If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.
— Mark Twain (supposedly)
2¾ hr read (33,000 words)
Prologue — 1983Tonight’s party at the Foyster’s was going to be lively. Syncon ’83 had finished just a few days before and now everyone was back in town, rested up and full of yarns. After getting underfoot a bit while trying to help with the preparations, I retired to the main room and occupied myself by reading something I’d found in John Foyster’s bookshelves. A large green-bound tome, printed on blue paper, its spine stamped simply with the words “Warhoon 28”.
“Why,” I’d gasped, “it’s … it’s a fanzine!”. Unlike Jophan, I did not leap into action at the discovery. Instead I sat down and started reading it. At over 600 pages and 700 words per page, the Walter A. Willis issue of Warhoon — the Willish — is quite a read, so it was capable of keeping me out of mischief for quite some time.
It contains (among many other things) Willis’ reports of his 1952 and 1962 trips to Chicon and points west and south. He visited New York, Chicago, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco among other places, and told about it all in engaging detail. I was hooked.
In later years, although I searched Australian huckster rooms avidly, I could not find a copy of the Willish to call my own. I read John Foyster’s copy from cover to cover and later used Roger Weddall’s copy to produce an Australasian edition of Willis’s masterwork The Enchanted Duplicator, but that wasn’t the same.
Fast forward 17 years from Syncon to another Chicon. The late Walt Willis was not at Chicon 2000, but I was. I had been gafia so long that I was almost unknown, and I spent a lot of time fruitlessly trying to track down people I’d known. One morning early in the con I drifted into the fan lounge, hoping to find new familiar fannish faces. There were none I hadn’t already found, so I settled for browsing the fanzine offerings.
I cruised along a table weighed down with stuff people were flogging off and there, an emerald in a rockpile, reposed a majestic green volume. After staring incredulously, I pounced, and for $25 it became mine.
It was too heavy to carry with me on the remainder of the trip, so later that day I squeezed it gently into a padded envelope and for $18.32, not counting the cost of the bag, I posted it to myself. I sent it surface to ensure beating it home.
IntroductionFrom late August to early September 2000, I travelled in the USA and Canada. The core of the trip was intended to be Chicon 2000 in Chicago, that year’s World SF Convention, but in order to get the most out of my fare I took the opportunity to see places and people I’d wanted to see for years. Most of the trip was in the USA, but a quick nip across the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls allowed me to claim a few hours in Canada as well. In the end, well, the convention became a mere few days interlude between New York, Niagara, and the Grand Canyon.
The following table shows my itinerary. The dates are all local time.
| Date | Sleep | Activity |
| 25/8 | New York | Orientation |
| 26/8 | New York | Liberty, Ellis I., Staten I., Pier17, Bkln Bridge |
| 27/8 | New York | Empire State, Midtown, Central Park |
| 28/8 | New York | Wall St, United Nations, Greenwich Village |
| 29/8 | To NF | New Jersey day trip, to Niagara Falls. |
| 30/8 | To CHI | Niagara Falls |
| 31/8 | Chicago | Chicon Day 1 |
| 01/9 | Chicago | Chicon Day 2 |
| 02/9 | Chicago | Chicon Day 3 |
| 03/9 | Chicago | Chicon Day 4 |
| 04/9 | Chicago | Chicon Day 5 |
| 05/9 | Las Vegas | Missed seeing Hoover Dam |
| 06/9 | Nth Rim | All day to GC Nth Rim |
| 07/9 | Bright Angel | Walk to BA Camp. Dined Phantom Ranch |
| 08/9 | GC Village | Walked to South Rim |
| 09/9 | GC Village | West/East Rims |
| 10/9 | Los Angeles | GC Village, then to LA |
| 11/9 | Los Angeles | Santa Monica |
| 12/9 | Frisco | Hollywood & Observatory. Bus to SF. |
| 13/9 | Frisco | Downtown, the piers, the trolleycar |
| 14/9 | Frisco | Alcatraz, Golden Gate |
| 15/9 | Frisco | Berkeley, Golden Gate |
| 16/9 | To MEL | Downtown, to LA for return to Oz |
| 18/9 | Arrive MEL | End of the trip |
Getting ThereFriday, 25 August 2000
It was my first big overseas trip since 1986 and I wanted to make sure that it started without a hitch, so I was all packed two nights in advance.
I was also trying to pre-adjust my body to New York time, 14 hours behind Melbourne, to reduce jet lag. The time difference meant that at midnight in Melbourne on the 25th it was 10:00 in New York on the 24th. So I went to bed at about 18:00 on the 24th and got up at midnight. A few hours into the flight my body should be ready to sleep, hopefully until a couple of hours before landing at Los Angeles (07:30 LA time, 10:30 NY time), and should be ready for sleep again that night in New York.
My plane was due to depart at 10:35. Just after 07:00 I picked up the small pack and large bum bag that contained everything I was taking with me, and stepped outside my door. I took my first photo on the doorstep to immortalise the moment. I went downstairs, arriving just as my taxi pulled up — a good omen!
The day was cold and rainy, which made leaving melbourne both less comfortable and more pleasant — the former being of the body and the latter of the spirit. I was at the airport within 40 minutes, well ahead of schedule. About 09:00, bored with wandering around the terminal after booking in, I went through customs and made my way to the departure lounge. Boarding started at 10:10, the plane started moving at 10:40, and we left the ground at 10:48. It would be 12,769 km (7,934 miles) and 13 hours, 31 minutes before it touched the ground again. In 2001 the trans-Pacific flight between Melbourne and Los Angeles may have been the longest non-stop passenger flight on Earth, stretching the endurance of the 747.
I was assigned seat 56A, a window seat on the left side of the aircraft. I’d hoped to get some good shots of Victoria and the coast of Australia slipping away, but it was too cloudy. So I chatted to the couple beside me — the Jennings, from the Mornington Peninsula, semi-retired, on their way to two months in Mexico and South America. (I know this because I noted it down in my organiser, a practice I later lapsed from, which is why you’ll rarely find such details later in this report.)
The cloud was unbroken for most of the trip. Los Angeles was also cloudy, but it broke as we neared land and I was able to get a good view of the north end of Santa Catalina Island as we went over it.
We crossed the coast near Seal beach, just south of Long Beach. I didn’t know what I was seeing at the time — I later plundered TerraServer and managed to match the images there against a street map. I identified the freeways in the same way. For now, it was new and mysterious and exciting.
Just a bit further on I saw my first freeway interchange, the junction of 405 (San Diego F’way) and 605 (San Gabriel F’way). When the plane banked to the left on approach now to LAX I saw the intersection of 110 (Harbour F’way) and 105 (Anderson F’way).
Arrival. In Melbourne I’d decided to have my gear checked through to New York, so that I would pass through Customs there and save hassles during my limited time at LAX. I thought I’d spend my time relaxing in an air-conditioned transit lounge with shops and clean toilets and a view of the airport. Well, outside it was a nice fresh morning but I was herded into a hot, narrow, stuffy place with no view. Most of the other occupants were chattering away in Spanish and badly needed an encounter with some deodorant. I was no flower myself — there was no chance to shower or even to change my clothes. The loos were crowded and filthy. In short, the day had turned to crap. My only desire for LA now was to get out, as soon as possible, and not return until I had to.
(I learned my lesson. When I returned to the USA in 2003, I checked my baggage only as far as LA, and so I got to wander around a bit before boarding my onward flight.)
I bought a small plastic cup of bad coffee for $2.00, my first use of US currency. Actually the coffee was $1.85, but there was 15¢ tax added. I didn’t notice this introduction to the US sales tax system at the time, as the posted coffee price was $2.00 — I paid what I expected to pay. Sales tax is everywhere, but most US price lists and tags don’t include the sales tax. Most don’t even bother to remind you that tax will be added or give any idea of the likely amount. It just gets popped onto the total at the register, when it’s too late to change your mind without humiliation. I guess the locals absorb some notion of the likely amount through years of exposure, but it must still play hob with budgetting.
QF107 took me out an hour and a half later in seat 47A. Our course was a weird preamble to the rest of my trip. We passed above or near Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Chicago, Niagara Falls and Seaside. It took just over 5 hours to cross the country, and we landed in New York at 16:46 local time, just over 20 hours after leaving Melbourne. And it was still the 25th of August! (In Melbourne it was 06:46 the next morning.) So in more than one sense of the word, the 25th of August was the longest day of my life. By the time midnight arrived in New York it had lasted over 38 hours. Compare this with the 17th of September on the return leg, which I effectively lost completely as I departed LA late on the 16th and landed at Melbourne early on the 18th. There might have been a couple of hours just before the International Date Line which were nominally part of the 17th, but if so I slept through them.
Arrival, take two — New York, 16:46. I’d had some views of New Jersey as the plane banked around, but Manhattan had eluded me. So my first sight of Manhattan was after landing, when I got a smoggy view of the skyline from JFK. The dominant feature was the World Trade Centre towers — this was one year and two weeks before some very evil men flew a plane into each tower.
Customs was routine. Australia and New Zealand participated in a visa waiver program with the USA, allowing entry to each other for up to 90 days without a visa. I filled out a green entry card with my name, birthdate, gender, Passport number, airline and flight number, country of citizenship, country of residence, and the address I planned to stay at the first night in the US. Immigration looked at it, looked at my passport and remarked on the absence of Australian entry stamps (my original NZ passort expired in 1993 and I hadn’t been back to NZ since, so the renewed book was a virgin). Actually there was an Australian immigration stamp in it — from my departure on this trip — but it was on on page 15! Do they train these guys to screw up our documentation this way or do they just hire people with a natural talent for ignoring such esoteric notions as stamping the first page with room for the stamp? On the return trip, the Australian officer again managed to miss the first available page, whacking it on page 48, the last page in the book, and in Niagara Falls the Canadian officer hit page 7. At any rate, the US officer eventually found the page 15 stamp and added his own stamp on page 5.
After several false starts I found my way to a place where I could catch a free bus to the nearest subway station. For about $40 I could have taken a taxi, or for $13 I could have taken an airporter, but I wanted to get right into the feel of the place. Outside the air-conditioned terminal, the heat and humidity were the first thing I noticed. In Melbourne it was about 14°C and rainy; here it was about 30°C and humid. The bus, when it arrived, was boiling. It wound its way through an endless carpark before pulling up outside the Howard Beach-JFK subway station.
I made my way inside and for $17 I made my first strategic purchase of the trip: a 7-day “MetroCard”. This gave me unlimited use of municipal trains and buses and turned out to be quite a bargain. Without the MetroCard, each trip would have cost me $1.50. So to come out ahead I needed only use the subway or bus 12 times. I lost count, but I did at least 20 trips in the time I was in New York, so I was at least $13 ahead in just four days. If I’d been staying another three days I would’ve been even further in front. The use of a MetroCard is very similar to a MetCard in Melbourne, so I felt quite at home getting around this way. But I forgot to buy a subway token as a souvenir! (By 2003 tokens were no longer in use.)
The subway was considerably cleaner and less threatening than I’d expected. The subway cars looked, well, pretty much like the ones in the movies, but without the guns and knives. The people averaged darker than in Melbourne but were otherwise ordinary. “The ropes” were pretty much the same as in Melbourne — avoid eye contact, avoid body contact where possible, get on fast, get off fast. But the conversations around me were all in American accents.
From the airport to 103rd St I was busy navigating and coping with the heat. I have a rat’s sense of direction, which means that if you put me down someplace I can usually find my way to some other place given a few hints about where I am and where the other place is relative to me. But on this trip, unless I could see my destination, I kept finding myself headed in exactly the opposite direction. Possibly related to the crossing of the equator, possibly something more esoteric. The sky looked odd — the texture and the colour were both off, just a little.
I had one train change to make on the way to the hostel — at Chambers Street I had to change from the A Line to the 1 Line. My confused sense of direction struck again and I found myself standing on the corner of Chambers and Church Streets, my first view of Manhattan from the inside. Rather than retrace my steps, I took serendipity and walked up one block to the Chambers and Hudson entrance.
Up until now there had been no real feeling that I was in America. It was just another place to be in with a backpack and sore feet, and I’d spent months planning my every move up to now, so there was no novelty left. But during that brief unscheduled walk up Chambers St, it finally sank in. I suddenly realised I was wearing a huge grin. I wiped it off and it came back. I was here! I’d made it! It had all come off! This was new york.
At 103rd Street I emerged from the subway again, and my confusion immediately took me off towards the river. I realised my mistake at West End Ave and turned back. 103rd Street is on the edge of Harlem, but the area is heavy with tourists and Broadway is a major shopping drag, so although most of the locals were black the general drift of people on the sidewalk was a mixture from everywhere.
It had taken me an hour and a quarter to get my baggage and clear customs, and it took an hour and three quarters to get from the airport to the hostel. I finally reached the hostel at 19:46, three hours after landing.
The New York AYH is simply the worst large HI hostel I have ever stayed at.
The hostel was an unimpressive brownstone building backing on housing estates. Entry was down a ramp at the corner but was not well signposted. Inside was a huge queue waiting to book in. At first I thought I’d just arrived at a busy time, but it quickly became apparent that the real reason for the queue was that the booking-in process was slow and cumbersome. I timed the process and it was taking them an average of about 5 minutes to log someone in at each of two stations. This equates to about 24 people per hour. And when I finally reached the front of the queue, I discovered that they had lost my reservation!
They managed to find me a room for the first two nights (25/26) and I booked for the next two night (27/28). But the process was not well explained. They wanted me to come downstairs on the morning of the 27th and pay and book in again. They would then assign me a new billet, probably in the same room. Not understanding this rigmarole, and thinking I would be in the same room but not necessarily the same bed, I saw no reason to come down and stand in that insane line at a time when I could be downtown sightseeing, so instead I came back later and paid for the next two nights in advance, thinking that this settled matters and they could easily shuffle things around in their computer booking system when the time came. I reasoned that if they had a bed for me two nights hence, then it was logical to stay in the bed I was already in. Whoever would have been given that bed would be just as happy in whatever other bed they were going to offer me.
Because I didn’t jump through their hoop. they treated my bed as vacant and sold it out from under me. However, it’s worth noting that the subsequent booking was not made until the 27th and was for just the 28th. So the bed was actually vacant and available for the period I needed it and there really was no need for me to queue up twice. Don’t ask me how this happened: incompetence is all I can suggest. Nothing happened until 05:30 on the 29th, when the person they sold the bed to finally arrived. So although I got turfed then, I only lost about two hours sleep and it had no effect on my trip apart from annoying me.
I did make a point of haggling with the manager over storing my luggage. I’d planned to leave my pack at the hostel on the 29th, but this was now in doubt as if I hadn’t been there the previous night then they had no requirement to watch my gear for me. So I pointed out that they’d sold my bed on a technicality — because it was technically vacant. That meant that technically my booking had lapsed, but that as I’d paid for the two nights, then they owed me a refund on one of them. If the booking hadn’t lapsed, why was I turned out? The manager conceded this but claimed they had no cash to provide a refund. Whereupon I turned my ace, which was that I wouldn’t insist on the refund provided they took care of my luggage. So in the end things went as originally planned, less two hours sleep.
Apart from the hassles over my room booking, the hostel was noisy and hot. The room was nominally air conditioned, but the air conditioner was so noisy that nobody could sleep when it was on. Fortunately I had a bed by a window, so I got the benefit of what little breeze there was.
The room keys kept failing. One time a key would work, and the next time, maybe a only few minutes later, it would not. This required a trek downstairs — the lift was preposterously slow — to get a replacement. Usually no checking was done on key requests as so many failed that they’d make out a key to whatever room you specified. So much for security. When booking in, they asked me if I was a HI member but didn’t ask to see my membership card.
Food storage was a problem. I wound up storing everything in the fridge as there was no other satisfactory food storage area. Some went missing.
In summary, next time I’m in New York I’ll sleep in the Park before I’ll consider the AYH hostel there. Fortunately my AYH experiences in LA and SF were more pleasant.
As were my experiences in New York excepting the hostel.
Battery ParkSaturday, 26 August 2000
Next morning I was up before 06:00. The night had been sticky and uncomfortable. In Melbourne it had been 14°C the day before; in New York it was about 28°C and so humid that sweat just clung without cooling. So I took advantage of the coolest moment of the day to shower and relax and psych myself up for the ordeal of moving around in this turkish bath. Melbourne gets hotter — peaking in the high 30s and low 40s — but it’s a dry heat, and people have months to get used to the heat.
By 08:00 I was walking through Battery Park. This is the little patch of greenery at the southern tip of Manhattan. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferries depart from here, and since my plan for the day included both islands it was the place to start. Fortunately the subway that runs nearest the hostel (1/9 Line) terminates here. The subway trip from 103rd St takes about 20 minutes.
Battery Park’s largest feature is a huge grey and brown stone pile called Castle Clinton. This was the US immigration centre until about 1890. After 1892, Ellis Island took over. Today Castle Clinton is a tourist trap, baited with windows for buying ferry-tickets.
I had plenty of time in hand before the 09:00 sailing of the first ferry, so I strolled down to the waterfront to check out my first target of the day.
I got a superb profile view of the Statue silhouetted against the skyline. I also got my first good look at what I came to think of as the Pall — a heavy brown smear of pollution squatting on the horizon in every direction. Melbourne, too, has a pall over it at times but nothing like New York’s. At the time I wore a silver charm bracelet and chains, and after four days in New York’s dirt and heat they had all turned black. I thought they were corroded, but the black gradually wore away once I left New York and the bracelet was as good as new by the end of the trip.
Although I was enjoying walking in the park, I noticed that there seemed to be quite a bit of activity around the ferry, for a boat that wasn’t going to depart for another hour. I turned back to Castle Clinton, to make sure I didn’t miss my berth.
As I walked around towards the entrance, a squirrel shot across the path in front of me, jumped onto the wall, then stopped to stare cheekily. My first encounter with a squirrel. These animals are all over the place in the city’s Parks, which puzzled me a bit as the island city would be a difficult place for land wildlife to survive in — or to get back into later. I had this image of wetback squirrels from upstate making their way stealthily by night beneath the girders of the Brooklyn Bridge. Later experience suggests the north end of Manhattan as an easier point of entry. Most likely they just bred in Manhattan. At any rate, although they quickly became a familiar sight, this was my first squirrel and it was obliging enough to let me have a good look at it before it whisked away again.
