Selfish Hedonist

Greetings dear readers...

It's been slow blogging over the past couple of weeks, due primarily to the impending trip to NYC, and ending today the actual trip to New York. I'm in the concourse of LaGuardia, blogging as the flight is (hopefully slightly) delayed. A little windy here today, no doubt due to Katrina.

I have been away from the news for the most part this trip. This means I haven't really had the time to absorb the full impact on one of my favorite cities by that huge storm. Perhaps because it wasn't as dramatic as 9/11 or as significant in terms of loss of life as the tsunami ... it still feels remote. I've been to New Orleans 3 times and truly love it's vibe, and the people I've met there have been uniformly fun and inviting and up for adventure. It was always a risk building a modern city there but they did it and I love it and now they will do it again and for that I'm glad. I also hope to help out a bit when I'm there again in June 06.

As for the trip to New York: lots of walking. A couple of serindipitous moments that seem inevitable in this city, including stumbling upon free tickets to the revival of the 1971 version of Two Gentlemen of Verona at Shakespeare in the Park, starring Rosario Dawson, my favorite, in her first stage gig. She was very good and the show as a whole was a hoot. Missed opportunity - Friday night, the night we saw the Rude Pundit LIVE, it turns out we missed a Central Park screening of The Muppets Take Manhattan. GRRRR.

Tennis? Saw my favorite woman, Milagros Sequera, lose. Saw my favorite man, Robby Ginepri, on his way to win. Missed Roddick's loss, thank goodness. Became a new fan of Vania King and Italy's Roberta Vinci and Scoville Jenkins and Jamea Jackson. Sat next to James Blake's brother. Loved it.

The bottom line, however, is that there's just too too much to do, and if you're not careful you will feel disappointed that you didn't do something you could have done. Statue of Liberty. Yankees game. Harlem. Still haven't done any of that in all my trips there. Regardless, my advice is to leave at least 2 days for walking around, not even to sightsee, but just to wander into places, stop at a cafe or restaurant, and RELAX. Because otherwise it's go-go-go. And you will collapse from exhaustion. Which is no fun. That is all.

So much for my future career as a travel writer, eh?

Looking forward to coming home, just wish we could be going back tomorrow, so that there would be a new crossword puzzle in the onflight magazine...