My Summer Solstice Adventure: Afternoon

Roar! After I rode over in to Manhattan, I found myself up in Inwood at 207th street. Turns out there was some great graffiti up there!

Check out this sweet Pink Panther tag! Looks like inspector Clouseau is on the case! Roar!

I decided to ride down the West Side bike path to the George Washington bridge and do the Key to the City location there. The GW is such a BRUTAL looking bridge. In fact, the famous French architect Le Corbusier called it the only beautiful thing the U.S. ever created. Roar! That is just so French!

The map of the West Side bike path was poorly marked and I found myself on a trail that quickly turned into a dirt path that then ran into train tracks. I guess I was on the wrong trail, roar?

I could still see the GW in the distance so I pennied the tracks for good luck then climbed through the woods towards the bridge.

After passing through the woods I finally made it back to the West Side bike path. I then rode up and around to the entrance to the south path to check out the Key to the City location.

Roar?! Where did the lock my key opens go?! There I was at the 3rd gate and the lock was missing. I guess someone must have taken it.

Ahh... There was such a lovely view of the Hudson river from atop the George Washington Bridge. I could see all the way out the harbor. I'll be heading down there later.

Look down there! That's the little red lighthouse under the great gray bridge. The subject of a famous children's book. Let's go take a closer look.

Roar! It's the groovy green dinosaur in front of the little red lighthouse under the great gray bridge! I hope we can all be friends!

Next I continued my way down the West Side bike path until I hit 72nd Street, then decided to cut on over to the park for a Make Music New York performance. But first I needed to make a quick stop at the 72nd Street subway stop.

Ring! Ring! Wait, where did the phone go?! I was expecting a call from Simon! Roar!

I continued my ride over to Central Park to see a performance of Iannis Xenakis's Persephassa on the lake. Here I am playing in the fountain by the lake while I wait for the concert to start. Woah! What is that kid behind me up too?

The performance was really cool! All of the percussionist were set up on boats on the lake and the floated around while they performed Persephassa. The audience also got to float around the lake on rowboats to enjoy the concert. It was so neat!

The concert was a little late getting started so unfortunately I didn't have time to stay for the whole thing. Instead of riding the boats I hung out on the small bridge over the lake and enjoyed a nice view of the Upper West Side.

The concert was a really nice end to my afternoon but I still had a long way to go before my day was over. 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!

Wild Weekend Part One: Thursday

Roar! This was one wild weekend! There was so much stuff happening all at once and just no way I could do it all. Like every New York weekend it started on a Thursday, with a trip to the museums in lower Manhattan. First I went to Federal Hall to see the spot where George Washington was sworn in as first president of the USA.

George W. was one classy guy! He sure loved T-Rexes.

This is the stone that George Washington stood on when he took office. I hear if you look hard enough you can still see his boot print. Roar!

Next, I went to the Skyscraper museum over by Battery Park. It has a really cool show on comparing the growth of New York City at the beginning of the 20th century to the current building boom in Shanghai. Here I am in front of an artist rendering of one of the new "future" skyscrapers they are building in Shanghai.

Here I am attacking a model of a new skyscraper in Hong Kong. I hope the real building can hold up to a dinosaur attack!

The Skyscraper Museum had this small exhibit on the Burj Dubai. They really need to update their photos. The exterior of the Burj is done. It's 818 meters high and it's not just the tallest building but the tallest thing ever built by humans! That's pretty cool if you ask me!

In the gift shop of the Sky Scraper Museum they had this cool book of old stereoscopic slides of New York City. It even had a built in viewer so you could look at them all in 3-D.

Here is a stereoscopic image of me looking at slides in the book.

Next stop was the Museum of the American Indian which is in the old U.S. Customs House. Here I am in their sweet lobby!

They had some great art on display. Here I'm checking out the work of this Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook. It was really cool.

This crazy painting is by Andrea Carlson and is really awesome. I definitely recommend checking it out!

Here I am in Bowling Green outside of the Museum of the American Indian. Bowling Green is where the dutch aristocracy would play lawn games back in the early days of New York City. During the Pig War in the winter of 1643 to 44 the Dutch cut the heads off all the Native Americans living in lower Manhattan and then all of the Dutch women went bowling with the heads. It was awful!

I think the park rules should include no playing with human remains. Roar!

I headed back up to Wall Street to get my bike and go home. Now a days everyone is making such a big deal about the economy and the stock market. I remember back at the end of the Cretaceous when the BER (Bone Exchange Rate) fell and everyone started panicking! Now those were some scary times!

As I was heading home I passed the tree lighting ceremony for the New York Stock Exchange. They had all the different celebrities there to perform. Oh my god, is that Lady Gaga?!