The open gate of the castle was bustling with tourists, so I hustled my way in and through the throng to the ticket booths in the center of the courtyard. Sure enough, the sign proclaimed that the first ferry would depart at 08:30, half an hour earlier than I’d expected. I hastily joined a line, and by 08:09 I had my ticket — at least, that’s the time printed on the ticket.
Once I had my ticket, I pushed my way out onto the ferry wharf. The queue was long, but not as long as I had been afraid it would be. A lot of the people going into the Castle were hitting the tourist stalls first rather than the ticket booths. Still, the boat already had quite a few passengers and I was reduced to hoping it wouldn’t fill up before I got aboard. In the end, I was probably in the first half of the final number.
While waiting in the queue I had my first experience of New York street vendors — half a dozen guys with briefcases full of watches, knives, and assorted souvenirs were trying to flog their wares to the passengers. Since entry to that part of the ferry wharf was controlled but no officials tried to move them on, I assume the sellers had some sort of license to be there. After a day or two I got used to it, but at the time, I was croggled by the experience. In Melbourne, the small merchants tend to be a little less mobile — and more reserved. Although some of them sell the most amazingly worthless trash, it is possible to get real bargains from the street vendors who have stalls or tables, so selectively cruising their tables is probably going to be more rewarding (on average) than trawling the tourist shops. Word to the wise.
Most of the ferries use the same standard design — probably because it gives maximum view and passenger capacity for minimum size. Sydney’s ferries are more picturesque but less effective for those aboard, while Melbourne’s low bridges restrict the Yarra ferries to being flat, wide barges.
Once aboard the ferry I made my way to the top deck, which provided an excellent vantage point for buildings of New Jersey on the far side of the harbour. Ferries go there — there is apparently a “Liberty Science Center” there — but I didn’t go there during this trip. My New Jersey excursion was still three days away and would be in a different direction. (I didn’t get there in 2003, either. New York is too big to see everything in less than several weeks.)
Eventually the ferry pulled away from the wharf. Over the next half hour it made its way gradually down the bay, passing Ellis Island and rounding Liberty Island to the wharf on the far side. The views were worth the trip in themselves. The ferry starts tucked in beneath the frowning heights of Manhattan’s buildings. Gradually as the ferry moves out towards the Upper Bay, the buildings shrink and open up new angles and groupings. The views up the Hudson and East Rivers extend gradually, until it becomes obvious that Manhattan is an island — or at least a very long peninsula. However, although the land towards Brooklyn is higher, the buildings on Manhattan still dominate the view and draw the eye all the way out to the Statue. Other cities have tall hearts, but they must compete with lesser buildings washing up to their knees. In New York the buildings start at the waterline.
Out on the seawards horizon I could see a long, tall bridge. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge connects Staten Island to Brooklyn. It’s a tall suspension bridge. The height is understandable, as it straddles the main entrance to the Upper Bay. New York’s shipping traffic needs to pass beneath it.
The traffic volume is tremendous. I grew up in a port city. Fishing boats, mostly, but when I was young my home town (Wanganui) was a favoured entry point for the potash trade. Every few weeks a Russian ship would come in. Later I moved to Wellington, with several ships a day, and I thought that was big. Then I moved to Melbourne, with dozens of ships per day — there’s always one in sight, coming or going. But New York’s bay makes Melbourne’s look empty by comparison.
The ferry passed close to Ellis Island. The island’s main building has an eastern European appearance, with four towers topped by four big cupolas, but even more strongly it reminded me (architecturally) of Flinders Street Station.
The ferry slowly clawed its way around the Statue. I don’t know whether the placement of the wharf on the far side from Manhattan is deliberate (there is another wharf on the Manhattan side that doesn’t seem to be used by the tourist boats), but it does guarantee arriving tourists a fine set of viewing angles.
I’d always thought that Liberty Island was a strange place to put the Statue. It’s a long way from the city and facing the wrong way. It is well placed to impress immigrants coming in to Ellis Island by ship, but when the statue was put there (completed in 1886), immigration was still being handled through Castle Clinton. Ellis Island didn’t open until 1892. The immigrant ships would have to pass the Statue on the way to Manhattan, but the impact would not be the same. A man-made island in the middle of the Bay would be better from that point of view, as it would allow the Statue to look down the Bay instead of across it. But then of course she would have her back to Manhattan, so perhaps the chosen position is a compromise.
I’m left to assume that the decision to use Ellis Island, which started out as an inadequate lump of dirt and had to be expanded by landfill, was in part prompted by the erection of the Statue on Liberty (then Bedloe’s) Island.
As the ferry finally came in towards the wharf I cunningly percolated down from the top deck towards the exit. Unfortunately, several hundred other sightseers had the same cunning idea at the same time, and most of them were closer to the exit than I was, so I got stuck on the stairs until the pressure in front was released. But I made the most of the human tendency for groups to clot up and stall in order to improve my place in the queue for the Statue.
The queue formed beneath a huge pergola. Actually there are two queues, compressed by baffles and barriers, on on each side of an empty corridor. The idea appears to be to control the entry of sightseers so as to reduce the crush inside, and to use the empty area to expedite the exit of those who’d had their look (or given up waiting).
The pergola is quite a flimsy structure on an island where everything else appears to have been built to last forever. Perhaps it is put up each summer to provide shade, and removed each winter.
The two queues converge at the entrance. This is directly behind the Statue. If you get there in the morning, it is out of the sun and is surprisingly cool. For once, waiting was a relatively pleasant experience.
The Statue’s beauty is all on the outside. Inside, no effort has been made to make the stairs or elevators attractive to the eye. There is no grace to the fittings, and apart from a coat of paint the whole thing looks raw and unfinished. This seems to be standard procedure for US National Parks. They concede the necessity of allowing people into their parks, and the consequent need to provide facilities for those visitors, but begrudge the effort required to make the facilities less utilitarian. Wherever their income from fees goes, it isn’t into improving the service.
It’s worth noting that there is an elevator inside, but it only goes as far as the top of the pedestal. What’s more, if you plan to climb to the crown you can’t take the elevator even that far. You must climb from the base of the pedestal. Apparently a policy designed to help keep the number of would-be climbers manageable.
Climbing the Statue is an experience everyone should have, but it’s not entirely a pleasant one. The stairwells and steps are grimy and dirty, worn, and just plain ugly The design of the actual internal supporting structure of the Statue is surprisingly simple and elegant (as might be expected of its designer, Eiffel) but the execution is slapdash.
The bronze skin of the statue is clipped to form-fitted strips of steel which provide the strength to hold its shape against wind and weather. Although the result is ugly from the inside, the decision to leave it visible is right for once. Not only is it more practical for maintenance purposes than attempting to prettify or hide it, but the visitor gets a real view of how the whole amazing thing is put together.
Graffiti is an ancient and dishonourable phenomenon that afflicts every tourist spot. Between the tourist’s tendency to graffitise and the amount of time spent standing on the steps waiting for the line to move forward, every accessible surface should have been covered. However, there was surprisingly little graffiti. Most of it was quite recently dated, so this probably reflects a graffiti removal program rather than tourist restraint. But if they are that effective against graffiti, their ineffectiveness against dirt and wear is all the more surprising.
The climb is not particularly arduous. The line moved very slowly — at one point a ranger got on the speaker system to declare that the day was going to get pretty warm and if people didn’t get a move on the Parks service might close the stairs early — so there was plenty of time to stand around and to socialise with those above and below me in the line. There were very few New York area locals, but a surprising number of Americans and an enormous number of Japanese. Considering the depressed yen versus the soaring US dollar, the number of Japanese tourists in New York — in the USA, in fact — was incredible.
Quite suddenly, the crown was there. It’s a level spot only about 3 to 4 metres (10 to 12 feet) long and a couple of metres at the widest. The windows in the crown are small. They can be opened, which allows decent photographs to be taken, but getting an angle on Manhattan is tricky as it’s almost out of sight around the edge of the crown. The torch is also hard to see, athough it is possible to stick a camera out the window and take an upwards snapshot. Don’t drop it!
Considering the time taken to get to the top, the time available at the top is all too brief. Anyone who spends more than about ten minutes there is being greedy. Fortunately the downward trip is fast, since it is not impeded by people in front who wish to spend extra time at the crown.
I left the downward rush at one stage to snap the park ranger who was checking the tickets of those still climbing. This was the same woman who had threatened to close the climb early if people didn’t move it. I had to get my shot before she looked around though; I wanted her looking “bad’ and knew that if she spotted the camera she would smile and spoil the shot. She was actually very pleasant and friendly.
The climb to the crown is not the be-all and end-all of a trip to the Statue. Many people don’t even climb, due to the rumoured (grossly exaggerated) effort of the climb and the long waits. The views from the pedestal are much the same as those from the crown, and it’s easier to get there. For those not climbing, there’s an elevator to the top of the pedestal. For climbers, it’s just a stopoff on the way down.
There’s a number of museum displays inside the pedestal, including a retired version of the torch, and also a substantial souvenir shop flogging largely “Made in China” souvenirs. I searched the offerings carefully and managed to find one that claimed to be US made: a pewter bell topped by a miniature Statue of Liberty.
There’s not a lot of point in trying to look up Liberty’s skirts. She has them well tucked in around her ankles, doesn’t tend to react to peeping toms, and besides, she has nothing to hide. However, she really ought to iron her petticoat — it looks like she wrung it out by spindling, then hung it somewhere to dry.
The Liberty ferries go to Ellis Island as their next stop. Ellis Island looks extensive from Liberty, but the nearer half of the island is blocked off from tourist incursions. Only the Main Building and some of its grounds are accessible. The ferry wharf is in the cleft between the halves of the island. The length and narrowness of the cleft makes for interesting traffic jams when several tourist boats arrive at once.
It’s a shame half the island is blocked to tourists — the forbidden zone features many attractive buildings and houses set amidst trees. I would have enjoyed a stroll through those grounds. I did essay a quick examination of the options for sneaking in, but the fence was too high and the gates were closed.
The main building has obviously changed since it was used as an immigration control station. Many of the fittings such as the canopy over the entrance have a recent feel to their archictecture — mid-20th Century utilitarian. Inside, the changes are less obtrusive.
On the ground floor there are a number of displays showing how it looked when the facility was in use. The baggage room is particularly good. The press of tourists does a good job of emulating the one-time bustle of arriving immigrants. As usual in America, flags hang down wherever someone thought a flag might fit.
Upstairs there are more displays, including several models showing the development of the island through land-fill from a bullet-shaped rock to its modern dimensions.
Back on Manhattan I cruised through Battery Park. As with much of Manhattan’s shoreline, this is mostly landfill — Castle Clinton was built on an island. The main feature I came across was a collection of huge concrete slabs, the World War II East Coast Memorial.
I did pop out of the park to visit a location from Men in Black — the ventilation facility for the Brooklyn Battery Toll Tunnel, aka MIB Central. I peered through the door but was disappointed: no huge fan with security guard slouched in front of it, just a dingy room and a metal staircase. Sigh.
I worked my way around the chin of Manhattan until I reached the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, an unimpressive pile but it was the home base of New York’s best free sightseeing trip.
The Staten Island ferry plied half-hourly between Manhattan and (where else) Staten Island. It was a commuter ferry, not a tourist excursion, but it was also free — and it would take me past some of New York’s icons.
The ferry was double-ended. You walked on at one end, and after crossing you stepped off the other end. The ferry turned right as it left the dock, giving a succession of splendid views of lower Manhattan and the bridges across the East River as it gradually moved out into the harbour. The island grabbed all eyes: Brooklyn Heights, opposite, was almost ignored.
As the towering buildings of the city started to lose their dominance, the ferry came abreast of Ellis Island and then the Statue of Liberty. The encounter was at much longer range than the Liberty ferry, but gave abundant opportunities for gaping — and for perpective photography.
Finally the small islands slipped away, and Staten Island loomed ahead. The large island was not noteworthy, but now that the Statue of Liberty had been diminished by distance, the whole panorama including Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Jersey shore opened up beyond the stern of the ferry.
The entire huge harbour was a bustle of ships and ferries and boats, coming and going. There was no obvious traffic control, but somehow it worked. There was always a jet overhead, headed to or from one or another airport.
The ferry was more than just a ride. Buskers set up in the main cabins, vying for tips. And there was the whole gamut of New Yorkers: light, dark, thin, fat, tall, short, young, old, male, female, and points between, all jostling for seats and all speaking in broad American accents. I roamed the vessel, eavesdropping shamelessly, revelling in the moment. It was like being in a movie. I was surrounded by stock extras from American TV productions. And then I’d spot a new angle on one of the icons and I’d whip out my camera and dash to the railing to capture it.
The ferry nuzzled up to its berth, the gates crashed open, and the mob poured off. I stayed aboard, as did a few others. With the locals gone, we tourists stood out prominently. And then the tide of locals poured aboard, submerging us again.
The return trip was a mirror image of the outward leg, except that instead of early-morning shoppers and night-shift workers heading home, these were people headed for work or shop. The mood was different: more subdued, less relaxed. Instead of booming conversations there there muttered exchanges. Instead of sprawling across seats and shepherding parcels they sat primly, in ones and twos.
Back on Manhattan, I headed north out of the ferry building. It was nearing lunchtime and I’d heard there was a food hall at South St Seaport. I made my way up a canyon until the buildings gave way on the right.
South St Seaport turned out to be the tourist trap I’d expected, but I had fun. I bought a silver Statue of Liberty charm for the charm bracelet I was building, and some silver rings to hold additional charms. I bought some little “money” notepads. And I even found the promised food hall, where I purchased coffee and a gyros, the souvlaki rolled up in its pita bread that I’d eaten so often in Melbourne as a quick, healthy, mobile meal.
The place was full, but I found an unoccupied table. I’d only been there a few minutes when an elderly woman came up and asked if I minded sharing the table. I had no objection: it was big enough for six.
We chatted a bit as we ate. She was born in Italy but her family emigrated after the war. Her sons had grown up, married, and moved away and her husband had died. Her life story was fluent and well structured: I soon got the feeling that hanging out in the food hall and chatting up strangers was her way of getting through a lonely day.
She spotted the “celtic” silver ring I was wearing. Since I was wearing it on my left ring finger (I hate encumbering my right hand with rings) she accused me of being married. She didn’t believe my denial. Marriage to her was a ritual, like mass: you wore things, you did things. In her world, if you wore a ring on the left ring finger that meant you were married.
It was a pleasant lunch, but I am a quick eater and I could see my next target, the Brooklyn Bridge. All too soon it was time to move on.
Brooklyn Bridge. Legendary real estate. I knew it could be crossed by foot. But how to approach it? I was down by the waterfront. There didn’t seem to be any way up.
I had to push some way inland below the bridge before I found a way up. Then I found myself stranded on the wrong side of several lanes of Brooklyn-bound traffic, glumly watching people strolling along a walkway that ran down the middle of the road. I risked my life and probably broke any number of laws to get across, but finally I was one of the nonchalont strollers.
Seen from a distance, the Brooklyn Bridge has massive grace and strength. Close up the mass and strength remain, but the grace is lost. It is still impressive, but its beauty leaks away when detail overwhelms appreciation of its lines. The walkway is a brually stark metal passage overhung by grimy metal hawsers thicker than my thigh. Only the pylons soaring overhead soften the effect.
The cars down below had it worse. They ran in slots, walled by girders and roofed by bars.
At the far side I toyed with going down and walking beneath the bridge, but the sun was beating down and the humidity was so high that sweat was pooling on me. My winter-adapted body was not used to this.
Pity. If I’d gone beneath the bridge there would have been shade and relative coolness beside the river. I probably would have been better off resting there for half an hour or so.
Instead I walked back across the bridge, getting the reverse view as Manhattan resolved from stone ridgelines into a confusing maze of canyons.
I followed the footway to its end, in a park with a fountain surrounded by heat-sapped tourists. I found that fountain again, three years later: it was in front of City Hall.
I’d had enough. I found a subway entrance and rode a mobile sauna back uptown.
There was a general store across from the hostel. I bought some food — can of Coke, $1 — and a heavy-duty combination padlock, suitable for securing a locker. I still have that padlock. Every trip now I debate the wisdom of packing the wretched thing along, and every trip I do take it, though I rarely get to use it. The time I leave it at home will be the time I need it!
For now, it came in handy. I moved the less perishable food, my kitchen items and a few minor valuables into a locker downstairs. My organiser, papers, tickets and money I always took with me. The rest of my gear, well, if it was stolen I could replace it. As it happens I only lost some milk and cereal. But one of my room-mates lost his mobile phone, which he’d been using as an alarm clock. My own alarm was a decade-old leatherette digital device dymo-labelled “Josa”. It worked perfectly, but was nothing anyone would bother to steal.
The Empire State BuildingSunday, 27 August 2000
Another early start the next morning. Yesterday had been a mere entree. This was the day when I intended to follow in the footsteps of King Kong and go up the Empire State Building — but inside, using the elevator. Then I planned to walk up Broadway and through Central Park, which would take up the balance of the day.
The Empire State Building is one of those icons that everyone knows about, but whose very fame obscures their details. It floats in a mythic TV Never-Land, even in New York. It can be seen from many points, but can’t be tied down to one spot.
It actually fronts onto Fifth Avenue, filling the eastern half of the block between 33rd and 34th Streets. The other end of the block, which should be on Sixth Avenue, is clipped diagonally by Broadway at the south end of Herald Square.
There’s a subway station below Herald Square, but getting there from 103rd Street requires changing at Times Square. I cheated, staying on Line 1 to 34th Street (Penn Station) then walking east two blocks from Seventh Avenue instead of one from Sixth. It was only about 600 metres, a sedate 10 minute stroll.
I arrived well before opening time. It was a Sunday, and I had the unusual experience of standing in the middle of 34th & 5th and knowing I was perfectly safe because there was not a car moving for at least two blocks in every direction.
Eventually the front doors were unlocked and I saw people started moving in and out, so I headed in to secure my place in the queue.
The lobby was ornate, hanging stone and metal, and (inevitably) had flags all over it. There was a sign about security, but the guards just waved everyone through — after all, this was still the world before “9-11”! At the reception desk I asked which way to the observation deck and they waved me to the left.
I soon found the place to wait: a few people were already hanging around the top of a stopped escalator. So I joined the crew.
Eventually the escalator ground into motion, with me near the head of the queue. Perfect!
At the bottom I followed the people in front of me, only to discover that they already had their tickets but that I needed to divert to the ticket office to get mine. A mob of us ended up following each other in circles. By the time I found the ticket office (right by the base of the escalator), there was a big queue at the window. By the time I had my ticket the queue for the lift was huge. Bah, humbug!
