Start Spreading the News....

Well, here I am at JFK looking out over the tarmac with an hour to go before I fly home. I'm handwriting, so by the time I type it up I'll be back in Birmingham which is a very surreal idea right now. Internet access in New York for those without wi-fi laptops proved trickier than I would have expected so it's back to trusty pen and paper. Just as an aside, not to be biased or anything, but the airports here are lame compared to the UK and the security is nowhere near as tight as I would have expected.




My trip to Yosemite was a great success (although several weeks too short!). It was good to see what was beyond the city and it didn't take very long before we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere in the the semi-desert of inland California. As luck would have it I was with a good group of people and our guide Dave had a 70's radio show and then his MP3 playing a good selection. Bowling up the highway in the sunshine past Mack trucks, big red barns and gas stations it felt like I was really in America. The road climbed upwards into dramatic scenery courtesy of a big scrap between tectonic plates some time ago (note the geological precision). We stayed in a cabin camp in the woodlands down river from the park and a congenial time was had with the aid of (considerably better than expected) local ales.



Spotted a bobcat on our first hike but no bears in evidence sadly. No gold either which was a shame. The Merced river was a big spot during the gold rush but is protected from mining nowadays. On the second day we went into the park to pay our respects to 3000 year old sequoias then on down into the main valley surrounded by magnificent rockfaces. Our hike took us up to Vernal Falls where, depending on your sanity, it was reportedly possible to swim. As previously mentioned I'm not one to look a gift swim in the mouth [eh?] and was second off the big rock into the idyllic rainbow-adorned pool below. Let's put it this way: it was so cold it was a good 10 seconds after surfacing before I could muster the breath to send some choice vocabulary echoing around the valley. Lake Baikal still takes the temperature prize, but for shock value and exhilaration this might have had the edge. Drying off was no problem as the fitter and speedier members of the group charged on up the mountain and back round in a big loop in a race against the setting sun. Splendid stuff.



Back in San Francisco for a couple of days I busied myself with some hardcore tourism with the able assistance of assorted buses, street cars and trams. Hurrah for the SF trams, they're extremely cool. Alcatraz was well worth the visit although I'm now slightly suspicious that Stephen King may have passed that way too and blatantly ripped off all the escape accounts and interiors for the story that became The Shawshank Redemption. Cheeky sod.


Sailing plans were scuppered due to race season being over. I fared even less well in Manhattan where I couldn't even find any yacht club marinas. On an island stuffed full of rich people you'd think some of them would have stashed a boat near at hand, but no. Marinas on the far shores of New Jersey taunted me but I simply didn't have the time to investigate. There's so much to see in NY that I didn't have enough eyes or brain cells to comprehend it all.


My marina hunt was actually a diversion tactic while I made up my mind whether or not to visit ground zero. In the end I wound up going there three times for various reasons and felt differently about it each time. The first, amongst the crowds of tourists, just felt ghoulish and I couldn't reconcile the pictures in my head of the World Trade Centre with the giant building site before me, or get away from the idea that I was breathing the dust of the dead at what effectively must be the world's most expensive graveyard.


The second visit a few days later was incidental. I'd inadvertently gone to see a dance performance 24 hours early and found it was at the World Financial Centre in an atrium overlooking the site. Standing inside that building there amidst the solid-feeling marble, steel and plate glass, looking at that gaping absence, I was suddenly overcome with the enormity of it. The next night after I'd actually seen the performance, being there just gave me the creeps and I couldn't wait to get away from it, particularly when I spotted all the dumper trucks making off under cover of darkness with their loads of goodness knows what. Like Lady Macbeth unable to sweeten her hands, I can't help feeling that even with all the symbolic ponds, this spot will always be somehow irredeemable.



Grim thoughts aside, I've had a crazy week of sightseeing and cultural enrichment in the Big Apple. But first, a few random interesting things I've noticed:

* There really are loads of yellow cabs, yellow school buses, steaming grates in the street and police cars. However, there's also a large fleet of NYPD golf buggies which are hilarious but handy.

* The subway is not a scary hellhole but is cheap, efficient and runs 24/7. Brilliant.

* You can get bereavement counselling at the vet

* There are an awful lot of little white kids with black/Hispanic/Asian daytime mommies

* In lieu of multi-storey car parks they stack up cars on 2 or 3 level metal lift contraptions and tough luck if yours is on top.

* There are fabulously over made-up men as well as women working at all the fancy cosmetics counters.

* It's quite hard to make yourself understood when you speak English with an English accent (but then I seem to have become invisible again anyway judging by the number of times I've been walked into/on in the the last week).


Just a few of the the wierd and wonderful things going on while I've been snooping round Manhattan, The Bronx and Brooklyn. I went through Queens on the train and got as far as the ferry terminal on Staten Island, so my plan to check out all five boroughs didn't quite work out. I think the enormous amount of time I spent getting drunk on art at the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art might have had something to do with it. In a gutting episode I ran out of time at MoMA and had to trot past a whole floor's worth of Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, Bacon, Klimt, Gaugin etc etc etc. Such an embarrassment of riches in this city.


I was certainly glad of the 24 hour subway when I emerged from a downtown nightclub at 4am one morning with no plan for how to get back to my Upper East Side hostel. I'd gone to see what I imagined would be a DJ set but got a DJ with live band, genre hopping all over the place with moments of genius including a glockenspiel solo. Now you don't see that every day! The next night I scored a last minute standing ticket to a sold out award winning Broadway musical. Now I'm not usually into the whole belting-them-out-with-jazz-hands-and-a-rictus-grin thing, but this had been reviewed as being 'like nothing that has ever been heard on a Broadway stage' so that was an endorsement as far as I was concerned. Well I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was particularly impressed as most of the talented cast would have been too young to legally toast their own success.


The excellent (and free!) contemporary dance show was also a highlight but the coup came on my last night when I got into the Meteropolitan Opera for a tenner. This involved three hours of waiting in an underground corridor but to be honest, I was at saturation point by that time and appreciated the chance to sit down and do nothing for a bit. The lovely older lady next to me kept me entertained with her opera-going tales and the time was soon whiled away. My philanthropist-subsidised ticket procured I went and changed into my crazy red high heels in an attempt to look ladylike for the evening. Unfortunately, they looked pretty tarty amidst the soberly dressed Met crowd and I was in a whole new world of foot torture but Marriage of Figaro was sublime an a fine time was had. My poor feet which have so ably carted me around these last four months are getting a well deserved pedicure when I get back.



And that's it! I clicked my red heels together and said 'there's no place like home'. Lo and behold, I've written this in such dribs and drabs that I'm now in a National Express coach that's just passed the central mosque in Small Heath. I'm having distinct problems with reality right now, and it's not just the sleep deprivation. In my head Tony Blair is prime minister, you can smoke in pubs and Rhianna is number one. I think I need to do some catching up. Four months has been a long time and no time at all. There's been joy and wonderment, anxiety and frustration and occasionaly, painful loneliness and boredom, but it's all been an experience. So, crewmates: raise the main; combat bunnies: put your guard up; tai chi folks: prepare; bandmates: tune up; night owls: get motivated; colleagues: stroke those beards. I'm on the way.

Jude xx

Now where to next......?

---

---