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It's been a whirlwind couple of days.
The whole flight via jetBlue was a bit off. Driving to Burbank at just before 5 in the morning, Sarah and I were both kind of punchy (but it was a lot easier than coming via LAX).
The departure from Burbank seemed really odd. We took off heading SSE and made a wide swooping turn over Glendale and wound up heading nearly NW over the 405 pass into the valley. I had my first viewing ever of Van Nuys Airport out the left window and got to see Simi Valley and the Santa Susana area in a whole new light. It was pretty neat to see the fog layer still sitting over Thousand Oaks, parts of Moorpark and the whole valley below Lake Piru. And then we finally began to gently bank right and head east (more or less).
The flight plan may have been conceived to use atmospheric effects as best as possible, but it seemed like a child who loved arcs had drawn it. I still don't quite grasp how a flight from SoCal to JFK wanders over Canadian air space and makes land fall just about right over Erie, PA along the way.
Looping had become a pattern, so we swooped southwest over the Brooklyn Bridge (hey, I see something I know!) still at 20,000 feet (are we going to dive?) and then did a long banking dive over Long Island, out over the Atlantic and eventually around past Sandy Hook with a nice view of the Amboy's and then a bit further around the Verrazano Bridge (partly obscured by fog, then and later when we drove over it) and then dropped into Jamaica Bay. This was my first ever flight into JFK and the Manhattan skyline seemed so familiar and yet quite odd.
As we dropped lower the city begins to emerge. Lots of tenements. When we fly over some lower density housing, we're missing one common ingredient from all of California. The familiar opal spots that litter the landscape are not here; unlike Florida and California there are very few pools.
When we finally hit the Parkway, I was actually a little stunned. It took a little while to figure it out, but I was awed by how green everything was. Even the grass on the median was a wonderful, lush green. Trees? Yeah, that's normal. But all the grass? Wow. Did I forget something?
We had a great dinner last night at a place called the Bamboo Leaf (a Thai restaurant in Bradley? color me surprised!) I introduced everyone to Lemon Grass Soup and we all learned that they do take out.
The fog and humidity last night was like a warm damp gauze wrapper around everything. It's so humid here, I was beginning to think that I forgotten what it could be like. Not so I learned, this has been a very warm and wet spring and summer. The early morning fog burned off a bit today but the marine layer (I never called it that until I moved to SoCal) never really retreated and the overcast remains with us. Despite the normal summer breeze, by mid day it was more than muggy. I've always loved this kind of weather in the fall, when it helped to drive off the last off the summer people with soggy nights and you could walk along the waters edge early in the day in nearly complete isolation; sometimes you'd see the boardwalk, but mostly not. My memories of this weather during the sumer all come back to fishing. Being offshore, the boat in a swampy haze and running around the boat doing various sweat producing activities; chumming, gaffing and just talking.
We've had several long and winding conversations about everything and anything.
I explained Vonage and the general idea behind it. We'll be talking more about it in the coming days. I'm shocked by the telecom costs Jean and Carol are dealing with.
I've also learned that a relative (great uncle Steve?) did arrangements for George Gershwin before he learned how to do it himself (that explains some of the family craziness about his music).
We had a long discussion about crazy children and further revelations about my own childhood adventures like swimming across Shark River many times and the night we swam out to the Belmar channel buoy. Oddly, our swimming across Shark River (about a quarter mile wide) multiple times over the years (always during the day) was somehow more horrifying than swimming out a half mile to a buoy in the middle of the night (to prove we weren't afraid of Jaws). I've always thought the latter was one of the more moronic stunts I've ever pulled.
We also revisited the LaReine Hotel fire (it seems it was 1974, not 1973 as I'd mentioned before). As an adult I would have been terrified to see burning embers landing in the street in front of the house, but as kids we were only interested in what was burning. The fire had started not long after dark and it was probably 3 AM by the time things had calmed down and I dragged myself home (the whole town was out there that night).
Posted by Dave at July 16, 2005 10:43 PM