The lifts were huge and fast, designed to move sightseers en masse. But they didn’t go all the way up. One entire floor of the building was a staging area devoted to crowd mangement. People spilling from the big lifts had to join a long, snakey queue for the elevators to the viewing platforms. I was momentarily dismayed, thinking this closed-in place was the observation level.
But I had struck out on my hopes of a view from the 102nd Floor: it was closed. I had to settle for the 86th Floor.
The way to the viewing platform on the 86th floor was through a tourist trap — a huge souvenir shop. I walked through it resolutely and out onto the platform.
And the city was there, looking just as … well, just as it had in all those movies. Except I don’t recall that the view was so hazy in the movies. Even the buildings down on the tip of the island tended to blend into the haze. The Statue of Liberty was a smudge.
But it was there, and I was here, and I was deliriously happy. It was the realisation of another long-held dream. I rushed from vantage to vantage, camera in hand, straining to see one icon after another. The Twin Towers, Brooklyn Bridge, the UN, Central Park. The city stretched away below me, a cubist’s dream.
When the first rush wore off, I slowed down and took a more leisurely circuit, stopping every so often to lean on the parapet and inhale the views, trying to store it all in my memory. I might never be here again, and I wanted to keep these moments with me forever.
But time was not stopped. Eventually I tore myself away. It was time for the gift shop.
I zipped through the shop, getting the gist of what was on offer. In the end I came away with a crystal paperweight and a t-shirt. Net time taken, five minutes.
I queued for the lift. This was a rewind of the upward journey, except that the queues were shorter and the down lifts weren’t packed as tight. The viewing platform had already been crowded when I arrived, but the population was still rising fast.
At the bottom I took a roundabout way out of the building, stopping at a tobacconist’s to buy a fold-out map of the midtown area and a tacky little pop-up model of the area.
I walked along the flank of the building to Broadway and crossed over to Herald Square. Broadway was a canyon bordered by tall buildings.
I walked north on Broadway, window-shopping and people-watching. There were so many TV drama, Hollywood and MTV stereotypes it was scary. There were also plenty of people who would blend right in almost anywhere else, but they weren’t the ones who grabbed the eye. Instead I saw the rappers, the executives, the mothers-in-law. Their overheard conversations were in a cacophany of American TV accents.
Times Square. A disappointment. Just a traffic-clogged, hourglass-shaped intersection where Broadway cut across Seventh Avenue. And only the southern loop of the hourglass is Times Square proper, the northern loop is Duffy Square. But that distinction is not generally made.
A friendly cop posed obligingly for a photo, and then I walked through and followed Broadway north again.
A peculiarity of learning about a city through TV shows is that I had only a fuzzy notion of the place as a connected series of points. In TV shows they jump in their car and zoom off. Cut to next scene (car arrives at destination). The TV city is therefore a collection of disconnected fragments.
It’s one thing to look at a map and see that Broadway connects the Empire State Building, Times Square and Central Park. You can understand intellectually that these things share a physical matrix — but then you’re walking up Broadway, watching the landmarks approach and recede, and you realise how pathetic maps and TV are as a substitute for being there.
TV and even maps are recent things when set against our evolutionary history. For thousands of generations the only way to see something was to go there.
TV and maps are still crude technologies, only beyond the ancient bards because they can be exactly replayed to order. Until we achieve full 3D virtual reality complete with vision, sound, smell and touch — the complete virtual experience, indistinguishable from reality — going there will always be better.
Eventually the row of buildings ahead of me broke, replaced by a wall of trees. I had reached Columbus Circle, and the main event of the day: a walk through Central Park.
Five kilometres long and most of a kilometre wide, Central Park is arguably the world’s most famous urban parkland. It’s also one of the most artificial. Although it looks natural, it is the product of meticulous planning and massive landscaping. Few of its features are original.
Its long axis runs roughly north-north-east, but for immediate purposes I’ll call it north.
I was standing at the south-west corner of the park — Columbus Circle, where Broadway crosses Eighth Avenue. To my left, Central Park South (the portion of 59th Street that fronts on the park) was a row of glass fronts, polished brass and uniformed doormen. High-end hotels and apartment buildings lined it from end to end. I went that way, parading my tatty t-shirt and trackpants across the eyeballs of the rich and wanna-be-famous.
Partway along on the other side was a park entrance known as the Artists Gate. There was a horse and buggy parked outside. The driver had just taken some passengers aboard, but the horse had decided it was fed up. It started by refusing to move off. As the driver flicked the reins it started to snort and froth at the mouth. When the driver got down to quiet it, it started plunging against its straps. By now a crowd had gathered.
The red-faced driver finally had to let his fares climb down, after which he released the horse from the buggy and led it around in a circle for a while until it calmed down.
I don’t know the cause of the problem, but by now the day was hot and humid. Everyone was sweaty and edgy. Perhaps the horse just wanted a break from the sweaty straps..
At the south-east corner of the park (Fifth Avenue) I finally crossed Central Park South at Grand Army Plaza and entered the park via the Scholars Gate. There was a huge wooden sculpture here, meaning unknown. It had no particular shape, it was just a big round knob made up of hundreds of blocks of wood.
Shortly I came to the Central Park Wildlife Centre, still usually called the zoo by the locals. Most of the big animals were moved out years ago. The biggest remaining beast was a polar bear that spent its day boredly paddling back and forth in its dismal tank, with locals and tourists gaping vacantly at it through the glass walls.
No better housed, but much less bored were the seals, who cheerfully played up to the ranks of faces that crowded up to their round pond.
After a while I came upon a café in a shaded courtyard and stopped for coffee and a bite and a chance to let my body recover from the heat. Between the the shade of the trees and the ability of the ground to absorb heat, it felt cooler in the park than on the streets outside, but my body was still fresh-come from Melbourne’s winter. I was doing well time-wise, so there was no point in rushing on.
Refreshed, I left the zoo and headed west in the first of a number of planned traverses. I crossed The Pond via Gapstow Bridge, but The Pond had been drained for repairs and was just mud and puddles.
Continuing west, I crossed Center Drive and took to the walking paths on the far side. These were pleasantly shaded and for the first time I felt comfortable. The breeze from my motion caused enough evaporation so that sweat was no longer pooling on me. I turned north at Pinebank Arch because I could see another road (West Drive) ahead and I wanted to prolong the walk.
This area was quite rocky. I could see slabs of cardboard scattered across the top of one large flat rock nearby: homes for the homeless. Safe enough by day, it place must be a maze of shadows and desperation by night.
I came across a large area of open ground divided into several large baseball diamonds. All were in use — today was Sunday.
A bit farther on I reached an even larger open area, the Sheep Meadow. I had planned a possible lunch near here in the so-called Tavern-on-the-Green, but one sight of the enormous parking-lot around it dissuaded me. Fortunately I had expected it, and had packed some fruit and sandwiches. At 12:47 — I made a note of the time on my map — I found a nice bench beneath a tree and enjoyed a picnic lunch and some people-watching.
This lawn was called the Sheep Meadow because, well, that’s what it had been for many years. Sheep were grazed here to keep the grass down.
The passers-by were totally unremarkable. Families with children, tourists, joggers, cyclists, this could have been any park in Australia. Australia has less African and more Asian in the mix, but this was the wealthy end of the park and white faces predominated. When I reached the north end of the park, the differences would be marked as that end is surrounded by predominantly black neighbourhoods..
The costumes of some of the joggers were outrageous. Several well endowed women went past wearing halter tops that looked scarcely capable of holding things in when the occupant was merely standing and breathing. To my disappointment, all these garments performed beyond the call of duty. In fact, the breasts of one woman wearing two pink triangles held together by string, scarcely even jiggled let alone bounced. Silicone?
Out in the meadow, families were sitting and having picnics. People sunbathed and lovers necked. And the giant buildings towered above the trees on all sides. I’d thought the length of the park would cause a gap, but perspective closed it again.
Rested and refreshed, I headed east along the south edge of the Sheep Meadow until I reached The Dairy. This tourist trap and visitor’s centre was the nerve centre of the park. Unfortunately they had little enough to offer me.
I did buy a big map of the park — not the one I wanted (they had none left), but acceptable. I was tempted to buy a rolled version but sanity prevailed and I went for the folded version. I could have mailed the roll home in a tube on Monday, but first I’d have to lug it around with me all afternoon. It would get creased and dirty, and I’d be likely to put it down somewhere and forget it, as did happen later in my trip. The folded map tucked neatly away in the giant bum-bag I was wearing in lieu of a day pack.
(The bum-bag had the capacity of a day-pack but it was an experiment that failed. I thought that carrying the weight around my hips would be more convenient than lugging it on my shoulders. It wasn’t. In fact, it left me feeling like I was waddling. And if I’d been foolish enough to wear such a contraption in, say, Rome, it would have attracted every cutpurse in town!)
Outside the Dairy, several artists had set up easels and displays of their work (for sale).
I headed north. Around here I heard a familiar accent and spent a minute chatting to an Australian couple — who also lived in Richmond! We'd come a long way to talk to the neighbours.
The Mall. A broad path lined by statues of literati and such notables as had exuded a sufficient trail of inky paper (money) to force their way in.
At the north end was the Naumberg Bandshell, fronted by an expanse of concrete made perilous by a cloud of whirling skaters and cyclists. The seats around the edge were packed with people who obviously found just breathing was sufficient exercise in the humidity. Daft. The concrete took the sun and cast the heat back on them in waves. If they wanted to cool down, there were plenty of seats nearby in shady spots surrounded by grass.
North, and I found myself on a bridge or overpass looking down on another terrace. Bethesda Terrace. It was lovely, and not too crowded. There was a fountain in the centre and the terrace looked out on a branch of The Lake. The abundant water tended to cool it down and the overpass gave some shade, but it was still pretty hot out on the pavement.
There was a food cart here, selling drinks and overpriced junk food. I replenished my water supply.
I headed east to complete my second traverse with a visit to the Alice in Wonderland statue, a massive bronze Alice sitting on a mushroom overlooking the Conservatory Water. It was a favourite with the children.
From the statue I immediately started my third traverse, heading west through The Ramble to Bow Bridge. The Ramble, a maze of twisting paths through a dense wood, was once a hangout for gays looking to hook up and child molesters looking for victims, but I didn’t notice anyone particularly odd hiding in the bushes or hanging around in quiet spots.
I crossed Bow Bridge to Cherry Hill. The name tickled something in my memory, but I couldn’t quite place it. There was a fountain in a big flat plaza, quite pretty but bland. I kept moving west.
I took a jog south to check out some buildings, then went west again. At the edge of the park I turned right.
There was a collection of people ahead of me, clustered around something on the ground. And so I found Strawberry Fields. This was the name “Cherry Hill” had roused in my memory. I had noted it during my pre-trip reseatch, then forgotten it was here.
This is a garden donated by Yoko Ono to the memory of John Lennon of Beatles fame. It takes its name from one of his songs, and its centrepiece is a mosaic donated by Naples, reproduced from one in Pompeii. The centre of the mosaic contains the word Imagine, title of another Lennon song. Lennon devotees come here to lay flowers around the mosaic.
I was tempted to seek out the nearby Dakota Apartments, where Lennon was shot, but I wasn’t sure of the address so I decided to keep moving. Silly. All I had to do was look it up in my guide book! I can only plead that the heat was getting to me — big time. The exploratory urge was evaporating rapidly. If I stopped I might fall asleep and miss the rest of the park.
Salvation was at hand. Facing the park across Central Park West was the mammoth pile of the American Museum of Natural History. The moment its airconditioning wrapped me in delicious coolness, my fatigue dropped away.
The entry hall to the Museum has a dramatic display: three dinosaur skeletons. An allosaurus is attacking a diplodocus herd. The adult has reared up on its hind legs, ready to stomp the meat eater. It is protecting a small diplodocus.
I wandered through the halls at random until I came across a huge white sphere: the brand new Hayden Planetarium. This was supposed to be state of the art. Best of all, the next presentation of “The Big Bang” was about to begin — and I already had my ticket.
My previous experience in a planetarium was some twenty years old — sometime in 1980 or 1981, the Wellington branch of New Zealand’s National Association for SF had organised an outing to the Wellington Planetarium. That had basically been a slideshow narrative projected on a flat screen while the simulated night sky wheeled around us on the roof.
The Hayden was essentially the same, except that instead of merely rotating the sky on the roof it was able to take us on swooping dives through the galaxy, and instead of a flat screen the narrative was also projected on the roof. The narrative started with the Big Bang, which a powerful sound-system ensured really was a big bang, and continued forward to the present day.
It was expensive and flashy, and very impressive, though it fell a little short of its hype. The seating was less than perfect: I came out with a crick in my neck from having to crane to see things.
After the planetarium I calmed down by cruising the Hall of the Planets, admiring the meteorites, moon rocks, and model planets displayed there. I finished up with another pass through the rest of the Museum, partly for another look at an exhibit that had dropped my jaw earlier.
We tend to gape at the dinosaurs and sigh that we live in an age of midget animals. And yet, the biggest animal this planet has ever birthed is alive today. It’s even a relatively close relative — a mammal. It’s the blue whale. And in one great hall the Museum had mounted a full-grown blue whale, squeezing it in from corner to corner.
Thirty metres of whale floated in the air like a bent zeppelin, caught in mid-sound, about to hoist its tail from the non-existent water. I took a photo of it, but it didn’t come out. I had to wait till 2003 to try again - successfully this time.
Of all the things I saw this day, the whale was one image that was indelibly stamped in my memory.
I now re-entered the park via the Hunter’s Gate for my fourth traverse of it.
At Delacorte Theatre I looked into the possibility of a ticket to a show, but tney were sold out. So I moved on to Belvedere Castle.
This structure broods over Turtle Pond, the last remnant of a former reservoir that has mostly been converted into the Great Lawn now. It was a disappointing tourist trap inside, but the views were splendid from the top of it, and there were some redeeming cultural events being held around it.
I now reached my next objective, an Egyptian obelisk outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Met itself wasn’t on the agenda for today — even a quick look through it would take more time than I could afford. I never got back to it this trip — I finally saw it in 2003.
I set off on my fifth traverse, skirting the Great Lawn and rounding the Reservoir, and came back across the north side of the Reservoir on my sixth traverse. There were some old forts and an interesting fountain that I wanted to find.
I found Fort Clinton, and the fountain. The fountain was as lovely as I’d hoped, made up of several bronze nymphs dancing around the main spurt.
I came out of the north-east corner of the park at Frawley Circle. I was now standing in Harlem. When I was growing up, there was every chance I would be mugged or killed if I’d walked north or east from here. I am white, so I would have been a walking target.
Fortunately things are more settled now, though it’s still not the place for a casual walk. I had no plans of exploring it further.
There was a monument in the middle of the Circle, and some locals were clustered excitedly around something on a step of the monument. Curious, I sidled around to see what it was, and got smacked in the face by prejudices I didn’t know I had.
The boys were black, and looked rough. So I’d vaguely assumed they were gambling or dealing or some such. It wasn’t a conviction, just an unchallenged assumption. If I’d really believed in it, I would’ve been headed in the opposite direction. But my traveller’s intuition was silent: there was no imminent danger.
I reached a point where I could see the object of their attention. And it was a game of chess!
I approached and asked permission to take a photo. They politely agreed, though they wanted to know why I wanted it. Several boys backed out of the picture, but it’s one of my favourite souvenirs from the trip. I look at it every now and again to try to remind myself never, ever to judge people at second or third hand (TV) or by first appearances.
I didn’t try to overextend my welcome. I went back into the park for my seventh and final traverse, walking across the northern edge to the Stranger’s Gate at Frederick Douglass Circle.
My walk in the park was over and it was starting to get dark. But I was close to home: five blocks south and several west, and I was there.
I went out again later and found dinner at a cheap restaurant on Broadway. The night life was rough. People would gather in small groups, money and packages would change hands, and the groups would disperse. It was all quite open. But it wasn’t menacing: half the people on the street were obvious non-locals. There seemed to be an agreement that the tourists were not to be hassled.
DowntownMonday, 28 August 2000
Today was for kicking around lower Manhattan. I started by taking the subway to Penn Station. I found a spot beside a bin that was out of the way, and watched the morning rush hour flow past me.
Walking outside, I found a quiet step outside Madison Square Gardens and had a picnic breakfast there. Like watching the Penn rush hour, this was actually more of a dare than a pleasure — when I talked about breakfast at Madison Square Gardens, my (local) correspondent pooh-poohed the idea, pointing out that Madison Square Gardens were neither square nor gardens (they’re a rather large theatre). When I mentioned wanting to watch the rush hour in Penn, she pointed out that Penn was designed to move the maximum volume of people with the minimum of turbulence: there wouldn’t be any quiet spots. So I did both things anyway.
Once fed, I started in earnest upon my day. I started by walking up and across town to the Library, then on to Grand Central Station. This was a fair hike through the heart of midtown, with plenty of opportunity to catch daily life in New York in the round.
Grand Central Station is a grand building with a grand name but it only handles a few services, from upstate. Penn Station carries the bulk of Amtrak’s long distance action and is better placed for transferring from intercity to intracity transport. But although Penn is big and efficient, it is not beautiful. Grand Central is beautiful. People come here just to hang out.
I walked around it for a bit, getting the feel of it, then headed east.
As a schoolkid in the 60’s I learned about the United Nations in geography and social studies. Along with models of lunar landers and balsa rafts, we also built a model of the UN HQ. I was impressed because the General Assembly Building looked a bit like our school assembly hall.
We learnt about the high purpose of the UN and all the marvellous things it was doing to feed the starving children. One day they gave us each a sample compressed milk bar to eat. It tasted much as you’d expect powdered milk compressed into a bar to taste. The slight strawberry or lime flavouring did nothing to conceal the slightly sickly over-rich taste of the milk.
At any rate, I came out of the exercise with a desire to see the UN buildings in New York. And suddenly, there they were, just as I remembered them from school, right down the the ranks of flapping, snapping flags out front.
I thought I might go in and look around, but the queue outside changed my mind. The wait would be interminable, and they were telling people that they might not get in today. So my tour of the UN had to wait until 2003.
Instead I walked on by and then made my way west to Rockefeller Plaza. One of the statues there had an interesting optical illusion. Seen from the side, its face presented a fine profile and its back curved deeply before reaching protruding buttocks, but instead of jutting, its breasts were almost flat to the chest. Seen from the front, its face was curiously bland and its hips were understated, yet the breasts appeared to bulge. The result was a sense of androgeny.
