Crowds...crowds...crowds (Third Day, First Leg)

I can't believe the traffic this morning! This is definitely the first "stressful" drive into the city I've had since we started "the walk" from the tippy-top of Manhattan down to the Battery, along the Hudson River. Blame it all on a "bike-athon" that has closed both the upper FDR Drive and West Side Highway. Or, you might blame it on my traveling companion this morning (as I always do)...the Old Guy. He's sitting next to me, calmly reading the Sunday Daily News while I'm battling other cars and drivers as frustrated and late as I am...wondering why in hell on this lovely (though a bit chilly) Sunday morning we have all this traffic!

After a few frantic calls to Nature Girl (who didn't have nearly the number of traffic snarls I did and was at our finishing point--West 12th Street--more or less on time) we're finally parking near West 68th Street and rendezvousing at exactly the point we left the waterside trail nearly a month ago. Once we meet NG I take a few deep, cleansing breathes and we're off!

Tradition dictates a photo of today's band of merry trekkers at the start of the journey...
...and the man (and dog) that took the above photo.
Making our way down through the high West 60s along the river, we started seeing much more "urban" sites than we had along the 105-odd city blocks we'd walked so far, such as what looked like an abandoned grain storage building on the water and more stark visuals of the underside of the West Side Highway.

NG (in her Sacajawea guise), checks out "the signs" for interesting facts along this stretch.

Suddenly, around West 63rd Street, this all faded away into a field of "arranged"sea grass, wood-planked paths and designer lounge chairs.

Another oasis for biking, strolling and sun-worshipping -- all hidden from sight, unless you actually make the time for it. And, as the OG and I had already walked the newly opened High Line Park (to be walked again with NG at the end of today's journey), the cool seating along this part of the path looked familiar. But, the really cool seating was a few short blocks away...Our lovely model, NG, will demonstrate how you can enjoy a cooling cocktail (though I am sure alcoholic beverages are verboten on this strip) while enjoying any number of views as you swivel away in these cleverly-designed chairs...We have to remember to try this out next summer.

According to more historical signage along the river walk, this section (we're around West 60th Street now) was a terminus for the freight train lines that used to run pretty much all up and down the west side of Manhattan...probably up to the late 1960s. An old New York Central engine is on display here in homage to the "workhorses" that pulled all the cars laden with goods coming in via freighters from all over the world (but primarily Europe) to what used to be rows upon rows of West Side piers and warehouses (the ribs of the one left is visible in photos

above) It is one of the few remaining reminders that this city wasn't build on "rock and roll" but the rocking and rolling of ships that plied the waterway known as the mighty Hudson, and the trains that carried the French foie gras, Russian caviar, Italian truffles, Middle Eastern silks and satins, British buttons and bows and everything imaginable from those magical lands way across the Atlantic. I wax poetic...

My reverie is interrupted by the cacophony of noise and congestion that now greets us as we approach West 59th Street. This is where the West Side Highway dips down to river level and pedestrians can actually walk across it (I've carted wine across it)...to the warehouses have been restored rather than destroyed for purposes ranging from trade fairs (including wine and food extravaganzas that I have poured at) to antique car shows to the terminus for charity runs and bike-athons like the one that caused my driving angst earlier this morning. It was a bit unnerving to be standing at the bottom of the West Side Highway at West 56th Street, on a highway I'm usually whizzing (or crawling) down, now poised to photograph bikers flying down that same expanse of concrete, to the end of their trip.

As I was crossing back and forth across the West Side Highway to pour wine at the aforementioned show last spring (and cursing my indoor fate on such a sunny spring day), I always wondered what lay north of Pier 96 along the river...and now I had walked it!
But, what I never expected to see here was a giant bottle! Given that my livelihood over the past ten years has been intimately tied to the wine and spirits industry and that I had worked a wine and food show here only six months' prior, I thought it might just be a hallucination! The giant bottle was confirmed by both NG and OG...not that they are the most reliable sources...but peering inside to what seemed to be the living room of an old Airstream mobile home!

As you can see, OG mistook it for a Jeroboam of Eponymous or the other fine California Cabs I have in my basement (I meant "wine cellar").

Just south of Pier 96 is a storied part of the Manhattan's glamorous past...where many of the piers remain that still greet the grand (and grandiose) ocean liners. How I wish I could pop into the 1920s or 1930s to travel to Europe on the Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, Normandie or one of the other amazing "floating luxury hotels" that used to be the "de rigeur" mode of transportation between the two continents (okay...maybe not the Titanic or Lusitania). Watch any movie from that period, especially the Fred Astaire/Ginger Roger musicals, and you can see just how pampered you would be on a Star Line or Cunard ship, making it's way to Liverpool or Le Harve or Hamburg. Today's tours to the Bahamas and other southern "ports of call" hold no interest for me -- and certainly not for the seasick-prone OG!

At this point, we are 550 acres of riverside walkway away from Battery Park...and have now traveled approximately half of the five-plus miles of Manhattan from end to end. It is at this point that we encounter our first bit of "nastiness" if you will. In taking the above photos, I had to step inside the gate that separates the actual piers from the West Side Highway and biking/walking path next to it. No sooner do a snap the shots than a security guard hollers "get out of the area." Now, I know security is all-too-necessary in the post-9/11 world, but I look a heck of a lot more like the people who were inside the gate waiting around for taxis or buses than anyone looking to do harm. And, if they were worried about photos being taken of the piers and ships, then why have only a chain link fence, through which anyone can take photos anyway!

More likely, he was harried by the tourists just off the ship waiting for the buses and was way annoyed that he had to be working on what was turning into a pretty warm and lovely Sunday. Regardless, after a few choice words from OG and NG, I got the photos anyway and we just shook it off as we headed down the road into the heaviest pedestrian traffic we'd encountered so far.