New York City, Part 4

We lucked into an absolutely beautiful day so we spontaneously decided to go to the Intrepid instead of being inside a museum.  (Comment from an amateur: "Why would you want to be in a museum? It's just full of dead people's pictures!") The Intrepid is interesting, but it felt sort of like a Disneyland ship exhibit. You can't get the sense of the vast size of an aircraft's hangar deck (underneath what you see as the deck the planes land on) when there are exhibits filling up the space.

That said, here I am in a medical evacuation helicopter. The goal was to get the wounded up and out fast and that meant a bare-bones framework of a helicopter-- with my feet hanging out. I found this interesting because I was with an air rescue squadron in Viet Nam. Our helicopters were much larger (below). The yellow piece is the hoist that would pull up a long basket with the wounded inside.

DaNang, Viet Nam, 1969

How do they fit planes in under the landing deck? Fold-up wings (below). Interesting stuff on the Intrepid but geared for avid fans of planes and ships. And kids. We did make friends with Charlene at the ticket booth. She's moved to New York City from Ohio to go to college.

Oh yes, we make lots of friends in New York City, once again much to the dismay of our friend who lives there. Why would we bother to talk to strangers when the rule of thumb on the streets is "No eye contact!" OK, we do the no-eye thing on the streets but on the subway is another story.  Remember, we never take our maps out because we don't want 5 different residents arguing with each other as to which is the best route for us to take. On the C Line we talked to Mark, once again proving that New Yorkers are the friendliest people around.

His companion had really great red (dyed) hair and we discussed colors and the fact that they were originally from Brazil. He mentioned he had once dyed his hair green and Susan jokingly asked if it glowed in the dark. Well, YES! And here's the picture he showed us.

We pay an outrageous sum to stay in the same hotel every time. Why? The staff is great. Here are Domingo and Marcel. Marcel really is friendly, he just likes to pretend he's stern, just in case you really aren't supposed to be in the lobby. They both take great care of us and always have a smile when they see us coming back in at the end of a long day.

 

This piece of art just didn't talk to me so it became a give-away. Both my gallery and my Muse have told me I'm getting too cute and have to work on getting my edge back. Point taken. Sometimes it's easier to be cute than to really push for soul. Nobody ever said being an artist was easy.