The famous gilded statue of Prometheus bringing fire left me unimpressed. The pose was awkward and the clumsily arranged cloth covering his groin looked like a third leg. Heroic statues should either be nude or realistically clothed: nobody is going to fly around with a strip of cloth somehow clinging to one thigh.
The whole place was like that: grand ideas, half drawn through primness or ideological blinders. The buildings were standard industrial-age monoliths. The final word on it is probably best delivered by mentioning that in 1999 they bulldozed a small park with a waterfall to make way for more buildings.
I walked out past the Radio City Music Hall, but did not stop for a tour.
Around here I decided to go buy my Greyhound bus tickets for the rest of the trip. I had to get to the Port Authority, some way across town, so to save some time and effort I grabbed my only New York taxi ride.
The place was big and bustling, but I eventually found the counter. I surprised the girl behind it by reading off the services I wanted, their timetables, and their fares. My pre-trip research on the Greyhound web site paid off, because I was ready with the answers when she had trouble finding a service. I can place this task in time, thanks to my Greyhound receipt for the first leg: I bought the ticket at 10:11 AM on the 28th of August.
Business taken care of, I decided to fill in some gaps further south, so I dived into the Subway, to emerge again near the World Trade Centre.
Office workers were coming out for lunch, so I took the hint and bought sandwiches and coffee from a lunch cart. I sat on a convenient ledge and watched the business heart of New York pause its beat to eat around me.
This was 2000, and mobile phones were still essentially a status symbol. There were a lot of people wandering around with clunky devices crammed to their ears. They spoke loudly, with an air of ponderous deliberation, as if to underline the importance of the topic under discussion.
Refueled, I wandered into the courtyard between the twin towers. People hurried to and fro, entering and exiting the towers. Some of these people rushing around me probably had only a year to live. I’ll never know who they were. If I’d suffered a premonition and asked one of them “what if someone flew a plane into your office window?” they would have looked sideways at me and hurried on. But of course, I had no premonition, no reason to doubt that the towers would be there for years to come.
Seen from this close, the towers lost their tuning-fork appearance and became fairy-castles springing into the sky, insubstantial and unreal. They seem to rest on the plaza rather than be set into it. But they were real. Alas, they were also insubstantial.
I went into the south tower to see about going up to the observation deck on the 107th floor. The queue for the elevator was enormous and moving slowly: I figured it would take more than half an hour to reach the front. So I decided to leave it for another day, or a later visit — and now it’s too late.
I explored the streets nearby, finding first Broad Street, and then, a canyon leading off Broad Stree, Wall Street.
The Stock Exchange building was curiously unimpressive. The problem may be that there was no room to step back. The narrow street meant that it could only be viewed from below, foreshortened by proximity. Anyone stopping to gawk was jostled by the crowd. I did not go in.
I skipped back down into the subway and shot up to The Village. One of my maps mentioned “Mark Twain’s House”, one of Samuel Clemens’ various New York abodes. I was determined to find it — and to explore the area around about it in the process.
Unfortunately the map was large scale and not very clear about the exact location of the house, but it had to be West 9th or 10th Street. I spent quite a while wandering around the area, content enough to explore but frustrated by that elusive house (I finally found it in 2003, at 14 West 10th St, thanks to my Blue Guide New York).
I did stumble across 4 Patchin Place, one-time home of e.e. cummings. Some of my literary friends would be more excited by that than by Mark Twain, but I never cared for cummings.
I also found Washington Square Park, its fountain dry and its seats occupied by sleeping bums. (Contrast with 2003, when the dry fountain featured a performer and the seats were occupied by dozing students.)
I started south, thinking of walking down through SoHo, but I was pretty tired by now so I came back and walked across to Sixth Avenue to hop a subway ride home.
New JerseyTuesday, 29 August 2000
Next day was my last day in New York. This was the morning when I was rudely woken before dawn because they’d sold my bed.
I took a leisurely shower and then sought out the manager and arranged to have my pack taken care of. Then I headed down to Penn and hopped a train down the coast.
Years ago I was out of work, broke, alone, and deeply depressed. In a move toward regaining some kind of non-threatening arms-length touch with the world, I scraped together the money for a 2400-baud modem, got a list of good computer bulletin boards (BBSes) from a friend (Terry Frost), and started dialing.
The hobby took hold and I was soon spending hours each day on the local boards, reading and writing mail, dowloading (and uploading) files, and playing the online games.
I soon had my favourites identified. The Wizard’s Tower, Great Northern, Candi’s Box. But king of the pile was Another Bloody BBS — usually referred to as ABBBS. The message boards (“echoes”) were sharper and weirder, and the files were biased heavily towards textfiles instead of software. A lot of the callers appeared to like science fiction, too.
Over time I grew aware that a lot of the stuff I liked was mostly coming into ABBBS through a US-based BBS network called Godnet, for which ABBBS was the Australian host.
Then one day this comfy association was shattered: ABBBS was closing down!
I had been thinking of making the transition from user to sysop by putting up my own BBS. Now it became urgent.
I ransacked my bank accounts to upgrade to twin 14400-baud modems and with technical help and other aid from Black Rose, ABBBS sysop, and Tal Meta, who ran Godnet, Vapourware BBS went online in time to pick up the slack.
This arrangement lasted several years, but eventually Tal Meta announced that he was folding his BBS, Phoenix Modernz Systems. Godnet could not survive this blow, and when PMS went down, Godnet was no more.
Fortunately by now the internet was becoming the favoured method of contact worldwide, so the end of Godnet did not mean the end of contact. But much pleasant weirdness was lost.
Tal Meta lived in New Jersey, and so did his most prominent user, Ace Lightning. Although Ace had visited Melbourne I’d never met either of them. In planning this trip I’d decided to allocate my last day “in” New York to a pilgrimage down the coast, to met Ace and Tal, to get a taste of greater urban US culture, and to help break any cobwebs that might have formed around my ankles after staying several days in one place.
(I know their real names — although in Tal’s case the name is too good to be true — but I’ll stick to using their BBS nanes here. It’s how I think of them.)
When I stepped off the train at Middletown, Ace was waiting: chubby, older than me. I handed her a small gift I’d brought from Melbourne and we drove off towards Tal’s beachside lair at Seaside Heights.
Semi-rural New Jersey was a shock after New York. But it looked nothing like the equivalent territory around Melbourne. The angular frame houses, built to a standardised formula, all looked alike to me. There were differences in colour, arrangement of rooms, etc, but my eye was raised on the varied shapes and sizes of houses of New Zealand and Australia, where winters are mild, so I mainly saw the ways the frame buildings resembled each other with their tall slab sides and sharply peaked rooves.
Seaside Heights itself was stark beneath the sun. It looked half built and treeless. But I have no surviving photos of the area, so I’m working from memory, which has a way of editing things. An Australian beach town would be almost overgrown with palms and trees and other greenery. Seaside Heights might have been lush enough by US standards, but if so it left no impression.
Up some stairs, and there was Tal, saturnine, spade-bearded, tall and solidly built. All he needed was a cyborg arm and he could have stepped from the pages of a Heinlein novel. His PC was set in a corner of the living area. He sat down beside it and the picture was complete.
His wife, Cool One, was out or at work and Tal was playing Mr Mum to their two children. His daughter was devastatingly intelligent and self-possessed. His son was younger but showing signs of the same precocity.
I wanted to see the Atlantic, which I hadn’t seen close up (a hazy view past a distant bridge), so we all went down to the boardwalk and sat in what I guess must have been a soda fountain. The Atlantic looked pretty much like any other ocean, but I could now fairly claim to have seen two of the world’s major oceans. (To the Pacific and the Atlantic I’ve since added the Indian and the Miditerranean.)
On the walk back to Tal’s place, the children got tired. Tal’s son ended up riding on my shoulders. It was an odd sensation. He weighed almost nothing. For many years the people I usually hung out with tended to be either single adults or childless couples. My reflexes for dealing with children had atrophied, so now I had to make it up as I went along.
Back at Tal’s place, Tal dug out a soldering iron and Ace spent a few minutes fixing up my headphones, which had become faulty due to wear and tear on the wires. Her repairs kept the things serviceable until I reached the Grand Canyon, where I finally ditched them.
I also picked up copies of the Godnet files on CDs. Although I’d inherited the bulk of ABBBS’s Godnet filebase and had added to it the files received while running Vapourware, there were many gaps in my collection and some of the files were corrupt. Now I had a pristine set. I offered to pay, but Tal refused.
Finally it was time to go. I was willing to take the train back, but Ace volunteered to drive me into Manhattan. My protests were half-hearted: apart from anything else it meant I would see the New Jersey turnpike!
We came in over the George Washington Bridge. Manhattan was a wall of light. Ace dropped me off at the hostel and drove off into the dusk. The visit was over, and so was my time in New York. I retrieved my pack and headed for the subway.
At Penn Station, catastrophe! While I was bending down fumbling for my bus tickets, my camera slipped from my grasp and banged against the stone floor, hard.
It was in its slip-case: perhaps the shock had been cushioned. I turned it on, and it opened up without a hitch. Whew! I turned it off. Alas, the barrel retracted only partway and the thing ground to a halt. It never worked again. After many attempts, I managed to rewind and extract the film that was in it, but not before I’d stuffed up many of the shots through light contamination.
This was annoying. Tomorrow I was going to visit one of North America’s major beauty spots, and now I had no camera!
Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. I shouldered my pack and walked down from Penn to the Port Authority.
This was my first experience of American coach lines. I was used to the New Zealand and Australian system, where you book a seat on a specific service. On occasion you even get a specific seat number. If the service is full they don’t sell you a ticket, though they may put you on stand-by. If you have a ticket, you just turn up and climb aboard. If not everyone turns up, those on stand-by get the vacant seats.
In America your ticket doesn’t guarantee you a seat on any service. You queue. It’s first-come, first-served. When the bus is full, it leaves. If there is a spare vehicle and enough left-over queue, they will add a second vehicle, otherwise you must wait for the next service and queue again.
I got aboard this first service without incident. It would travel overnight to Buffalo. When it got there in the morning … well, soon enough then to cross that bridge.
I could sleep on buses. I curled up in my seat, puffed up my horshoe-shaped travel pillow and hung it round my neck, and dozed off to the sound of drumming tires, while the lights of New York flared past the windows and were left behind.
Niagara FallsWednesday, 30 August 2000
The bus pulled in at Buffalo before sunrise. I stumbled off and reclaimed my pack, then went looking for the local bus to Niagara. Eventually I found it. Satisfied that my next leg was covered, I thought about breakfast, but I have no recollection of whether I found it. Running my memory forward, I recall buying something during the walk into Niagara Falls, so probably I didn’t find anything to eat in Buffalo.
Actually, looking at my Greyhound ticket now I realise I may have stuffed up. My ticket was good through to Niagara Falls, Ontario, which means I probably could have ridden the same bus through from Buffalo to Niagafa Fall, NY.
When the sun came up I peered out of the doors of the Transportation Centre and decided that I didn’t really need to forge a closer acquaintance with Buffalo. It looked dull and ugly. Instead I took the 6:40 bus to Niagara. The ride took an hour. The scenery was pretty enough, but it could have been anyplace.
The bus pulled up beside a building, the Convention Centre, isolated in the middle of a gigantic parking lot. The other passengers, all apparently locals, dispersed or were picked up, and there stood I, looking around for some way to get to the middle of town. Nothing presented itself.
I went to the information desk. They were little help, though they offered to book a hotel or a tour. They looked startled when I explained that tonight I would be on the bus again and that tours weren’t my thing.
So I picked up my gear and started walking, out of the carpark and through some backstreets, then up wide, interminable Main Street towards the centre of town. Somewhere along the way I stopped in and bought some sandwiches for breakfast.
Eventually I reached the centre of town. Although I wasn’t staying in Niagara Falls, I needed a shower. My last one had been early yesterday. Fortunately I had planned for this. The local YMCA was cheap and I figured I could pay them for the use of a shower.
In fact they didn’t offer their facilities to walk-ins. However, they did hire out mattresses in their gymnasium for $10 per night, which included access to the facilities. I shrugged and signed up for a mattress I would never see, then went and had my shower.
The showers were communal, which intimidated me a bit, but they were clean and soon so was I.
Morale much restored, I rented a locker and shoved my pack and the big bumbag into it, keeping only a bag I’d bought from the Discovery Channel shop in New York, then went looking for my objective. There was a column of mist in one direction, so that is the direction I went.
Soon I felt an odd sensation. Whenever I opened my mouth I could taste a sound. There was a vibration around me that was too low for my ears, but powerful enough to vibrate the back of my tongue.
I came into a park, and now I could hear a continuous thunder and also feel the vibration in my ears and down in my diaphragm. Then the path ended and the ground fell away before me, and for the first time in my life I looked out upon Niagara Falls.
It was breathtaking. I wanted to take a photo, but my camera was broken. So I stood there and drank in the view, watching megalitres of water pouring into the abyss.
Near at hand were the American Falls, seen from the side at an awkward angel. But in the distance, incomparably more majestic, the Canadian Falls were a curved wall of thunder and steam. It looked just like all the photos and TV images, except that this was real. I was here, I was seeing it, hearing it, tasting it and feeling it. No camera or microphone could capture the whole experience. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
In New Zealand, north of my home town, lie Raukawa Falls. They always impressed me with their size and power. But compared to the least of the three great falls at Niagara — the Bridal Veil — Raukawa Falls are a rivulet.
I love the sound and sensation of falling water. Here was the near ultimate in falling water.
I wandered along the rim, gaping, until I came to the information centre. Tearing my eyes free, I went in.
Inside I bought a combined “Master Pass” to many of the attractions. I doubted I would get full value from it, but it would save queuing for tickets and suchlike stuffing around.
On a counter in the gift shop, I found cameras. I pounced, buying a disposable camera with flash, one without flash, and a waterproof. They were an inferior replacement for my APS, but better than nothing. The receipt tells me the time was 9:36 AM.
I used my new Master Pass immediately, to get onto the nearby observation tower (normally $0.50, woohoo!) — where I also immediately used my new cameras!
The observation tower stands out from the cliffs that line the river. It gives a considerably enhanced viewing angle on the American Falls but that merely emphasises the American realisation of the superiority of the view from the Canadian side.
The Americans also refer to the American Falls as the American Falls and the Canadian Falls as the Horseshoe Falls, refusing to allow Canada the satisfaction of claiming the better set of falls.
I took the lift down to the riverside, in search of the Maid of the Mist. My Master Pass was about to get wet.
These are the boats that take tourists almost up to the base of the Canadian Falls. The ride includes a free plastic rain slicker that provides poor water protection but a fine souvenir. I posted mine home to myself, and when it arrived, weeks later, it still had some droplets of St Lawrence water wrapped in it, so I got to experience the Falls again, vicariously.
The boat moved slowly upriver, cutting in as close to the American Falls as the jumbled rocks would allow. Everyone aboard clustered at the bow or along the left side, moving backwards as we passed the falls. We could see a cluster of yellow-coated tourists moving across the rocks near the edge of the base: a Cave of the Winds tour.
As the American Falls receded, people started deserting the mob at the stern to grab prime spots at the bow. The thunder from the Canadian Falls, still well ahead, was already louder than the sharper roar from the nearer American Falls.
The Canadian Falls approached almost imperceptably. Then they dominated half the world. We bobbed around like a toy in a bathtub, buffeted by the waves. The base of the falls was lost in the fog and spray, but the wall of water loomed above the boat, improbably tall. The crash of the water was a continuous thrumming at the base of my throat. Water fell across us like a rainstorm, driving in through every gap in our plastic slickers, running down our necks. Everyone was yelling excitedly, hyped by adrenalin.
And then it was over. The boat’s bow fell away from the falls and the brink receded. By the time the boat finished turning, we were out of the mist.
Back at the boat landing, I bundled up my slicker and stuffed it in my bag. Then I noticed a trail leading off towards the falls. I followed it, and found that it led up to a vantage point close beneath the American Falls.
I went back up the elevator and walked towards the falls, but I didn’t get far. Near Prospect Point I came across a serial buggy arrangement called the Viewmobile. It was about to pull out. My Master Pass entitled me to a ride, so I decided to jump aboard. I could always fill in the gaps by walking back.
The Viewmobile drove up beside the rapids then crossed to Goat Island via Niagara Rapids Bridge. It drove down beside the rapids and pulled up at the Cave of the Winds. My Master Pass covered this, so I got out.
Kitted out in a heavy plastic rain coat that stank of old socks, I joined the gathering tour group at the elevator. Down we went.
From the elevator we walked down a path towards the falls. Eventually the path gave way to a boardwalk. The way was soaked with spray from the falls, and soon so were we.
The final stretch was heralded by a collection point. The guide gathered us around him and warned us to be careful of our footing, as it was easy to get disoriented by the spray and the thunder of the water. Then he turned us loose.
The final landing was almost beneath the Bridal Veil Falls. In fact, it was in the outer edge of the torrent. My stinky raincoat was totally ineffective against the storms of water that swept across the platform. The sound of the water was overwhelming.
It was exhilarating!
Back up on top, I gratefully shed the raincoat and ambled down towards the Canadian Falls, hoping the odour of old socks that now impregnated my clothes was less obvious to others than it was to me.
The observation area on the American side of the Canadian Falls is called Terrapin Point. It’s a good vantage point, very close to the edge. But the falls curve back from here, robbing it of the fullest impact. Still, it was the best view I’d had yet of them. The water rushed by a couple of metres away.
The edge is abrupt, possibly even overhanging. The water flows over it and then just … drops. I spent a while standing there, just trying to grasp the dynamics of it all. It seemed impossible. The water came down the river in endless volumes and tumbled over the edge. It never stopped, never slowed.
I was carrying a half-litre bottle of water with me. The equivalent of twelve million such bottles goes over the edge every second. That’s a lot of empties. Yet the flow is only half what it once was, due to the wholesale diversion of water to make electricity. It would be nice if, on a few days each year, the falls could be turned back on full volume, just so modern visitors could enjoy the real thing.
I headed up the edge of Goat Island to the Three Sisters. These are three islands, linked by a footbridge, extending out into the main channel. The water running between and around them is shaped by flat plates of rock into an intricate series of runs and rapids. Tourists tend to get wet here, playing in the running water.
