New Shoes, Different City

One of my favorite things about traveling is taking off on a run, early in the morning and seeing a city on foot. Knowing this would be on my agenda on our trip to New York, I finally broke down a bought a new pair of running shoes, something I've been procrastinating about for months now. So at 6:25 this morning, I laced up my new shoes and took off down Bleecker Street towards the river. It's been 16 years since I've run in New York and I was really looking forward to a little less humidity and a different scene. I didn't have a plan except to check out the area along the Hudson and see where the morning would take me.

When I got to the river, I decided to go left and head toward the southern tip of the island. I hadn't been to the World Trade Center site since years before 9/11 and wanted to see what was happening. It is sobering to see the big gaping hole first had, such a large open space in the middle of Manhattan's sky line. It made me start thinking about the parallels between our two cities with their mighty rivers, both, in some way, wrecked by made man disasters caused by the failure of our government to protect it's people.

It's been almost 9 years since 9/11, nearly 5 since Katrina and a mere couple of months since the Deep Water Horizon explosion and with all of the other disasters, both natural and man made, happening in the world today, one might wonder if the Mayan calendar is right on track...