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October 10-24 2008

Our great New York and New England Vacation

During October 10-24 2008, my old friend Harald Waage and I had a vacation in the good, ol' US of A to New York City and New England. The trip was my birthday present to Harald, who shortly turns 40. Our Dutch friend Merlin Sluis was supposed to come along too, but in the end he wasn't financially able to, alas, nor my old friend Morten Schou-Nilsen, whom I also invited.

I'll soon make a map graphic which shows our travel route. Alas, I forgot to turn on my camera's GPS unit for some shots, so I don't have exact location data for all photos.

What follows here are a just some holiday snaps, in almost no particular order, with brief remarks — more will be added in the next few weeks. I also took some photos in New England which I think will, after many, many hours in front of the computer, turn into 2 or 3 Really Excellent Images -- but the photos on this page are just pleasant holiday memories.

Out in Linden, New Jersey we rented our RV — and it turned out, to my initial shock, to be at least 50% larger than my own RV in Norway! But after some rather slow and stressed initial driving in NJ, I got the hang of it and it turned out to be a very nice RV indeed to travel with. This wide-angle photo exaggerates its size a bit, but it did have a huge rear end, big enough to haul Harald's ass, while I slept in the cozy compartment above the driver's seat. Google-map this photo's exact location.

The New Hampshire scenery and fall foliage was, as always, a joy to behold, even though we were there a bit late in the season, which is good, as there then are much fewer other tourists around. Google-map this photo's exact location.

The vainglorious Mr. Waage & the glorious Empire State Building.

Yup, that great building, again.

The column saint with his favorite column in NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art. We also visited the Frick Collection, quite likely my favorite museum experience in the world, but unfortunately they don't allow indoor photography.

We spent our last night in NYC with our old buddy Lee Pierson, who's a fast-talking, fast-thinking, late-nighter, wild-eyed radical. No wonder we get along!

Central Park in NYC on a fine autumn day. Google-map this photo's exact location.

One of our fine overnight parking spots in New Hampshire. We only got accosted by the police once for our parking practices . . .

We took a tour bus trip in NYC, and thus covered a lot of splendid ground in a few hours. (No, we did not go to Ground Zero, where the WWT attacks took place, that would have been just too depressing to see.)

The splendid view from our hotel room on the 21st floor in downtown Manhattan (44th and 7th Av., right next to Times Square). We were happy to see that a lot of high-rise building activity was going on all over The City. Except on Ground Zero, which is a major outrage and defeat: the WTC towers, or something else, should have been rebuilt, standing higher and prouder than ever.

This is Greenland, as seen from my window seat on our Oslo-Newark flight.

In Keene, New Hampshire, we had a quick but pleasant lunch with my old buddy Travis Norsen, who is, of all things, a theoretical physicist.

In NYC, we took a terrific harbor cruise in the evening. "Liberty enlightening the world"? I sure wish, but the world is looking rather bleak in that respect . . .

The Manhattan Bridge, as seen from our cruise boat in the middle of the East River.

In NYC we were royally dined and entertained by our friends Harry Binswanger and his wife Jean Moroney. Here's Harry in his favorite restaurant, Neary's, a wonderful Irish pub which also has excellent food (I had their prime rib). The light there is exceedingly dim, and even my Nikon D3 labored mightily, at ISO 12,800, to shoot there (though I was dumb enough to have a rather slow lens on at the time).

See more USA 2008 photos and stories here.