The ViewMobile came by and I hopped aboard and let it haul me back to the vicinity of the observation tower. From there I headed north a bit until I reached the Rainbow Bridge.
The river is spanned by two bridges near the Falls, the Whirlpool Rapids road/rail bridge up north and the touristy road/pedestrian Rainbow Bridge in sight of the Falls.
Crossing the Rainbow Bridge was simple and hassle-free. I fronted up to the booth and presented my passport. He looked through it till he found the green visa waiver slip stapled to it, and asked me why I was here. I told him. He visibly checked me for signs of baggage, accepted my story that I just wanted to see the Canadian side for a few hours, and stamped me out. The Canadian side was even easier. They didn’t even bother stamping me in, just waved me through.
“9-11” was still a year away, and nobody cared. But it wasn’t much worse when I came here in 2003, although they checked my day pack that time. Anyone wanting to sneak in and out of the USA can do it much more safely at an infinite number of other places along this border. The visa waiver was non-renewable and would expire in less than 90 days. If I didn’t come back from Canada and exit the US formally within that time, I’d find it hard to get a waiver next time. So I had every reason to play by their rules — and since those rules were letting me do exactly what I wanted to, I had no reason to buck them.
The border ran through the bridge halfway across. Predictably, there was a marker, a set of flags, and a bunch of tourists doing the standing-in-two-countries pose. But the view was good.
After a bit of gawping at the scenery from the hanging gardens near the bridge, I ducked up Clifton Hill to find someplace to change some money.
Clifton Hill is a tourist trap of the worst kind. Having nothing to offer, it sells whatever it can, and manufactures “attractions” such as haunted houses, rides, games parlours, etc. Naturally the tourists love it and willingly pay exorbitant prices for trash.
The willingness to be fleeced is an astonishing part of the tourist psyche. People who would bang on the counter if overcharged a dollar at home will swallow any outrageous price away from home.
Most of the shops would happily take US currency, but they discounted it heavily. The rate from the exchange bureau sounded less than stellar (1.38 for 1 when the mid-rate that day was more like 1.48 for 1), but I figured it would work out better than discounting my greenbacks. It cost me USD50 to buy CAD69.
I soon spent some of my expensive new wealth on some small souvenirs (including a tiny jar of maple syrup) and another camera. This was a disposable APS. It had no zoom of course, but at least I could now take “high definition” and “panoramic” pictures again, with realistic colours, and the lenses (it turned out) were good. From now on I tried to buy APS disposables in preference to 35mm even though they cost more.
With money, souvenirs and camera settled I didn’t hang around Clifton Hill. I wanted to see the Falls, not the fools. So I headed down to the Parkway and strolled along the wide walkway that ran along the edge of the cliff.
At the end, the view was breathtaking. It had everything that had been available on the US side, plus superior panoramic views up and down the river.
I found a sign and followed it to the “Walk behind the Falls”.
The Canadians have driven tunnels through the rock well behind the falls. From these tunnels, passages branch off and open onto the space behind the falls. Visitors are prevented by barriors from going too far up the passages.
The water falls past the open end of each passage sounding like the biggest, heaviest rainstorm imaginable. And yet, it’s something of a disappointment, since all you see is a white haze and a shifting blur.
Far more impressive is the balcony at the base of the Falls, although drifting spray makes this as wet an experience as Cave of the Winds. This is no toy waterfall like the Bridal Veil: the power of 12 million glass Perrier bottles per second crashing into the water a few metres away shakes the stone balcony.
There are three waterfalls I want to see before I die: one each in North America, South America, and Africa. One down … can the others match up?
To finish, I walked uphill to the Skylon Tower and rode up it for a view from the top. It was well worth the effort. The landscape was spread out all around, like a 3-D model.
I descended and started the walk back to the bridge, feeling a little disconsolate. The day had been one long high point, and now it was over. Now there was nothing left but the goodbyes and lingering last looks.
Leaving was uncomplicated. I went back to the YMCA, recovered my pack, showered, changed from my dirty socks clothes, walked back to the Convention Centre and caught the next Buffalo bus. I was back at the Greyhound station with hours to spare.
Supper was a hamburger and coffee. I’d already eaten dinner in the Skylon.
Despite being early back at the station, I was slow to queue for the Chicago bus. Just as I reached the front of the queue, the doors were closed and the full bus roared away. Fortunately there was a busload of people still in the queue. Another bus was found and I finally left Buffalo half an hour late.
My ticket was to Chicago, but I had to change buses at Detroit some time in the early hours. I was quicker to queue this time, but it did me no good: the queue was already long when I arrived. Once again the doors closed in my face and I lost another half hour.
With no more disruptions scheduled before Chicago, I dozed off to sleep.
Chicon 2000Thursday, 31 August 2000
I was not fated to get to Chicago easily. Just 50 miles from my destination, the bus pulled up by the side of the road. The driver disappeared out the door and started opening and closing things at the rear of the bus.
It turned out that the engine fan belt had broken. The driver’s first thought was to swap the aircon belt to the engine, only to discover that it, too, had broken, which explained why the bus was now so stuffy. There was no other spare aboard.
There we sat, while the sun rose higher and started to cook the bus. The passengers seemed content to broil.
I finally decided enough was enough, and climbed down. A few people followed me. I suggested to the driver that if he didn’t want 30 cases of heatstroke suing Greyhound, he’d better clear the bus. It didn’t really register with him, but a few people heard me and started moving. This precipitated a mass exodus.
It was rapidly getting hot outside too, but at least there was some air moving. I went and sat in the shade of some trees, leading by example. A lot of people just sprawled in the grass in the sun or stood smoking in the shrinking shadow of the bus.
Another bus pulled up. It was too full to take more than a few people, but they tried the fan belt exchange. No good: the engine had already cooked itself by the time we stopped.
An old woman started having trouble with the heat. I led her to a police car that had pulled up behind us and asked the policeman if she could sit in the air-conditioned back seat for a while. He agreed. (She later came up and thanked me for this at Chicago. She had a weak heart and might well have died otherwise. One of my prouder moments.)
Finally, an empty bus pulled up and took us aboard. And so, hours late, I came to Chicon.
I checked into the Hyatt and then raced downstairs. I had missed the Opening Ceremony, but I was able to register and, pocket schedule in hand, start planning my next few days.
Friday, 1 September 2000
Today I went up the Sears (now Willis, how appropriate) Tower. The shadows in my photos point directly north, so it would have been about 12:30 to 13:30. I vaguely recall an Alternate Prehistory panel at 10:00, which is highlighted and ticked off in my Pocket Program, whereas I had merely highlighted a World-Modelling panel for 11:30, so it’s likely something happened that led me to blow off the World Modelling panel (hence my desire to attend one in Toronto three years later). I probably attended a Heinlein Said panel on the writer’s predictions for the year 2000 in the afternoon.
I remember meeting Glen Cook, the author of the Black Company books, which I really liked, in the Hucksters Room. I bought a signed copy of The Black Company from him. This is probably also the day I bought my copy of Warhoon 28. I recall posting the Willish home the day I bought it. I arrived late Thursday and Monday was a public holiday, so Friday is the most likely date for me to be out and about in Chicago.
I believe this was the night I attended an Open Filk session from 11 PM led by Leslie Fish
Saturday, 2 September 2000
I attended several events this day but none of them really gripped me. I kept drifting from room to room looking for a hook. I had marked the 08:30 Start Up Rituals for the Pros, but after sitting into the early hours for the Filk, I may not have been up soon enough for that. I simply crossed out a couple of pages of the program book. I highlighted the 10:00 Gripe Session but probably didn’t stay long. Ditto the 11:30 debate about Toronto vs Cancun for the 2003 Worldcon. Ditto Pros and Cons Who’s Hiding From Whom. 13:00 Red in Tooth and Claw in the Hyatt clashed with the Fairmont Conversation between Benford and Cramer. 14:30 Fractured Fandoms didn’t hold me. Meeting the Fan Fund winners was scheduled for 14:30 AND 16:00 and I ghosted both, plus the Fan Artists and Funny Filk Tales at 16:00. 17:30 Authors Best Forgotten clashed with the N3F Meeting. Of which …
My main memory is attempting to attend the N3F Meeting in the Fairmont Diplomat Room. Many years ago I had been the token New Zealand member of the National Fantasy Fan Federation. Now I was looking to pull on that ancient string. IIRC, there was a sign in the (empty) Diplomat Room saying the meeting had been moved to another room. So I went where the sign said, and found a meeting room set up with notepads, pens, pitchers of water with stacked glasses, and totally empty. I took pictures, but cannot find them. Either way, this failure hit me strangely hard. My Saturday was over.
I note that I finished film roll 3336 on the 1st and started roll 3338 on the 5th. It’s the pictures I thought I took of the empty N3F room that suggest to me that I lost a roll of film somewhere. I can identify rolls 3332, 3334, 3335, 3336, 3337, 3338, and 3339. (I did not use the rolls consecutively but apparently bought a part-box of them that contained a consecutive sequence.) So is 3333 somewhere around here, or did I lose it in the USA?
Sunday, 3 September 2000
I attended the 10:00 Glen Cook Can You Really Make a Living Doing This?, but may have missed the 13:00 Jack Chalker Explains It All. I recall going for long walks down by the water and up into the inner suburbs to get a feel for the city, but there are no photos and I could be mixing memories with the Sears Tower visit on Friday — though if I was mainly in town then to post something, I probably didn’t wander far afield. This is the most likely day for the shoreline.
Monday, 4 September 2000
I attended the 15:00 Closing Ceremonies. I don’t recall anything else I did this day. It’s probably the day I walked out into the suburbs.
A Night in Las VegasTuesday, 5 September 2000
I checked out and caught the shuttle to the airport in plenty of time. However, there was a set of interminable delays at boarding and sitting like a brick on the runway waiting to take off. My plane finally got away five hours late. It was a frustrating end to a mediocre experience, and I was glad to see Chicago slip away.
The delayed flight meant that by the time I got to Las Vegas, any hope of scoring a Hoover Dam excursion was vain. I decided to spend the afternoon looking around Las Vegas.
It was stinking hot, and the Strip runs close to McCarran Airport, so I decided to grab a taxi up Paradise Road to my hotel, CircusCircus. What I hadn’t entirely grasped is the scale of the Strip. The taxi cost more than expected. Still, it saved me some sweat.
CircusCircus was enormous. It took a long time to make my way through the front gaming rooms to reception. But from there it took only a little longer to reach my room, a cubby in the Skyrise Tower.
I dumped my gear and headed out. I decided to walk to Downtown and back as a last piece of exercise in preparation for the Grand Canyon. Most of tomorrow would be spent sitting down, so I would have time to recover from any tiredness.
CircusCircus is in the north part of the strip. Almost all the other giant casinos are to the south of it. Heading north towards Downtown, I passed only the Sahara and the Stratosphere. The interstices were filled by smaller establishments.
At Main St, already half an hour into my walk, I left the Strip, stopping in at a couple of shops along the way. It took another half hour to reach the bus station. Have I mentioned that the heat was amazing?
The bus station area was not attractive, and in fact I felt unsafe here for the only time in the whole trip. Still, I went in and scouted the station to make sure I would not get confused by it when I returned from the Grand Canyon.
After that, I walked down Fremont Street. This mall is covered by a distinctive metal strutwork. Since it was daytime, it didn’t look impressive. When I came back in 2003, I watched the “Fremont Street Experience” unfold on it, and kicked myself for missing it in 2000!
Fremont Street was Las Vegas’ original casino alley, and it is still heavily salted with casinos. They’re bright and flashy, but second-rate compared to the mega-casinos on the Strip.
I walked back to CircusCircus via the Strip, watching the lights brighten as the sky darkened. Rough characters loitered on corners and my traveller’s bump was twitching. I was careful to steer clear of groups and to stay on the main drag, where the authorities had a vested interest in making sure visitors were safe.
Tired after my long walk, I went to bed early.
The Grand CanyonWednesday, 6 September 2000
The Scenic Airlines shuttle picked me up from the hotel the next morning — I’m not sure where now, but it would have been down the side near Reception. They ferried me out to North Las Vegas Airport, where I was crammed into the last empty seat in an old turbo-prop Fokker Friendship. This was an unexpected experience. My first ever plane flight had been on a Friendship, so I was happy to refresh the memory.
The rest of the passengers seemed to be a Japanese tour group. In fact there was another independent traveller aboard, but I didn’t notice her until the Japanese were absorbed by their tour bus at Tusayan and only we were left.
The trip was a progression of small insights as we flew over Lake Mead then over ever more impressive stretches of canyon country. Finally we descended at Tusayan Airport.
As mentioned, here the Japanese were herded aboard a tour bus, leaving the two independents rattling around the airport. I took the opportunity to stock up on cameras. Eventually a woman picked up some keys and led us out to a 4WD.
At Grand Canyon Village, I was unloaded at Bright Angel Lodge. This was to be my base camp for the assault upon the Canyon.
I walked through into the reception area. There was something interesting through the doors at the back, but I ignored that for now. I dumped by pack in a corner and went up to the counter to reconfirm my room arrangements for two nights from now and my meal arrangements for tomorrow night in the Canyon. All was well.
I also made sure of the details of the shuttle to the North Rim. Yes, it would be leaving at about 13:30 and no, they didn’t think it was full.
Now I could scratch the itch. I walked through the back doors and out onto a broad terrace. On the far edge of the terrace was a low stone wall, and beyond the wall was the Grand Canyon.
As I reached the wall, the view opened up and smacked me in the eyes. I stared, trying to make sense of a riot of red and brown stone.
The cliff fell away below me, a vast wall that merged at either side into the great cliffs that framed the scene.
At the base of the cliff a great valley zig-zagged away towards a second cliff in the distance that hid the inner Canyon. Beyond that was a third cliff that must be on the far side of the Colorado, and beyond that reared the greater cliffs of the North Rim, ranked beside another valley that zig-zagged away out of sight.
The valley below me contained the Bright Angel Trail. All being well, I would walk up through that valley the day after tomorrow. And the other, distant valley was the Bright Angel Canyon, containing the North Kaibab Trail. I would walk down through that valley tomorrow.
Somewhere down there, hidden by the cliffs, was Phantom Ranch and Bright Angel Campground. I would sleep at the campground tomorrow night. And over there, invisible but perched on a clifftop of the North Rim, was Grand Canyon Lodge, where I would sleep tonight.
I stood there for a long time, feeling the rough, hot stone of the wall with my fingertips, searching the view with my eyes, drinking in the warm air and the sunshine, listening to the quality of the void, letting myself realise that I really was here, that all my planning had come off. It was real. This was the Grand Canyon.
New York and Niagara were long-held dreams, but the Grand Canyon was a passion, one of those legendary places that you read about and see on TV but expect you’ll never see in person. I’d dreamed of this moment for decades.
For many years my understanding of the geography of the place had been vague. I tended to conflate it with the Rio Grande. Gradually the Canyon itself had taken shape, but the details remained fuzzy. There was a town on the rim, but I didn’t really know much about it or where it was. I knew there were mule trails into the Canyon but didn’t really know where they were.
But I did know I wanted desperately to see it for myself. When I started planning this trip, the Canyon was one of three “musts” in the itinerary from the start. The other two were Niagara Falls and New York.
I thought I was on my way in 1986, when I left NZ for Oz on the first leg of an ambitious round-the-world trip. Shit happened and I didn’t get past Australia. 2000 could be my only opportunity to make good on my frustrated hopes, and I’d planned the trip with military precision. Photos, maps and profiles of my primary targets and their habits, spreadsheets tracking my every movement.
I recalled the photos I had seen, some of them possibly taken from this very spot. Now I was standing in the frame of those pictures!
There was a cafetaria off to one side. I went there and bought brunch, and also several litres of water. I wanted trail munchies as well, but apart from some salted peanuts they had nothing that would serve.
I went back and sat on the wall, munching sandwiches and sipping coffee, looking out on the Grand Canyon. I still couldn’t get over the wonder of the place, and the miracle that had let me get here. Five years ago, the dream had been more remote than ever. And then I got a job that paid well and lasted, and became permanent almost offhandedly just last year. Suddenly I had money in the bank and paid leave accruing. And so here I was, breathing in the smell of hot rock carried upon the breeze out of the abyss beside me.
When the food ran out, I went back inside and sorted out my pack. Anything that went with me into the Canyon, except the water, would have to come back out with me. So I was ruthless in slashing things I knew I would not need. Not ruthless enough, perhaps, as my pack still felt loaded with bricks. But perhaps it was just the five kilograms of water I’d loaded into it. (I didn’t make THAT mistake again in 2003!)
I had gambled on one point. I had not brought a tent for the one night I would spend in the Canyon. I’d risk a drenching to save weight. Silly. I had far too much water and not enough shelter. I didn’t realise how the temperature could plummet when it rained.
The unwanted stuff went into a lightweight bag I’d brought for the purpose. I sought out the hotel porter, who unlocked a storage room filled with the excess baggage of other walkers. My bag was tagged and shoved into the mass, to await my return.
With nothing left to do but wait, I alternated between staring out over the Canyon and wandering through the lobby and out front looking for the shuttle.
As it happened, the driver found me. He passed through the lobby, almost casually collecting me and his other passenger on the way. Our packs went into the back of the van, and we were on our way.
I had lucked out. Yesterday the shuttle was packed, but today I had no competition for the privilege of sitting in front.
We shot through Grand Canyon Village in minutes, and then there was just the road and the Rim, endlessly unreeling. I caught sight of a few landmarks as we passed them, but the driver did not even slow down. He had about 250 miles to cover in five hours, in a van that was 4WD and sturdy, not built for speed.
We did stop once, around the half-way mark, at a gas station with a store attached. I rushed inside and completed my selection trail munchies: a couple of packets of trail mix and some beef jerky. I wanted some muesli bars but they’d never heard of such things. If I’d asked for “granola” (not quite the same but close enough) I might have had more luck.
Now we bent around, crossing the Colorado east of the Canyon, and headed west.
Coming south towards the Canyon, we passed groups of mule deer grazing beside the road. Then we stopped, in front of a long, low building. Grand Canyon Lodge, on the North Rim.
I went in and found reception. They checked me in with admirable efficiency, room 93 — half a chalet.
I dumped my plunder in my room and headed back to the main building. The sunsets seen from the North Rim were supposed to be excellent, and although the shuttle arrived earlier than the nominal 18:30 on its timetable, I now had only about fifteen minutes to get down to the lookout.
