New York City, Part Seven

We are finally back to this narrative.

When I was a kid, the other folk in the neighborhood and I used to sit on a neighbor’s lawn on the summer and eat watermelon around a tree. We would spit our seeds at each other and into the rock ring surrounding the tree.

As we sat there, we used to talk about the world. The Empire State Building often came up in those discussions. Two points were routinely made. First point–if you jumped off the Empire State building, you would die before you hit the ground. I am uncertain as to the logic behind our thinking on that one, but I can recall discussing it with my father. He said that it was probably true, mostly because you would be repeatedly slammed into the building on the way down. Second point–if you threw a penny off the Empire State building, it would build up such force that it would kill someone if it hit them on the ground. Actually, I think we decided that it would more than kill them–it would slice the person in two–head to foot. In later discussions my father, he said this would never happen, as the penny would be slowed by aerodynamics.

The Empire State Building has always been part of my personal mythology. I had to take a pilgrimage to the shine of the watermelon charged bull sessions on the neighbor’s lawn.

I did not, however, make it to New York City until 2004–some thirty years later. On that trip, we tried to go up the Empire State Building, but the line just to get into the building was an hour and a half. So we skipped it, and went to ride the wooden escalator at Macy’s instead. It was too cold to bother with it on the next trip to New York City in February 2006. So I had not been to Mecca.

This trip proved to be the one in which all was accomplished. After checking in and taking care of business, we hit the streets. We had recently purchased a book about walks in New York City, and decided to take a walk around Times Square with the book. On the way to the starting point, we passed the building. I observed that there was no line–no line. It was too good to be true. So I did not believe it.

We then went arrived at the starting point, and headed out on our walk. We shortly came to the Empire State Building. Again, no line outside the building. We walked into the building. No line all the way up to the ticket place. We purchased our tickets. Short line–less than five minutes–at the elevators. We took the bizarre twists and turns at the top of the elevator, but again, there was no line. Finally, we were at the top. I had reached Mecca.

The place was very windy–very, very windy–on the 86th floor observatory. How in the world they thought to make this a Zeppelin landing spot is beyond me. We put on the headphones, and walked around the building, looking at the sites. It was one of those rare times in my life when I was not going to be moved, even if it meant I was being impolite by overstaying my time at a spot. We had purchased an audio tour, and went through the seven stations there. I stood at each station listening to the audio guide for as long as the guide went on. I did not care that others wanted to look. I figured that I am going up here only once in my life, and I was not going to be moved for anyone or anything.

Strangely, though, nothing really stands out about that stroll around the observation deck other than it was a long ways down. The sun was setting over Brooklyn. A sax guy was playing. I resisted the urge either to jump or to throw a penny off the roof.

We were up there for probably an hour and a half. When we came down, it was closed to eight o’clock, and I was dead tired. We walked back toward our hotel, bought a bad deli dinner, and ate it in our room. We sat there watching Andy Griffith. Aunt Bea was learning to fly or something. Zombies ate my brain. I was soon asleep. I had walked over 17,000 steps that day.

Today’s stats–Yesterday, I walked 11,006 steps. As of this moment, 7:15 p.m. on July 6, 2009, I have walked 129,237 steps in 11 days.