Au revoir New York

I am very excited! I will be leaving the city - not quite yet for good. But for a little while. Europe - I'm coming! I will spend the next three weeks back home, see friends and family, touch base with everything, and enjoy myself. Well, almost. I still will be working, except for the 2nd week of September that I will spend in the Tessin! - Oh yeah!

This is not a good bye, this is just an au revoir. The Empire State Building is waving at me as I ride out of town towards the airport. As much as I love New York. It feels good to take some time off.

See you soon...

Ride(s) in Manhattan

In an attempt to still get some sensible "bike-time" I rode around Manhattan. Not quite the domain of a mountain bike - but then again, there's plenty of those SUVs running on Manhattan's street as well not really using any of the capabilities of some of their ancestors. As I passed by George Washington bridge on Hudson I managed to take the following snaps.

Also, on that trip, I past by a far relative of one of my other toys. Unfortunately, this Volvo 122S is in a rather pitiful condition and obviously used vs. groomed. Still funny to see an "Alter Schwede" in the streets of Manhattan. In fact, this is the second of its kind that I saw.

Breakfast at Pastis

This morning, I met a friend from grad school for breakfast at Pastis in the meatpacking district (http://www.pastisny.com/home.html). I can highly recommend their pancakes - great taste and perfect texture - just the way I like them.

Fog on Long Island

Of course, I wanted to take the bike out for a spin. Unfortunately, humidity was almost unbearable. I headed out to Long Island. But traffic was almost as bad as the weather. When I finally got past the airports and then further out it was almost foggy! Well, below an impression of what I'm talking about - view over a creak towards some impressive Hampton homes near Water Mill, NY.

Haze back in Manhattan as well - at least it does for nice pictures. My favorite Empire State Building in the evening haze.

Another Childhood Dream

It's been always a dream of mine to once own a Cannondale bike - their impressive thick aluminum tube frames, their distinctive lefty fork, and their "handmade in USA". A new mountain bike would need to be a good allrounder, offering great XC and true mountain capability as well as a full suspension. The Rush frame offers all that and more. I went for the SRAM X-9/ Shimano LX derailleur combo; the crank is a FSA Afterburner and the breaks are Avid Juicy 7. The XL frame with an extended Cannondale HeadShok Si headset fits perfectly and is a blast to ride. The Vredestein Team Replica color combination was maybe not my first choice but sure grew on me. It looks particularly slick with the supplementary CrossMax SLR wheels. Soon on a trail near you...

Veggies and Sculptures

Fabulous weather made this weekend a very nice experience! It cooled down a quite a bit which made the city much more bearable. With the sun was out it made for a very nice combination. Perfect, at least for me, to take a stroll over The Union Square Greenmarket, a huge farmers market in the middle of Manhattan, where I got myself some tasty veggies, fruit, and some fresh goat cheese. And as it seems so, I am in perfect company there, given that most New York chefs supposedly hang out there (see Kitchen report 2007, in: TimeOut New York, Issue 620). My veggies made for a lovely and healthy ratatouille - delicious, and maybe a reminder that there is still time to catch one of the few remaining screenings of this most recent Pixar oeuvres of Parisian rat Rémy and its dream to become a famous French chef. Well, while this movie is about to run out here, it seems that Europe is still waiting for its release in fall.

Something else is about to run out: Richard Serra's Sculpture: Forty Years exhibition at the MoMA is about to close (September 10). An exhibition not to miss, given that Californian Serra left one of his sculptures called Intersection on a major public place (Theaterplatz) of my hometown after it was shown during the 1992 exhibition "Transform". It's twin ("Intersection II") can currently be found in MoMA's "Sculpture Garden".

The steel sculpture Intersection represents not only an important example of Serra's work in the 1990's. It also made it on the cover page of the exhibition leaflet. According to MoMA, "the sculptural object is almost entirely supplanted by the experience of traveling through spaces created by enormous plates of steel. (...) Serra tilted four identical conical sections in opposite directions (...). The result is three distinct, contiguous spaces within a single sculpture. Despite the weight of the weatherproof steel used for this work, the sculpture presents a certain buoyancy - the four plates evoke the hull of a ship. the size of the plates (i.e. 3.6 meters high in the case of Intersection) was carefully determined; they are just low enough to allow for the sky or ceiling above to remain visible, and high enough to make a significant impact on the viewer." --- Well, keep this in mind when you - unimpressed - pass by Intersection on Theaterplatz next time and have your dog do wee-wee alongside one of those weatherproof steel giants! And even if you don't, enjoy my impressions of Intersection II as currently shown at MoMA...