Above me, guests were eating dinner on the terrace. I was ravenous, but I could eat later. The view was better where I was headed.
I passed people along the way. Quite a few had expensive cameras set up on tripods. I clutched my little disposables tightly. Half a loaf …
The view was magnificent. It was a clear evening and the Grand Canyon stretched away forever. East, a ridgeline descended into it, marking the far wall of Bright Angel Canyon. West, the ridge I was on marched up and became the Canyon wall, with the Lodge perched on it.
The sun tinged everything in blood, but above me the sky was blue and the quarter-moon was high in the sky. Waxing Gibbous. It would be brighter tomorrow night.
And then the sun went down. I waited until the colour started to fade, then made my way back up the darkening path to the lights of the lodge, and dinner.
Inside, I had a good dinner. I wanted to be at full fitness tomorrow. But I did take a celebratory glass of wine to commemorate the occasion.
North Kaibab TrailThursday, 7 September 2000
I was on my way by 05:30, making my way along the edge of the road in the pre-dawn dimness.
Although I was probably perfectly safe, I jumped at every sound from the trees that lined the road. There were bears in the park, and just before I’d gone on leave an Australian TV channel had shown a documentary with some title such as “when animals attack”, which among other things told the story of a woman walking along a road who had been mauled by a black bear that came for her from the trees. I’d never before walked in the wild in a country populated with big carnivores.
And there were big animals in the trees, crashing away from me as I passed. Mule deer. If I was the most fearsome thing they sensed, then I was safe as houses!
Eventually I found the trailhead, just as the sun was rising, and with the briefest of pauses I set foot on the North Kaibab Trail.
The North Kaibab Trail is 23 kilometres from the trailhead to Phantom Ranch. Add about three kilometres more from the Lodge to the trailhead. No light walk, although from the Rim it was all downhill. The problem is that so much of it is steeply downhill. I would be braking my full weight on every step for hours. I expected to be buggered by the time I reached my campsite tonight.
The trail quickly made its nature obvious. It sloped down a bit, then more, and more, until it became a series of wide steps. I experimented a bit until I found a loose-kneed stride that carried me down swiftly, with minimal effort, yet broke my momentum enough to allow me to stop quickly at need.
I soon found the need, when the path turned right and I found myself headed for the abyss, my boots sliding on loose gravel. One boot caught on a rock at the brink, stopping me, and I sat down abruptly. I tightened my knees and slowed down after that. The Canyon had taught me the first of several lessons.
I was still nervous. Several times, small rocks fell on the trail behind me. My imagination conjured up a mountain lion, but I saw nothing.
This was Roaring Springs Canyon. It ran down into Bright Angel Canyon. The path was a ledge cut from the sheer cliff faces. The views at every corner were to die for — if I tried to look at them without stopping. So I stopped frequently, just standing there and looking out for minutes at a time. I couldn’t get enough of the views.
But the ground below the trail was coming closer, and it was only a few metres below me when I noticed a metal pipe down there. It puzzled me. It was too thin to be a water main.
When I finished the switchback, I found myself in a small patch of flat ground. The “pipe” turned out to be a mule hitching rail. So this would be a staging point for mule trains coming out of the Canyon, before they started on the steep last section.
Just past this point I reached Supai Tunnel, more an arch hacked through a narrow spur. Supai Tunnel is 3.2 km from the trailhead. Just 20 km to go!
The trail flattened out a little now, still descending steeply but no longer precipitous. I was able to pick up the pace a bit.
Soon I could hear water falling over rock, and then the cliffs started to fall away. I had reached Roaring Springs, 7.6 km from the trailhead and more than a kilometre below the Rim, a drop of 1 in 7.2. Here I entered Bright Angel Canyon.
Roaring Springs provides the water for the North Rim. I’d reached the pump caretaker’s house. There was a table here beneath a spreading tree. My trail guide said there was sometimes a jug of lemonade here for passers-by, but today the table was bare.
The reason for the bare table is probably that the caretaker was away from home. As I walked on, a helicopter came down and landed at the nearby helipad. Later-arriving walkers might have been luckier than me!
The way was flatter now, and even went up from time to time. The canyon walls opened out and became grassland, scattered with copses of cottonwoods and other trees. Although I was actually getting deeper and deeper into the Grand Canyon, it was hard to sense the fact. It could have been a mountain valley anywhere, the Rim merely a mountain ridge. The Grand Canyon I’d seen this morning and last night had somehow vanished, replaced by scenery that was almost ordinary.
Passing through a band of trees, I was startled to hear voices. There were tents here, and a couple of near-naked campers. This was Cottonwood Camp, 11.1 km from the trailhead and 1.3 km below the Rim. Adding the distance from Grand Canyon Lodge to the trailhead, I was more than halfway through the walk. It was now after 10:30, which meant I was well behind schedule, but I knew I could make that up by taking a shorter siesta at Ribbon Falls.
I started looking for the turnoff to Ribbon Falls, but I missed it and had to backtrack half a kilometre when I realised.
Ribbon Falls lies 500m off the trail, deep in a narrow gully that it has cut for itself over time. The side-trip added a kilometre to the walk, but I had only allowed for the first half-kilometre in my distance planning. Whoops. Add the half-kilometre overshoot (a full extra kilometre once I backtracked) and the increasing discrepancy between my planned and my actual pace, and I could see that my itinerary was in strife.
Still, at Ribbon Falls I had covered a nominal 13.5 km from the trailhead and an actual 17.5 km all up. The time was now approaching noon, but that still left me time for a three-hour siesta here. And I needed the rest.
I stopped at a shady spot and lay down. After half an hour I sat up and pulled out my meagre lunch — water, jerky, trail mix and peanuts. I hadn’t thought to buy a lunch bag from the Lodge the night before.
The jerky was a novel foodstuff for me, and it lay heavily in my stomach.
Finished with eating, if not exactly refreshed by it, I snoozed for an hour or so until the shade disappeared. Then I pushed on up the stream, looking for the Falls.
They were just around the corner, almost dry but trickling into a pool. I was about to strip off and take a plunge when someone helloed me from the rocks nearby. Another walker, damnit!
We swapped a few words. He was headed out of the Canyon. He was friendly enough, but the mood was broken. No swim for me. It was time to move on. This was probably unwise. I could have kept my pants on and had my swim; the wet fabric would keep me cool as they dried. Well, I didn’t think of it.
The heat was intense, easily into the 40s, with no breeze to help cool me down. The sun beat down on me and was reflected up from the path. Dust puffed up at every footstep, coating me with a reddish grime and gritting between my teeth.
The only consolation was that I had plenty of water. I had used a litre getting from the Rim to Ribbon Falls. In the next hour or so I guzzled another litre and a half, but felt thirstier than ever. I was sweating faster than I could replace the water. My pace dropped right off: by the time the walls started closing in and casting the occasional shadow I had probably covered less than four kilometres from Ribbon Falls, taking almost two hours.
Finally, my body rebelled. At a shady bend I had barely time to get off the track before my lunch came up in a vile rush of undigested jerky.
Afterwards I lay there, disgusted, totally spent, unable to get up. If I’d been lying in the sun I would have been in worse trouble, but fortunately the shade was deep enough so that the heat gradually left me and I started to revive. I moved to a rock that let me lie off the ground, with air moving around me.
My head suddenly cleared, and I realised that I must have been on the very edge of heatstroke. How could I be so stupid? Still, perhaps I can lay some of the blame on the jerky, for which my stomach was unprepared.
A couple of other walkers came by. They looked a little concerned for me, but I told them I was just resting in the shade. True enough. My body was showing its usual resilience and I was feeling much stronger.
It was now headed for 16:30 and I still had at least 5 km to go, so I heaved myself up and headed on.
This narrow section of the canyon was called the Box. The cliffs crowded in on either side and closed off the view ahead. It was quite claustrophobic. I was now clear-headed and was careful not to strain my body further, resting every so often, but I could do nothing about my mood and fatigue. I felt depressed and impatient. The walk, such a pleasure this morning, had become a chore and a burden. I just wanted it to be over.
The shadows deepened. The Box wound on interminably. Would I get to Phantom Ranch in time for dinner?
And then, an apparition: a guy in pristine white t-shirt and shorts. We greeted each other. He was just out for a walk before dinner: Phantom Ranch was only a few hundred metres away.
Sure enough, around the next corner the canyon walls opened up. Trees appeared, then buildings, then people. Incredible!
I walked past a big building with people outside. This was the Canteen. I had arrived. It was just after 18:00, so my walk had taken me 12.5 hours, an average of just over 2 kph.
I trudged on down past cabins and mule pens until I found a bridge across the stream. On the far side was Bright Angel Campround, basically a long path with campsites embedded in the bush to either side.
Halfway down I turned right into an empty campsite — I didn’t note which one at the time, but in 2003 I sought it out and identified it as #19. I pulled out my sleeping bag and unrolled it on the ground, and placed a couple of non-valuable, inedible things on the table to establish my occupancy. My remaining food and relative valuables went into the varmint-proof metal bins provided.
As camps go, it wasn’t much: but the site was now clearly occupied.
Soap and towel in hand I went down the path a bit further, looking for a chance to clean up. I waded out into the stream and managed a poor bath that at least scoured away the worst stink. Wearing my spare t-shirt, I now felt semi-fit for human company.
I got back to the Canteen just as it opened for the 18:30 sitting. The hungry hikers filed in, surrendering their meal vouchers to the cook.
The Canteen was a big room with three or four big tables, surrounded by rustic wooden chairs that must be the most uncomfortable things to sit in that I have ever encountered.
At one end was a shop selling trail food, souvenirs and other items. I bought a fresh supply of munchies for tomorrow, and a t-shirt.
Then dinner was brought out, huge pots groaning with stew and vegetables, rolls of bread, corn on the cob, and huge pots of tea and coffee. It seemed impossible that so much food could be consumed at one sitting, but I didn’t see any leftovers. I know I had no trouble packing away my own prodigious portion.
The couple who had passed me when I was ill earlier were sitting at my table. They were pleased to see I’d made it. I grinned at them as if it had been nothing, and took another mouthful of stew.
Afterwards, in the warm darkness, I staggered back to the campground.
I shook out my sleeping bag in case of scorpions, and rolled myself up in it. But I soon felt too hot. I opened out the sleeping bag and lay on it, and it was still too hot.
After tossing and turning a while, I got up and sat on the table. I needed to get to sleep, but how?
I noticed that the table was high enough to catch a slight breeze that did not touch the ground. In a flash, my sleeping-bag was on top of the table and I was lying on the bag, wearing only my shorts, cooled by the air. Perfect!
I lay there, finally semi-comfortable, watching strange, incredibly bright stars wheel by overhead. And then it was morning.
Bright AngelFriday, 8 September 2000
It was not yet dawn, but my alarm clock told me it was 5:30, time to get up. I rolled off the table and gathered my things together, then went down and abused the toilets, doing my unsuccesssful best to get clean. By 6:00 I was on the trail. I had learned one lesson: I carried only three litres of water.
The night had been dry — my gamble with the tent had paid off — but the sky was now overcast and threatening. With the high canyon walls all around, it was a while after nominal sunrise before I could see much. I had reached the Silver Bridge by then.
A couple of walkers asked me to take their photo, then insisted on returning the favour. I took the opportunity to whip out the front page of my employer’s internal newspaper, which I was carrying for this very purpose. I thought I might submit the pic for their back page, which often features staff reading the rag in exotic locations. I figured few locations would be more exotic than this! But I never got around to sending it to them.
The Silver Bridge was a delicate metal arch across the Colorado. I stopped halfway across to take in the scenery.
The Grand Canyon is made from old, old rock but is itself very, very young. In just six million years, the busy Colorado has eroded a gully a kilometre and a half deep, ten wide, and hundreds long. Hard to credit, but true. Standing on the bridge, watching the river roil past, I could finally believe it. And yet, the river is a shadow of its past self. Most of the erosion happened during floods, but the river is not allowed to rage unchecked now. Great dams line its course, absorbing the force of the water. While they last, the river is pent.
I crossed the bridge and strode briskly up the River Trail on the far side. My memory of the River Trail is brief. I was walking quickly, intent on making distance while the trail was flat(tish) and I was fresh. I passed other walkers, who were startled by my energy. I laughed. “You’ll see me again!”
From Bright Angel Campground to the trailhead is 15 kilometres, most of it uphill. The half-way mark for distance, 7.6 km, is Indian Garden, 430m above the river. But that’s less than a third of the total climb: the South Rim is 1360m above the river. I expected to be completely knackered at the top.
At the River Resthouse I hit the Bright Angel Trail and started in earnest on the climb. My energy soon evaporated, though not as fast as my sweat. Yesterday had done me more damage than I’d thought, and my trail-mix breakfast was not a sound foundation for a big day. Still, I was making OK time.
And then I came over a rise and saw the Devil’s Corkscrew, 360 metres high and 2 km long, and I knew I was in trouble.
My memory of the next two and a half hours is vague. I would walk a bit, then find shade and rest. When my energy returned, I would get up and push on until it left me again. The climb was interminable and unrelenting, and the clouds kept breaking at the wrong moments. The temperature was rising remorselessly despite a couple of showers.
Thanks to my measured approach, I was in no iminent danger of heatstroke, but yesterday had definitely sapped my energy.
Finally the way curved around between two huge brows of rock and levelled out. I found a damp patch where a creek crossed the trail and soaked my feet in it. I had beaten the Corkscrew.
My energy revived now that I was on the level and surrounded by trees and vegetation. My mind, relieved of the fear of heatstroke, closed in on itself while my body broke out fresh reserves of energy. I remember nothing until suddenly I was standing by a tap in the shade of tall trees. Indian Garden.
I checked my watch. 11:00. My itinerary, far from ambitious, had assumed it would take just under four hours to get here, but in fact it took me five hours.
I had a side-trip pencilled in, out to Plateau Point and back, but I decided that would be too ambitious. I rested for an hour in the shade of the trees, refilled my water bottles (two litres only this time) then set out on the hard leg of the climb.
From Indian Garden to Three Mile Resthouse, 2.5 km, the climb is 340 metres — on a par with the Corkscrew, but without the murderous reputation. The path climbs the canyon wall in a series of stiff switchbacks, but the area is not a heat trap like the Corkscrew.
The showers kept up, and the day actually seemed to be cooler now than earlier. This was good. I met a couple of mule trains on their way down, and politely stood on the high side of the path to let them by.
Eventually I reached Three Mile Resthouse, where I refilled my water bottles, again two litres.
The next stage should have been relatively easy, 2.5 km and but just 240m of height up to One-and-a-Half Mile Resthouse. However, it was a nightmare of heat and dust. The clouds dispersed and the sun beat down. There was no shade. My two litres of water ran out before I reached the Resthouse.
But the end was almost in sight, just 2.4 km of track and a 350m climb ahead. I loaded up with 3 litres of water.
I took it easy, resting wherever I found a scrap of shade, drinking freely, chain-eating salted peanuts to help keep my fluids balanced.
And then I was out. I don’t recall the time, but by the shadows it must have been around 16:30. If so, I had completed the “hard” section in less time than the “easy” section, and the whole climb in 10.5 hours, an average of under 1.5 kph!
I could see wasn’t going to be setting any speed records if I ever came back here …
People swarmed on the terrace behind Bright Angel Lodge. I gaped. They looked so clean!
I went through into the lobby, all too aware of my sweat-stained, stinky state. I found the porter and retrieved my baggage. I went to the counter and booked in. Lugged my gear to my room. Pulled out my toilet kit and fresh clothes and grabbed a room towel. Found the hall shower. And became gloriously Clean! Black water swirled down the drain.
Scrubbed pink and scentless, I went back to my room and collapsed on the bed. Soon I must find dinner. Soon I must seek the sunset. But for now I had nothing to do, and abundant time in which to do it. I revelled in glorious sloth.
I had come here to see and experience the Grand Canyon, and my plan had succeeded completely. The experience was not all pleasurable — it had its share of humdrum and drudgery — but now, looking back on it, the pain and boredom were already fading, yet the thrill of discovery and the satisfaction of achievement remained.
Millions come to see the Grand Canyon every year, but only a few thousand get down to the river. Fewer still stay overnight in the Canyon or cross it from edge to edge. This is one of the paradoxes of the Grand Canyon, that a place that is seen by so many hides a heart that is seen by so few.
I also knew another thing, which is that my hunger for the Canyon was not satisfied. If my job lasted, if my health lasted, I would be back for more.
I dragged myself up and made my way back to the Rim. The landscape down there was no longer a mystery. I had measured it with my stride, had watered it with my sweat. In a very small way, I owned it now as I watched the cliffs turn red and fade to grey.
In the restaurant, for dinner, I ordered a huge steak and a whole carafe of wine. This was not a moment for moderation or penny-pinching.
Along the RimSaturday, 9 September 2000
Despite my heavy meal, I slept like a baby and woke just before dawn, completely refreshed — if a little sore around the legs. I pulled on some clothes and crept out to watch the light return to the Canyon.
It was sublime and serene. I had the terrace to myself as the light crept down the canyon walls, gradually picking out the most intimate folds and wrinkles. I was reminded of the time I watched a beam from the rising sun move across the exposed body of my sleeping lover, picking out her shoulder, breast, the delicate array of her ribs, and then continuing down across her stomach. This sunrise had the same sense of wonder, the same precise illumination of each prominence in turn across territory once mysterious, now familiar.
The lobby door banged behind me and my solitude was over, so I changed mental gear from hermit to hunter and went looking for a shower. And breakfast.
From vague memory I had flapjacks with maple syrup, bacon, egs, and a pot of coffee. They called it the “Backwoodsman” or the “Happy Hiker” or some such jolly name.
Fed, I transformed myself from hunter to explorer: out through the lobby and turn left, and down to the bus stop.
The South Rim was served by three free shuttle-bus routes: Hermit, Village and Yaki Pt. As I reached the stop a bus pulled up, so I followed serendipity and got aboard.
It was the Village bus, but despite serendipity I wasn’t ready for the Village just yet, so I got out at the next stop.
Another bus pulled up. This one was headed along the Rim to Hermits Rest. Good enough. I got on.
I only stayed on until the next stop. Trailview I Overlook had a spendid view across to the Village.
My next stop was The Abyss, a huge indentation in the Rim, followed by Pima Point, an arrowhead jutting out over the void. Finally the bus pulled up at Hermits Rest, end of the line.
