Visiting T-Rinity Church!

Roar! This morning I rode into Manhattan to visit Trinity Church and see Alexander Hamilton's grave. I'm not worried about running into Hamilton's ghost because he's still off haunting the Burr family but, hopefully, I won't run into Charles BOOS while I'm in the graveyard! That would be so scary!

Here I am outside Trinity Church. It sure is a cool building!The original church was built in 1696 and the pirate, Captain Kidd, even lent the block and tackle from his ship to aid in the construction. What a nice guy!

Right inside the churchyard is the Trinity Root, a sculpture made out of the root of a giant sycamore that fell during the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001.

My key was supposed to open a padlock that let me into the churchyard but the gate was already open. I guess it's cool that I can lock the gate up if I want to but it kind of takes the excitement out of the location when anyone can walk into the churchyard.

Here I am at Alexander Hamilton's Grave.He was one of America's Founding Fathers and the first Secretary of the Treasury. He was also responsible for founding the U.S. Mint.  He also had a few more unsavory business deals like using the money he raised  for the Manhattan Water Company to set up the first Bank of New York.

I guess my key won't open every gate in the churchyard. Roar...

After leaving Trinity Church I headed further downtown to Battery Park where there was a huge commotion going on.

It turned out today was the Red Bull Air Race and there were stunt planes doing death-defying tricks above the harbor.

Here I am with one of the nice Red Bull girls. She sure was having a fun time at the Air Race!

 It was really hard to get a photo of the planes with my camera but I managed to snap this one here.

Today sure was a fun day! The churchyard was nice and it was cool to see the air race. Maybe next year I'll enter my own plane. It sure would be fun to be a pilot! Roar!

 

Manhattan-henge

Roar! Today was Manhattan Henge, one of the two days during the year when the movement of the sun lines up with the grid system in Manhattan. It's a really cool phenomenon! Normally it happens around May 28th but this year it occurred on the 30th. So this evening I rode up 1st Ave and watched the sun set at a bunch of the major through streets!

Here I am at 14th Street. Roar!

Here I am at 23rd Street. Roar!

Here I am at 34th Street. Roar!

I think it's strange that Manhattan Henge happens on on and around the 28th in the spring and then again around the 12th of July. It also happens for sunrise on December 5th in the fall and then again on January 8th in the winter.  Those dates line up to some strange occurrences in world history! Apparently in 1644 the Boston Massacre took place then in 1804 Alexander Hamilton was shot and killed by Aron Burr in a duel! Not to mention, Christopher Columbus set foot on Haiti plus George Washington himself delivered the first State of the Union Address at Federal Hall right here in New York City! Oh my god! All those events lining up is just too much of a coincidence for me to over look! The layout of the Manhattan Grid must be  some kind of crazy conspiracy! The grid was first proposed in 1811 and a decision was made not to run the streets geographic north-south so they must have wanted Manhattan Henge to line up with these dates!  I'll never look at Manhattan the same way again! Roar!