New York, the City That Doesn’t Sleep!  While WildHorse was in NYC, our excellent crew Todd had to go home, Lucie came back, and our new crew Ben arrived.  Even though we were out in City Island, we took full advantage of being in NYC.  NY doesn’t sleep but we did, barely.

Todd and I went out for excellent chinese food for lunch – the place was called Excellent Dumpling House – and it was great.  Since moving from San Francisco, Lucie and I can’t find any good inexpensive chinese food anywhere. I think that I probably have had the worst Chinese food in my life in Vermont.  We walked miles around the city and met an old friend of Todd’s for dinner.  Then, he had to get back on the subway/bus/train/plane back to San Francisco.

I had a quiet night by myself on the boat after Todd left. It was a heat wave in NY, with temps in the low 80’s so I grilled a steak and had dinner outside in the cockpit of Wildhorse in shorts & t-shirt.

Warm clear evening in City Island

Lucie spent that night with our new friends Jim and Wijnonda in the city. We had met them up in Nova Scotia this summer, and Lucie and Wijnonda really hit it off. She’s a Dutch photographer and artist, and they had a great time talking about something other than boats.

Many people say that it’s notoriously hard to make new friends as an adult, especially as we get older. There are articles and books written on how to do it by the dozen.  We have found that when cruising that it is easy. We are all in the same boat, so to speak, and we all have many things to talk about and everyone helps everyone else. People come from all walks of life – some just scraping by, some quite wealthy, and ranging from their 20’s to well into thier 80’s still out on the water.  We have met so many new people since taking off on the boat, a few of which we know will be lifelong friends.

I took the bus and subway to Manhattan the next morning and met them all at their place.  We had a good time walking around Washington Heights and Harlem, areas of NYC that neither of us had explored much.  We found out about a really fun weekly jazz show and went to that.  Miss Marjorie is an elderly lady in Harlem and is a jazz pianist and worked a lot in the clubs back in the day.  Every Sunday she opens up her quite small apartment to the public and puts on a free jazz show, so we all went to Miss Marjorie’s that afternoon.  It was great music and a really fun New York experience! The band was piano, trumpet and sax, and they played many classics, including “Take the A Train”, which we had done to get to Harlem. Miss Marjorie herself sat down and played 3 or 4 tunes, and she still has the chops!  Not only that, but she served snacks and apple cider to a whole roomful of strangers.  Whoever says that New Yorkers are cold and unwelcoming hasn’t really been there.

Waiting for the show at Miss Marjorie’s apartment

Miss Marjorie jamming with the band

After that, we spent the rest of the evening walking around in Harlem and had dinner at the Red Rooster, where of course they had live music – a funk band this time!

Got to bed late, then in the morning Wijnonda kindly drove us back to City Island where we were joined by Ben, our good friend from Berkeley, got groceries and filled with water (NYC has some of the best-tasting water in the US), and got ready for our passage to Virginia.