In the Wilderness of New York

Hi folks. So sorry to be so long out of commission. Our house guests left, but not before I came down with a CRAPPY and LONG WINDED cold/flu. Today is my first day up and back on the saddle. I don't mind telling you that I am GLAD to be OUT OF BED. I am good invalid for about a day and then I get CAGEY and IMPATIENT.

While I was on the steep decline of getting sick, we went with Coreen and Lauren to do a bunch of VISITING NEW YORK activities like going on a carriage ride through Central Park and going to the Natural History Museum. I have such mixed feelings about the Natural History Museum. On the one hand it is one of my favorite places to go on the city--the dioramas are spectacular, and it's old and beautiful and CHEAP. You can wander the halls and follow the trail that JD Salinger described in the Catcher in the Rye. You can draw antelope or photograph them. You can touch the inside of a GIANT CLAM shell, and don't even get me started on the breathtaking dinosaur skeletons.

On the other side, it's just a big TOMB. All those amazing dioramas are filled with animals that were minding their own business one day, only to be shot by Teddy Roosevelt and his gang, so that they could be displayed in a painted case. They called it "collecting", but let's be honest--they were HUNTING. The baby gorilla all the parents point out to their own babies, and who everyone says, "Oh, look, how CUTE!" was KILLED to be here. The point was MAYBE that they could save other animals from human intrusion by presenting these animals as easily visited examples, but knowing what I know about Teddy Roosevelt, that crazy, toothy president, it was also for sport.

Here is something I didn't know before attending Disneyland in March and the Natural History Museum in April: Springbreak is as bad as Christmas for travel and event planning. I thought lunchtime in Midtown New York was bad, but it's GOT NOTHING on the Natural History Museum during springbreak. There have only been a few times I have felt AFRAID when I saw such crowds. It was NUTS. It was the one time I was glad that Lauren had the attention span of a hampster. It meant we go in, we saw a few things, and then we were OUT OF THERE.

Afterwards we went and got a carriage ride, which was fun and exciting, and also pushed my conflicted buttons of animal sympathies.

After a final meal at a greasy New York diner, my body now full ACHING with fever, New York gave our guests one last THRILL, by presenting the actor Danny Glover in our trail. We couldn't have missed him even if we wanted to. He's at least 6' 4", and he was standing on the sidewalk WAVING and occasionally YELLING. He was wearing one of those headset cellphones and apparently trying to locate someone. "I think I see you." He was saying, and then he'd wave and yell " JOSE!" andthen say, "Do you see me?" And I thought, Who DOESN'T see you? It was the perfect ending, and then I went home and collapsed.