This trip helped make the scale of the view comprehensible. All the way out, only the foreground had changed. The middle distance and the backdrop hardly moved.
Hermits Rest was not particularly interesting in itself, but I found myself staring longingly down from the trailhead of the Hermit Trail. I had just walked two of the Canyon’s three “corridor” trails: it was tempting to come back someday and try something more challenging.
On the return leg, I rode the bus to Mojave Point and walked back to the Village from there. It was an opportunity to extend my Canyon experience. Besides, after two days of abuse, my legs now needed the exercise. They were showing signs of stiffness if I stayed in one place too long.
At Powell Point there was a memorial to one of the pioneers if the area. It was a flat-topped structure with steps in front.
Eventually I was back at Bright Angel Lodge. This time I caught the Yaki Point bus.
I got out at the South Kaibab trailhead. The South Kaibab Trail is the third corridor trail. Unlike the others, it follows a ridgeline rather than a valley. The views were said to be spectacular, but all the trail guides agreed that this was a trail to descend, not to climb on foot.
I walked a few metres down the first plunging switchbacks, and knew immediately that I had to walk this trail to its end someday. I couldn’t close the book on the Canyon while so much was unexplored!
But I couldn’t walk it today. It would have to be on a future trip. I walked back to the Rim and compensated by exploring the area in detail.
The next bus took me to Yaki Point. Again the marvellous realisation that the backdrop had hardly changed from that of Hermits Rest. Some of the bluffs in the middle distance were seen at a different angle.
Back at the Village, I dropped off near the General Store, but most things were closed. So I grabbed the next bus to Bright Angel, where I loaded up my pack with my dirty laundry.
The laundromat was located near Mather Campground. From the stop I crossed the side road to the campground, then turned left. The laundromat was large, crowded with washers. For the next hour I stooged around the place while the washer pounded holes in my underwear and the dryer left the elastic smelling scorched. But I was on my last change of clothes, so doing the washing was a necessity.
Washing done, I’d run out of day. I watched the Canyon’s magical disappearing act again at sunset, and came back after dark to see it by night. The Canyon was dimly picked out by the nearly full moon. I knew there were people down there staring up at the lights on the Rim, but their own lights were invisible from here. The dazzle of the lights on the terrace did not allow my eyes to make the necessary adjustment.
I had another big dinner, no alcohol this time, and again I slept through till morning.
Grand Canyon VillageSunday, 10 September 2000
Another Canyon sunrise. It never lost its magic. This might be the last such I ever saw, so I made sure not to miss it.
I caught the bus “downtown” to the General Store. This was a single-storey department store run by the Fred Harvey Company. I spent a while wandering through without finding anything suitably portable to serve as a proper souvenir — I had bought two t-shirts, one in the Canyon and one from the souvenir shop at Bright Angel Lodge, but I was hankering for something more.
As I was walking out, I decided to replenish my stock of disposables at the camera counter. I found something better. In a glass case below the counter were several APS cameras, one of them going for just US$68. It had no zoom, but was cheaper than three disposables. I still had three or four unused APS films for my original camera in my pack, so it would more than pay for itself.
I just wish I’d found it before the Canyon. Oh, well, half a loaf …
Back at the lodge, I showered and checked out. I left my pack in the lodge’s storeroom and went across to the rail depot to check what time the train came in. I had some time to wait, so I headed for the Rim.
Hopi House faces the El Tovar across a carpark. Hopi House is a tourist trap made up to resemble an old pueblo building. However, I was in the mood and I bought a couple of Native American souvenirs - a necklace and a bracelet, made using mass-produced plastic beads. Once the Natives paid white invaders for cheap beads; now the whites pay the Natives. But I was delighted with my gimcrack purchases, which were at least allegedly made by American indians and not by any other sort.
When planning this trip my first thought had been to fly to Phoenix and/or bus to Williams and catch the train to the Canyon. Time and logistics persuaded me otherwise. But I decided to at least watch the train arrive at Grand Canyon Village. So I wandered the platform or sat on a low stone wall at the end of the line until it rumbled in.
After three days of movement, it was pleasant to sit on a warm wall in the shade of trees and just vegetate for half an hour, all objectives attained and nothing that needed doing. This was the first of many such pleasant moments, not so much on this trip but common on later ones. Although planning for such moments is counterproductive, I have become adept at arranging my activities so as to provide the opportunity.
But I was still unused to such hedonistic luxury. Once the train passengers had dispersed, I started fidgeting. After a while I headed back to the Rim, walking out to Mather Point, overlooking the South Kaibab Trail. I was pleased to discover that it also offered a glimpse of Phantom Ranch, a small twist of green deep in the Canyon. I walked around to the Yavapai Observation Station, about ten minutes away, and got the same glimpse.
I used up my last 45 minutes walking back along the Rim to Bright Angel Lodge to retrieve my pack and to meet the Tusayan shuttle. The Canyon had saved up one last surprise for me, in the form of a stray mule deer. It strolled nonchalantly past me and down towards the bus stop. I only remembered my camera as the deer’s tufted tail disappeared in the distance.
Exit via Las VegasAnd then it was over. As the Canyon slipped away beneath my wings, I slipped back into travel mode. It had been lovely, but it felt good to be moving on.
We landed at Las Vegas and the shuttle delivered me directly to the bus terminal an hour before the Los Angeles bus was due to leave. The queue was already forming, so I attached myself to it before it got too long.
Half an hour later I had to take a chance. My bladder was bursting, but if I took my pack to the toilet with me I would lose my place in the line, which by now was forty people long. I didn’t want to risk missing the bus, so I made a lightning assessment of the guy behind me. He passed the test, so I asked him to watch my pack for me. He agreed.
What he was really watching was my place in the line!
Still, I was taking a risk. He might abscond with my pack. But I figured the risk was minor. No thief would wait half an hour in a bus queue on the off chance someone would entrust them with a cheap, scruffy pack. And even if the pack did walk, I was carrying everything valuable or critical in my body bank and super-bumbag. The pack held only bulky things like my boots (no longer required), sleeping bag (ditto), toilet kit and clothes (replacable).
But nothing happened. Drained, I slipped back into my place in the line just as the bus pulled up.
As we left Las Vegas, the sky transformed into a gorgeous pastel sunset with the wide moon rising over the hills that loomed above the bus.
Considering how much I remember from the start of this ride, I am perplexed by how little I recall from the end of it. The LA Greyhound terminal was 26 km from my hostel in Santa Monica, and I remember nothing about how I crossed that last gap. My trip notes record nothing. My pre-trip planning has only the cryptic note “bus 60, tfr 33”.
Of course, it was almost midnight when the Greyhound pulled up — all I wanted was more sleep. I was over budget, but I might have used a taxi.
But my best guess is that I was met by a budget shuttle that ferries people from the bus terminal to accomodation around the Santa Monica area, and dropped off on the doorstep. Anything more exciting would have left a trace in my memory.
After so many days of solo rest, I was sharing a dormitory. I hope I didn’t wake anyone.
Santa MonicaMonday, 11 September 2000
I was up before the sun. As the day lightened, I made my way through deserted streets and down to the Santa Monica Pier.
This was another checkpoint. The Pier has featured in so many movies and travel programs that it was one of the icons I just had to tick off on this trip. And here I was standing at the tip of it, breathing the Pacific air and listening to the massive hook-beaked gulls that lined the boardwalk.
The Pier had another significance. It marked a decision point for the trip if I got here too poor to go on. I could hang around LA and catch my plane from here. Fortunately I didn’t face that choice. I was over budget, but still had ample slack to finish the trip as planned if I was careful.
What to do with my two days here was the problem. I had Disneyland and exploring Hollywood pencilled in as possibilities, but frankly, neither compelled me to action. I had a couple of other things in mind, but nothing felt compelling today. So I declared a slack day. I would hang around Santa Monica, catch up on chores, and relax.
I wandered up the Third Street Promenade, a pretty stretch of shops and imaginative sculpture, and bought a pair of shorts there. I walked a long way north along the water’s edge, then came back along the beachside promenade. I went shopping and found some nice silver charms to add to my travel collection. Santa Monica had almost any imaginable knick-knick available for sale, though the prices were often even more atmospheric than the shops.
Back at the hostel, I did my landry. There was a barbecue going on, so I hung out there for a while, shooting the breeze with other hostellers. That evening I had dinner in a place just off the Promenade, and walked back through a street transformed by lighting.
All in all, one of those days that looks wasted when set down thus baldly, but I had fun. I saw a lot of a new place, I got plenty of exercise, I filled some gaps in my souvenirs, and I socialised. Some people fill their whole itinerary with such days.
More importantly, the break left me refreshed and energised. I suddenly found some big-ticket things I just had to do the next day.
Los AngelesTuesday, 12 September 2000
I started the morning with a bus ride downtown. This dropped me off on the wrong side of a somewhat seedy district, but I didn’t realise that immediately. In fact, it only occurred to me after I dropped my pack off at the Greyhound bus terminal, when I noticed that I was the only white person in a street full of people. Everyone else was black, and some of them looked grim. By then there was nothing to do but to tough it out, walk confidently, and trust in my Harlem lesson about prejudging people and my obvious tourist-ness.
Sure enough, nobody bothered me. Nobody cared — another TV myth dispelled. The only attention I got was from a prostitute, who came towards me across the street carrolling a hello and twirling her arm in the air. But even if I’d been in the mood, she was thin as a rake and generally unhealthy-looking. I told her no thanks, I was just passing through.
Central LA was almost deserted, maybe one or two people per block. After the vigour of Santa Monica and the busy black area, this morgue was astonishing. OK, most of the people would have been in the office buildings, working, but in most cities the weekday streets would have been filled with people going to or coming from meetings, going out for morning tea, late for work, and so on.
There were more cars than people. Perhaps the answer to the deserted footpaths is that most Angelenos would rather drive a few hundred metres than walk the distance — but that didn’t explain why there were so many walkers elsewhere.
I walked through a vacant Pershing Square and along towards the Angels Flight funicular. Just before I got there I came across Grand Central Market, a large fresh food hall, and here I finally found people.
I’m used to Melbourne’s iconic Queen Victoria Market, which offers a huge variety of goods beneath its cantilevered rooves. Grand Central Market was more conventional, limiting itself to food, mainly fresh food. I used the toilets here and bought some fruit and cheese to eat for lunch, then left the Market and crossed the Road to the Angels Flight.
By the standards of, say, Sacré Cœur or Capri or Wellington, the Angels Flight was nothing special. The distance covered is so minor (200m, or 1/3 that of Wellington’s Cable Car, for example) that nowadays, more jaded about such things, I’d probably walk up. But my previous funicular experience was many years ago, so I climbed on and enjoyed the short ride up to the top of the hill.
Far from being ashamed of its diminutive course, Angels Flight proudly describes itself as the shortest railroad in the world, demonstrating that the rotation of its wheels isn’t the only spin it has on offer.
At the top was a soulless collection of anonymous plazas and skyscrapers, a concrete graveyard of astonishing banality. But there were occasional gems to be found buried in these grey piles, such as a funky cafetaria and the Wells Fargo Museum.
The Museum displays included photos, artists impressions, actual saddles and bags, and a complete original Wells Fargo stagecoach.
The stagecoach was a marvel of compact design, with seats at each end and a leather strip to act as backrest for the poor souls crammed into the middle seats. It would have being horribly uncomfortable to be forced to sit there as a full coach shuddered and jolted along rough trails. In Roughing It, Mark Twain describes such a journey — but his coach was never full (except with excess mail bags, which were laid down over floor and seats so as to form a sort of lumpy mattress on which the occupants were actually able to recline in relative comfort).
After this brief look at central LA, I missed a trick: just down the road was MacArthur Park, which featured in a famous song by that title. I hopped a bus up Wilshire Boulevard and must actually have passed through the park without realising it.
I got off a little before my destination and — on foot — cruised the Miracle Mile, which had a line in another famous song. It took its name after an entrepreneur took the stretch of wasteland and built a successful shopping strip on it.
My destination was the famous La Brea Tar Pits, repository for the bones of thousands of hapless now-extinct beasties.
I don’t really know what I expected. The famous models of mammoths caught in the tar, of course, but I hadn’t researched the place so I had no real idea what it would be like. A cricket ground studded with round, tarry holes, maybe.
I saw the models as soon as I reached the gate. They were set up in the large pool of tar to my left as I entered, and looked pretty much as expected. But for the rest, it was basically a campus studded with buildings. Most of the pits were dry or were covered by buildings. Everything of interest was caged behind sturdy fences. This was Hancock Park.
Straight ahead of me was the George C Page Museum. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I decided that exploring its air-conditioned interior would be my first objective. Not that I let the thought of someplace cool and shady draw me away from the baking asphalt outside. Of course not.
The Museum houses displays of the finds from the pits. The layout is uncomplicated. Tickets are on the left as you enter, the exit is on your right, and the shop and information counter are in front of you. You go through the turnstile by the ticket office and then move generally clockwise until you reach the exit. However, although the exit is clockwise, you are free to wander back and forth through the Museum. There’s nothing to stop you backtracking to take a second look at something or to pick up on an exhibit you skipped earlier. You can also go into the atrium in the middle of the building.
The famous sabre-tooth turned out to be smaller than I expected — great dane sized, though bulkier. I had expected something the size of an African lion.
I was more excited by the dire wolves. These were almost the same size as the sabre-tooth, and there was an excellent diorama with a display of skeletons to one side and an artist’s impression of the same scene fleshed in on the other. How did such fearsome beasts die out? They would surely have been able to bring down a bison, and there were plenty of bison around.
The most impressive displays were the mammoths (mastodons). Skeletons and models of these loomed in various locations around the floor.
The weirdest display was the giant ground sloth, bigger than a grizzly bear but rather less fearsome. The most poignant was La Brea Woman, the skeleton of a human victim of the tar.
Between the models and the reconstructed skeletons were displays explaining how the pits worked, the relationships between the animals they trapped, and how tarry masses of bones were extracted from the pits, cleaned up, and reconstructed.
The pits have surrendered millions of bones, but most are either on display elsewhere or else are so similar to those on display that they’re simply stored away as spare parts.
After the Museum, I braved the sun and explored the grounds. The pits made dull viewing, but a couple of model ground sloths huddling in the shade of a tree provided a grace note.
There is a discontinuity in my memory after La Brea. My photos, being pre-digital-era, don’t help much, except to tell me my next stop was Hollywood Boulevard, which agrees with my memory of the sequence of events. But I don’t remember how I got there!
At first glance my surviving documentation doesn’t help much. My Page Museum ticket is stamped 14:16. I have subway tickets stamped 15:49 and 22:23. I have receipts from the Greyhound terminal at 21:36 and 22:20. My Greyhound bus was scheduled to leave the terminal at 23:00. Since the bus terminal is not close to the metro, some of these items seem to contradict each other!
The Museum is right. The Greyhound bus is right. The 15:49 Metro looks right.
The answer, which sits well with surviving half-memories that must otherwise float in limbo, is that I caught a bus back down Wilshire Boulevard to a Metro station and at 15:49 caught a train from there to Hollywood Boulevard on a then newly completed section of the Red Line (it now goes all the way to Universal Studios).
I wandered down Hollywood Boulevard. I started to jot down the inscriptions from the stars embedded in the pavement, but gave up after less than 20 when I realised how long it would take me to record all 2,000 of them. I got only: movie camera; microphone; record; tv ears; theatre masks; the dead end kids; the real don steele; frances dee; kiss; pearl bailey; carlos santana; clint black; signe hasso; benny carter; rita moreno; earth wind & fire; cicely tyson.
After a while I realised time was passing and that I was bored, so I flagged down a taxi and told the guy to take me up to my last sight for the day, Griffith Observatory.
If you’ve seen Rebel Without A Cause (James Dean) or Terminator (Arnold Schwartzenegger) you’ll recognise the place. Several scenes from Rebel were set there, and Arnie first materialises there and beats up some thugs to acquire clothes.
The Observatory itself is worth a look, but mainly it offers magnificent views over Los Angeles, smog permitting. I was lucky: the day was clear.
I hung around until near sunset (due just after 19:00) then set out to walk back down to Hollywood.
There were two main routes down and I don’t remember which I used. Probably the one that comes out near Western Avenue and Los Feliz Boulevard (Western Canyon Drive). There was no footpath most places: I walked by the side of the road. I turned down several lifts offered by Angelenos who couldn’t understand why anyone would voluntarily walk here. The landscape was steep and brown and dry, and heat rose from every rock and stone. My water bottle, refilled from a tap at the Observatory, was soon empty. But it didn’t matter. I was having fun watching LA light up as the light faded.
Eventually I reached Hollywood Boulevard, either at Western Avenue (almost certain) or Vermont Avenue (unlikely), and took the Metro back downtown. I don’t remember doing this, but it’s consistent with what I do remember.
By now it would have been between 20:00 and 21:00, and I have no recollection of the rest of the evening. At supposedly 21:36 I bought an orange juice from Greyhound, which makes sense, and at supposedly 22:20 I bought a chicken burrito dinner and a 4-pack of AA batteries from them (my walkman must have run low, suggesting that I may well have spent some time sitting quietly in a corner of the terminal listening to music). But at supposedly 22:23 I was on the metro. Apart from the fact that the bus terminal is considerably more than three minutes from the nearest subway station, why would I buy dinner then go ride a train?
The Metro ticket must be wrong. It must be the ticket from the earlier ride back from Hollywood!
Once the Greyhound swallowed me, exhausted by my long, strenuous day, I slept all the way to sunrise and ’Frisco.
San FranciscoWednesday, 13 September 2000
I woke up just as the sky was lightening. Looking out the window, I saw an expanse of water on the right. However, I was still drowsy and kept dozing off while the bus twisted and turned through interminable suburbs and green belts. I didn’t wake up properly until the bus was on the Bay Bridge. The Bay Bridge? Yes. The bus went via Oakland.
I retrieved my pack from the melée beside the bus and trudged west. When I got to Market Street, the noise and confusion baffled me, so I took the first street I came to in the far side, Geary Street. I ended up at Union Square, where I finally got my bearings. One more block west and south and I found the youth hostel.
When checking in, I handed the guy my debit card. The transaction was declined due to insufficient funds. I did have enough cash to cover the hostel, but it left me in considerable financial pain. I would have to be careful with my remaining cash. I had enough for my planned itinerary, provided I ran into no unexpected costs, but there was no slack.
What puzzled me was that there should still have been plenty of funds in the account. I had budgeted pessimistically to ensure that.
