "saying" that's how it went, because it wasn't, it was only one of ten days.

The whole thing smacked of effort, as they say.

So around about mid-summer, I bought a round trip ticket to New York. I've been happily employed as a retail associate for almost a year now, and a vacation seemed warranted. Luckily I was able to get the time away from work and I started planning my visit for late October.

I flew to Newark airport on a Monday, and walked, and walked and walked. I walked across the Brooklyn bridge, I walked through Soho, Chelsea, Chinatown and the World Trade Center Memorial. I found the Fearless Girl statue, facing down the New York Stock Exchange; I walked past the Flatiron building, wrapped in scaffolding 22 stories high. I took some pictures, had a couple slices of pizza and got home in time to meet my hosts before they started their Tuesday morning.

Tuesday I went to New Haven, Connecticut and saw the Peabody Museum. On Wednesday I went to the Meat Packing District, visited the Whitney Museum, purchased a three day Citi Bike membership, found the 14th Street YMCA, swam and had more pizza.

Thursday I started early, riding a Citi Bike past the UN Building, through Central Park and stopping at the Guggenheim museum. I've never seen anything like Central Park, or the constant throngs of people in and around the city. The Manhattan Riverfront Greenway was safer than riding in the street, and every view of the Hudson and East rivers was worth the effort.

With half the day remaining I made it to the American Museum of Natural History and The Metropolitan Museum of Art before they closed - eventually riding my way back to the Chelsea YMCA to swim again before having a late night Chinatown dinner and beer with my host.

These two museums, the Natural History Museum and The Met - are grandiose in scale. I only had enough time to see one specific room of The Met, and happily viewed paintings of the Abstract Expressionist style before going to the roof and watching the sun set over Central Park.

Friday morning I saw the sunrise and got on the New Jersey transit to Newark before 8 AM.

While I was there my streak of New York Times crossword puzzles went past five hundred days. As I sat in the courtyard of the Natural History Museum and finished the Thursday puzzle without googling the answers or querying a blog for hints, I thanked whoever I could for the opportunity to be there, accomplishing something I had struggled with for so long.

So there it is, a couple of big events in the past four or five months. I think I skipped a few things, but most of it is in there somewhere.

Thanks for reading.