Wish You Were Here (Fourth Day, First Leg)

Today was, without doubt, the most beautiful day to finish our trek from north to south, end to end, along the Hudson River -- just to see if it can be done, and to eat some great food along the way.  Cloudless sky with temperatures in the sun in the mid-60s, slight breeze every now and then.

However, an early-morning phone call did cast a shadow over the day.  My main partner in walking...the hand that (gently) shoved this idea into reality...the trek's ultimate "path-finder" Nature Girl (aka Sacagewa) was sick and unable to take part in the "glory lap" to the finish line.   Were it not for the glorious weather and returning participation of both Upstate Annie (enroute all the way from Poughkeepsie) and the Old Guy (not coming much farther than our garage), the last leg of the walk, from 14th Street to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, might have been postponed indefinitely.
So, it is with a saddened heart and heavy feet that Upstate, OG and I parked the white Focus (aka, "the lemon") almost exactly where NG had left her car during our third day of walking and was on the trail by 9:45 a.m.  Below is the obligitory group shot at the start of the day...

...and a photo of our portrait artist, Lakeisha, who looked like she was out for a morning stroll along the same path, albeit a lot more stylin' than any one of us!














This part of the journey was going to be particularly interesting to the OG and I as we used to live on West 10th Street (a good 15 years ago) and were stunned by how remarkably well the Parks Department transformed the "barely there" cracked and rutted bike path on the west side of the West Side Highway, usually strewn with broken bottles, used needles and other debris, into a wide, paved stretch that had run all the way from 59th Street down through the Village...and likely beyond. 

And, forget about the piers.  Those rotted wooden piers that were leaning and creaking and just lying in wait for the unwary to end up in the drink are now more of what we had seen all along this river road...concrete oasis of creative and inviting benches, trees, flora and recreation features that certainly made for a pleasant stroll.  Just goes to show what happened when major commerce along the river "dried up" and the city realized that another kind of commerce (that involving making the Hudson River's Manhattan bank a "greenbelt" to attract apartment-dwellers to move to the Far West side of town) not to mention tourists (from near and far) wanting unparalleled views of Lady Liberty, Ellis Island, the New Jersey Palisades and the mighty Hudson herself.

Upstate Annie took over for NG (or Sac) in pointing out where we were on the handy historical and geographical maps of what is at this point officially called Hudson River Park (all 550 acres of it, from 59th Street to the Battery -- the largest developed park space in Manhattan since the completion of Central Park, so the sign says).

It wasn't quite all a "bed of roses" (visual pun intended) along this part of the trail, especially when we walked past this gate...

...housing a number of sanitation trucks and part of the city's supply of salt.  Not only was it a rather "odiferous" passing, it also was a sad reminder tha this glorious early November sunshine will soon be replaced with the bitter cold and snow of a typical New York winter (I'm already shuddering and hunching at the thought).
We had a number of banners and signposts to continually orient us as we headed south along the river. 

And, many new buildings mingling with old favorites on the east side of the Highway, into the depths of the West Village.

There was some real landscape creativity in place of the old piers, totally consistent with what we had seen further upriver...

I know Upstate Annie must have been pretty fed up with the number of times OG and I exclaimed "this is so different...so much better...than when we lived down here!"

While there were many places along the river walk where we saw sculptures (from artists -- known and unknown) the greatest juxtaposition of the famous and avant garde was just ahead.  A unique Jim Dine sculpture sparked a debate among the triumverate as to whether it was an apple in mid-peel, a marischino cherry or highly-stylized pumpkin (considering the time of year, I'll say pumpkin). 

I caught the OG peering through its core...

"Cat and Ape" ...

may harken back to a children's story, but none of us knew it.  Then there was the Louise Bougouis "Eyeballs"  (this is not a pornographic site so I will refrain from making the obvious observation).Full disclosure:  this pair ("Cat and Ape" and "Eyeballs") were way down in a new "pocket park" named after former NYC Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr., just north of Battery Park, but the above art discussion warranted including them in this part of the tale.

You might have thought the Bougouis was the "avant garde" scuplture I refered to earlier, but I actually was talking about this below...The best we could figure is that they were "plastic fish" filled with all kinds of garbage (Upstate Annie saw a Dunkin Donuts cup in the tail, and a plastic milk container in another).  After wondering if the containers were filled with chemicals to a) measure the water's cleanliness or b) filter the water,  UA posited the theory that it was to show what the river fish digest. 

Our new buddy, Park Clean-Up Steve,figured the same and said they had only been added recently...he thought as a Halloween stunt.  I think I'll go with the Dine and Bougouis.  I'll leave other art-lovers to ponder this for a while...until the next posting.