I later found that there were indeed funds left but that there were several “holds” on the account, the biggest being one for the Hyatt in Chicago. So a large portion of my own money was frozen for weeks because a large hotel was too lazy to clear its hold long after I had paid up and checked out and all charges were final. It made me more determined to avoid large hotels in future. (The holds expired one by one during the weeks after I got home — but that didn’t help me in San Francisco.)
I had been toying with the idea of an excursion up to Lake Tahoe, but that was out of the question now. Too much money had just been ripped out of my budget.
I ended up in a four-bunk dormitory with an en suite shower. Three bunks were occupied by dozing hostellers, so I dumped my gear on the remaining lower bunk, pulled out some clean clothes and my toilet kit, went into the shower and washed off the dust of both yesterday’s exertions and the bus trip.
My roomates were still dozing afterwards, though two were showing signs of life. Clean, and feeling good thanks to sleeping well on the bus, I decided to go straight out and explore San Francisco.
I went back to Union Square and looked around the area a bit more, then backtracked a bit and made my way down to Market St and the Embarcadero Centre.
This monumental backdrop to the waterfront seemed to be unavoidable. I walked through it every day while in San Francisco. Oddly enough, I never got around to going up to the Sky Deck here to catch the views. It didn’t even occur to me. Odd. I like getting up high to see a new place.
At the time there was one other city I’d been to where I’d never sought out a high place: Melbourne. And it gradually occurred to me that San Francisco felt a lot like Melbourne. It went beyond the trams. The cities aren’t much alike physically. But it was a place where I felt comfortable and at home.
A hundred years ago, 12th July 1899, an Englishman, one A. Basil Lubbock, signed on before the mast on the four-mast sailing ship Royalshire for a voyage back to England. He’d just come down from the Klondike gold fields and was hoping to work his way to Australia, but could find no ship going that way so he settled for going home. He later wrote a book about the voyage, Around the Horn Before the Mast, that is a classic in its genre. He came across in the book as a pleasant, curiously modern man.
I wandered along the row of piers, thriving heart of ’Frisco’s prosperity in Lubbock’s time, now mostly quiet and under-used.
At Pier 39 I came across the famous sea lion colony, a heaving, smelly mass of blubber occupying several large rafts. Oblivious to the gaze of the human audience, the sea lions went about their everyday routine, bathing, boasting, fighting and sleeping. I was impressed by the smooth grace with which they got from water to raft: the water beside the raft would swell and burst, and the lion would seem to float up through the air and onto the wood.
I continued along to Fisherman’s Wharf, which proved to be a tourist trap. But I did pick up a little silver cable car charm there.
I wanted to ride the cable car. I could have reached it just by continuing along the waterfront, but instead I headed uphill and inland. I was looking for something.
Eventually I found myself standing at the foot of a particularly steep street. The steepest section had been tamed by converting the roadway into a series of miniature switchbacks. Flowerbeds had been planted between the switchbacks. This was Lombard Street, and the switchbacked section proudly labelled itself the crookedest street in the world.
Cars laden with obvious tourists streamed down the switchbacks. They all wanted the dubious honour of boasting to their friends back home that they have driven down here. Me, I went up the footpath — which was not crooked but did give me the opportunity to quiz a resident for his opinion on living in a tourist hotspot He was dismissive of it. The constant engine noise was annoying at first but he eventually got used to it and stopped noticing it.
At the top of the slope I came across the cable car. I let the first one go by, but I climbed aboard the second and rode it back to Market St.
I took a tram up Market to the Civic Centre and took a look through City Hall. Then I walked back down Market to return to the hostel.
Homeless people were everywhere, sitting amidst their few possessions, standing around, washing in the fountains. There seemed to be hundreds of them.
That night I was in the mood for a big nosh, and I found “Lori’s Diner”, which promised — and delivered — big portions. I gave it a manful effort, but finally had to admit defeat. It was delicious, but I couldn’t cram it all down! I enjoyed the meal enough to go back there each remaining night in San Francisco.
AlcatrazThursday, 14 September 2000
I had a leisurely start. I had determined yesterday that the first ferry to Alcatraz was at 9:30 from Pier 41, so I had plenty of time.
The blue and yellow ferries sail regularly to Alcatraz. Since there weren’t many people aboard, either the schedule is too frequent, the custom builds up later in the day, or else I struck it on a quiet day.
The weather was a little iffy — the sky kept striking dramatic poses — but it didn’t feel like rain. Yet.
Alcatraz is one of those iconic places, like the Colosseum ot Marathon, where the past presses up through the veils of time and the hopes and fears of people long dead still ooze from the stones.
It’s a museum today, run as a National Park. Alcatraz-land. But the props are real. In the cells are drawings by inmates, the paper-maché heads of three overly legendary escapists, and the imprint of lost souls. At one point the floor is scarred where grenades were dropped through a hole in the ceiling in an attempt to force a desperate gang of would-be escapees to surrender.
I don’t watch a lot of TV now, but I try never to miss an episode of Mythbusters, a reality show in which two guys with too much time on their hands set out to put urban myths and legends to the test.
One of their better escapades was an analysis of the escape of three men from Alcatraz using an inflatable raft made from raincoats. The Mythbusters studied the tides and eventually concluded that the escapees would not have fetched up on Angel Island as commonly believed, but would have ended up on the north side of Golden Gate. To test this hypothesis, they built their own raincoat inflatable and launched it from Alcatraz. They ended up where they expected to.
However, their brilliance fades a bit when you understand that at least one recaptured escapee from another attempt wound up in the same spot. (He was recaptured because he swam the distance and was too tired to haul himself out of the water.) So the Mythbusters would already know some tides would go that way.
The main blockhouse was severe and forbidding, with its rows of dreary cells. Steel and concrete. Add the stench of hundreds of confined animals and you have a recipe for a cold day in hell. This was not a place for rehabilitation, it was a place to store dead men. The Regulations offered, in backhanded fashion, opportunities for legal escape — that is, transfer to a penitentiary back in the land of the living would not be recommended unless you had demonstrated good enough behaviour over a long enough period of time. Yeah, right.
I took the opportunity to snoop into everything that was open. I saw the dining room, the solitary confinement cells (D-Block), the Library, the Visitor’s area, the Recreation Yard.
Unlike the prisoners, I was able to go out through a door in the wall of the Yard and walk around on the island.
After the prison closed down, many of the residential buildings on the island were bulldozed to prevent anyone from trying to live in them. Silly, really. Nowadays they’d have been done up and converted into tourist accomodation. But the Park Service preferred to give the island back to the birds. So the heaps of rubble gave little impression of what had been there previously.
The Warden’s residence had not been demolished, but it had been burnt to a hollow shell in a mysterious blaze. The other buildings were intact but locked or marked “No Entry”.
I blew my budget by buying a couple of books and a copy of the audio tour from the shop, but I didn’t regret the extravagance. Then.
Back on land, there was no longer any reason to put off another pleasant “must”, the Golden Gate Bridge, so I caught a bus that was headed that way.
The bridge was playing coy, hiding its upperworks in the cloud drifting in from the Pacific. But I persevered and made my way to the pedestrian on-ramp.
As I approached the bridge, I expected it to make the same transition from grace and elegance to brute strength and raw utility that I had seen on the Brooklyn Bridge, but it never really happened. The Golden Gate is a simpler, more open construction and is so large that the detail never overwhelms the view. The bridge is always soaring away in the distance.
I walked all the way across. On the far side I dithered, tempted to walk along the bike trail to where I could get a view back to the bridge. But the cloud was drfting lower: the hillside was lost in it. I’d get damp and cold and see nothing. So I walked back to the south shore.
I took a bus back to the city and, after a pit stop at the hostel, went shopping. I couldn’t afford to buy anything, but I window-shopped my way around several large shoppng centres.
I came out on the street in time to see a demonstration march by. I followed it down until it stopped outside the Marriot Hotel. I’m not sure what they were protesting over: something to do with the Marriott’s hiring policies. They were well organised — several unions were involved.
That night I went back to Lori’s. I settled for a more modest order, and this time emerged triumphant.
BerkeleyFriday, 15 September 2000
The epicentre of flower power in San Francisco was the student counterculture at Berkeley. One defining nexus was in 1969, when the students and hippies converted a derelict block into “Power to the People Park”. Peoples Park still exists [alas, since demolished January 2024], and my objective today was to find it.
I took the train across the bay, emerging near the university. I came across a funky-looking cafetaria and stopped in for breakfast and coffee. The majority of the customers were obvious students. I was reminded of my own university days.
On impulse, I walked through the campus. It was neat and clean, and the students mostly looked neat and clean, too. And awfully young.
I’d never really grown up inside. Inside I was still the same scruffy drop-out I was more than 20 years ago. But in 2000 I turned 42. Walking through Berkeley, I could conjure up my memories of 1976 to 1978 and compare myself now with who I thought I would be.
The 1976 projection was hopelessly far off the mark. I thought I might be a lab technician or a labourer, or stuck in an office shuffling files, probably married with kids.
The 1978 projection was better. I’d been exposed to computers, and I felt an affinity and demonstrated a bent for them, particularly the little ones, but by then I was also resigned to leaving uni without a degree, which pretty much crossed out any hope of ever getting into a computer job. Too few jobs, too many people with better qualifications. I’d also decided I would probably never marry.
But my pessimism didn’t allow for the way computers took off. Behold, in 2000 I was working with computers. Shuffling “files”, yes, but what the heck. And not married.
My 1978 self couldn’t really figure out how my 2000 self would think. 2000 was still further ahead of me than my birth was behind me. I had no way to map out those 20 unknown years.
But my 21st-century self can’t really understand my 1978 self either. I do things daily for reasons that he wouldn’t be able to understand, but he did things for reasons I can remember but can no longer understand. 1978 is on the other side of a clouded window.
For a while, walking through Berkeley University, the window opened a little. And I realised that I truly wasn’t that young man any longer. We shared only a one-way continuum of body and memory, and the me at this end had surprisingly little in common with the me at the other end.
I woke up and found myself standing in a big plaza, near the main south gate of the university. People’s Park was down there somewhere. Telegraph Avenue, the street outside, was lined with tables selling all sorts of books and knicknacks. Jewellery, candles, Tarot, oils, bongs, t-shirts: it was all there. If I had enough money I could have walked out the far end fully outfitted for the 60’s counterculture, a 42-year-old hippy. My poverty saved me from any temptation.
I walked down a side street, and there it was.
A muddy, rutted piece of land stood vacant in the center of our community for over a year. For over a year, we listened while university committees, community groups, and others proposed the building of a park. We heard the university protest that it had no funds, that studies would have to be made, committees formed.Finally, we took the land. We tended it, loved it, planted trees, grass, and flowers on it, made it into People’s Park.
We used the land. We hadn’t tested and analyzed the soil. We planted things and they grew. We hadn’t run a feasibility study. We had labor, freely given, to build the park. We had no budgets. We found the money and materials we needed in our community. We had no organization, no leader, no committee. The park was built by anyone and everyone, and we, all of us together, worked it out.
We were told we hadn’t filled out the right forms, hadn’t followed the correct procedures, hadn’t been responsible, hadn’t been patient. We had asked the wrong questions and built a beautiful park.
It was an incredibly good feeling, building that park, in this country of cement and steel cities, better suited for its machines than for its people. We made a place for people, at a time when only experts and committees, qualified and certified, are permitted to do things. We did something ourselves, and we did it well. For all of us, hip and straight, the park was something tangible that we had done, something that drew our community together.
People’s Park existed for a little more than a month. On “bloody Thursday’, the day the fence went up around People’s Park, we took to the streets. The fence stayed up, although the Chancellor supported a park, the university professors supported the park, the student body voted for the park, and 30,000 people marched through the streets.
People’s Park now stands empty and guarded. The Park died, the idea that created it lives. Let a thousand parks bloom!
These words were painted on the outside wall of the toilet block. The passion of the writer still rang through them, three decades later. And the message is as timely and relevant today as it was then.
Nearby was another message about the park, this one erected by the University administration:
Rules for People’s Park
- Open 6:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M.
- Dogs must be on a leash, and litter removed
- No illegal drugs, alcohol or storage of personal items
- Permits and/or authorization needed for:
Public events, reserved uses, carts, trailers, motor vehicles, fures, structures, tents, furniture, mattresses, large household items Items left in the park between 10:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. will be removed City of Berkeley BMC 6.36.010 University of California
I had to laugh. The people had made a Park: the bureaucrats who claimed to own it could not undo that act, and were reduced to making rules about how the people could use the park. The fence was long gone. The park remained, testimony to what a community can achieve despite its leaders.
How much of the park layout is original I don’t know, but it is unconventional enough to suggest that it hasn’t been changed substantially since 1969. Instead of tidy paths and symmetry, little rambling stretches of grass separate the flowerbeds. Here there are trees, there is a clearing. I liked it. It was landscaping on a human scale, a place where people could walk and meet and talk. And on the spot where a committee would certainly have erected a memorial to one of their own kind in the middle of the park, there was grass.
On a nearby wall was another messsage:
There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious that you can’t even tacitly take part. You’ve got to put your hands on the gears, the levers and all the apparatus and indicate to the people who run it and own it that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.
In 2000 I wasn’t particularly struck by this message, but revisiting it in a later year, I find it relevant and topical. For after decades of relative obscurity, the attitudes and mindsets that gave us the Vietnam War have come back into vogue. Once again we are being urged to sacrifice real personal and legal freedom for a promised collective security that the urgers are not even able to guarantee will mean anything.
We live in an age when lunatics fly planes into buildings and drive explosive-packed cars into public places. These people want to impose their ways on half the world. They are apparently opposed to the “machine” but in fact they just want to replace the secular machine with a religious one more to their liking. It is hard to like them. And yet the dishonesty and rapacity of the “machine” have reached the point where it is difficult to side with it against the extremists. No side holds freedom in much esteem, although one side parrots the word frequently. In the view of each side, if you’re not “with” them you’re “with” the enemy.
Truer to say perhaps that if you’re not “with” them, you are the enemy.
I was determined to have a second look at the Golden Gate Bridge. Looking across the bay, I could see that it was clear of cloud. But by the time I got there, the clouds had returned.
Discouraged, I decided to hang around in case the clouds cleared. So I walked down to Fort Point.
A science fiction writer named John Varley once wrote a series of novels set inside an alien the size of a small moon. The alien was known as Gaia. When humans contacted Gaia, she established an embassy by sending some of her intelligent internal fauna to Earth. Fort Point became the site of the Gaian embassy. The ambassador was a large centaur with involuntary bowel habits and the stone fort made an ideal stable.
I had fun wandering through, trying without success to match it up with the novel. The views were good — the bridge strides directly over the fort on its way across the narrows. Another reason why a Gaean would be comfortable here — the view up to the bridge would look quite Gaean.
The cloud showed no sign of clearing, so I gave up and headed back to town. At Fisherman’s Wharf I walked down to the beach and looked back to Golden Gate. The bridge was clear!
I gave up. I had run out of time.
That night I counted up my remaining money and subtracted from it the expected price of breakfast, lunch and the airport shuttle. The balance was depressingly small, but enough to allow me a final dinner at Lori’s tonight. So I made it a good dinner.
HomeboundSaturday, 16 September 2000
My flight out of SF was set for 16:50 on the 16th. I planned to be at the airport by 15:30. The SFO Airporter would take 20 to 45 minutes depending on traffic, plus pick-up time, so I needed to be ready no later than about 14:30.
Since time and money dictated against anything ambitious, I settled for a final exploration of the area between Market & Fisherman’s Wharf.
I walked from Fisherman’s Wharf to Chinatown, and through Chinatown. It no longer looked really Chinese. I also passed by the TransAmerica Tower.
And then it was the end. The Airporter took me to the airport, where I caught a flight to Los Angeles, and from there flew home. My last legible receipt is from “Awesome Atom’s” at SFO, where I bought a key chain. Out of over US$3,000, I took home less than US$15.
San Francisco didn’t let me escape so easily, though. My plane was delayed interminably on the runway.
Sunday, 17 September 2000
The 17th of September 2000 didn’t exist for me: I lost it to the International Date Line. There may have been a period in mid-Pacific where it was nominally the 17th, but if so I slept through it.
Monday, 18 September 2000
My return flight from LAX went via Auckland. This brief stop in NZ was my frst time on home soil in over a decade. It felt … odd.
I was tempted to use up my remaining funds on a Kiwi souvenir, but it was too early in the day: everything was closed.
My plane landed in Melbourne at about 9:35 on Sunday the 18th. I gathered my baggage for the last time and made my way through to the taxi rank, where I finally broke the Australian $50 bill I’d been carrying with me for just this moment, and took a taxi home.
At my door I took one last photo, then opened up and went in. Flicked the main power switch. Closed the door. Dumped my gear in the hallway.
Home.
We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the sky-line, where the strange roads go down.
— Rudyard Kipling, The Song of the Dead
I was exhausted, but exhilarated. Decades of dreaming, years of despair, months of planning, culminating in three weeks of fulfilment. It seems a small payload for so much launch weight, but the value of the trip couldn’t be measured in terms of time.
It told me I was alive again. After a decade of depression, when planning even a week ahead was just too hard and seemed too likely to be futile, I had laid out a plan months in advance and had followed it as closely as could be expected. When obstacles or challenges arose, I handled them. Best of all, I could see realistic opportunities for several more such trips in the future.
I looked out my window, past the swaying treetops to the familiar skyline. Past the skyline. For a dark decade, I had been trapped within this skyline; but I was trapped no more. The horizon was no longer a prison, but a haven. I had followed the strange roads. They had brought me back here, to rest and to plan and gather my resources anew. This was only the beginning.
On 20th October, a month after I got home and over seven weeks on the way, Warhoon 28 arrived. It had made the journey in good condition. Re-reading the Willish was pleasant, not least because I now had personal experience of many of the places Willis mentioned in his trip reports.
Despite the quality of the inspiration, I make no claims as to the quality of this report. It’s as good as I can make it, and I hope that’s good enough for you.
This was actually the first-completed of these trip reports, and it is in many ways the most satisfying to me as it summarises well the feelings I had at the time and the contrast with the bleak years that preceded my long-delayed pilgrimage. The arrival home here may seem to echo “North of Capricorn”, but in fact it’s the other way around. This was written first. The acount’s main flaw is slippage between present and past tense. I could fix it, but why? Think of it as a feature, not a bug.
