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LA to NYC

September 2019 - October 2021
A 767-day adventure by Rosscoe Read more
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  • TravelerLA to NYC
    1
    11121
    Day 13

    Niagara Falls

    September 30, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    You can travel with your best mate and be having a great time but then they go and spoil it on you.
    So it goes with old spoilsport Rhonda who couldn’t be talked into going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
    I think more people have survived the experience than not and actually the first person to ever do it and survive was a woman.
    None of these arguments could convince her to have a go so I missed out on getting a great YouTube clip and all going well it probably wouldn’t have ended up under the Failed Army listing.

    The problem with trying to describe North America is you can’t. There are information boards around the falls with quotes from all the old explorers who came from lands that had vast mountains, lakes and rivers themselves but then when they first set eyes on Niagara Falls and this continent they were lost for words saying nothing they have ever seen before could even compare with this.

    I’ve been to Niagara Falls a fair while ago and was extremely impressed (not strong enough adjective) so this trip diversion was for Rhonda, for her to see them too.
    I thought I remembered them clearly though memories can get a bit exaggerated over time but it’s the reverse in this case, I’d forgotten the incredible size of the falls and the noise they make and the mist they throw in the air and simply it’s hard to remember seeing that much water falling at one time, about 2,555,150 litres per second but those stats mean nothing unless you’re a numbers guy.

    The best view of the main falls, Horseshoe Falls is from the Canada side, this is where I first saw Niagara from so I wanted to cross over for that view but the border crossing over Rainbow Bridge was banked up for miles, it would have taken too long to get through customs and then we had to return so we settled for viewing from the US side.
    This was good because we got to see Horseshoe, American and Bridal Veil Falls up close and at a few places you stand right by the drop over the edge, not only a brilliant view down but also not a bad barrel launching spot either. So this makes me think, do you think she would fall for “hey Rhonda I dropped my wallet in this barrel, could you get it out for me please” and then “whoops... sorry I just knocked it in the water!”
    Keep watching YouTube for the answer.    Read more

  • TravelerLA to NYC
    2
    111
    Day 15

    New York City #1

    October 2, 2019 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 23 °C

    After a 5,249 kilometres road trip across the United States we finally reached New York City.
    Everybody should drive a 41/2 ton RV into this city once in their life, you’ll never forget the experience, but whether you would ever want to do it again is another question.
    Most of the roads are narrow and congested and we were hoping the continuous bumps we ran over were caused by the potholes and not some Wall Street trader whose hedge fund took such a dive they decided to throw themselves under our wheels to end it all.

    It’s not that we have much sympathy for hedge fund traders it just that it could be a ploy to get themselves out of the ruined position they’re currently in because along all the highways are huge billboards advertising lawyers like “Backslap & Ticklewallet” promoting their legal services and the billions of dollars compensation that they’ve won for clients who have been injured in accidents.

    In other words they sue the pants off you over here if you do as much as spit chewing gum on the pavement and someone stubs their big toe because of it.
    Seeing this state has screwed every cent out of us in every way it can we don’t want them to finish us off completely, though they are doing a pretty good job of it at the moment so as a precaution we are trying to avoid hitting anything warm that may be lying on the road from Wall Street traders to homeless Hobos.

    Getting here we’ve been stung badly by toll roads so we set the SatNav to exclude them, then we set the SatNav to include them. They’re clever bastards here, they have covered every possible rat run you could use to avoid paying a toll which meant the alternative sent us so giddy and used up so much time and fuel that we drove back with our tails between our legs and begged them, at any cost to please let us use the toll roads.

    Our only bit of revenge was, if you are unfamiliar with the cash machines that take the toll they take a bit of working out. You shove notes in, they give change, you have to press all sorts of buttons, the amount is displayed in different place and on it goes.
    When we reach the end of the first toll road (which is the beginning of the next) we find a clear cash lane to drive through.
    While I’m trying to work it out a car pulls up behind us and Rhonda says “who would be stupid enough to pull into a lane behind a tourist”
    While I’m trying to shove notes in another car pulls into our lane. While I’m trying to push the right buttons more cars pull in. While I’m trying to find my change, more cars pull in. While I push the help button even more cars bank up behind us.
    After that I have no idea what was happening the line extended back too far for me to see, besides all I was worried about was getting my change back from this highway robbery.    Read more

  • TravelerLA to NYC
    1
    1211
    Day 15

    NYC #2 Statue of Liberty

    October 2, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    Apparently viewing The Statue Of Liberty is free, being a gift from the French and a symbol of freedom and the rest of it but they must have got the Toll Road guys in to work out how to squeeze the punter without going against the spirit of everything that Liberty symbolises.
    How this works is the only way on to Liberty Island is by official ferries and they charge you a fare for this so the cost is supposedly just for the transport over and return.

    But I noticed a disparity here so what I asked them was how come the lowest fare is just to get to the island. A higher fare is charged to enter the Pedestal and a much higher fare applies to enter the Crown, that’s for folks who go right up the top and stick their heads out of Liberties crown but this section is booked out until 2020.

    So my rationale is, they are charging for the viewing, it’s plain and simple the more you want to view the more they charge.
    I would have taken this a lot further but Rhonda said something about me and ruffling feathers and something about her being sick of it, I’m not sure I was too busy sending off a furious email to the American National Parks Association demanding to be reimbursed for our Pedestal admission.

    I was on a good roll too being inspired by the statue herself with all that righteousness and the “for the people by the people”stuff.
    The Statue of Liberty certainly does this flag waving and freedom for all stuff well starting with the sheer scale, I think it may still be the largest sculpture of that type in the world, if not it should be because it is one powerful piece of art and a more impressive thing is that they created and erected her in the 1880’s, and the size of some of the construction is on Egyptian Pyramid scale.
    Like our Opera House the position out in the harbour, at the entrance to New York City adds to the power of the piece, anywhere else it could get lost amongst the skyscrapers of Manhattan but instead those buildings become a backdrop for Liberty.

    The experience so far of NYC is, we suggest that any of you who never want to visit any cities in the world or are turned off by what they’ve heard about this place should make an exception, just once and try a trip to New York.    Read more

  • TravelerLA to NYC
    2
    1121
    Day 17

    NYC #3 Manhattan

    October 4, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    It stormed overnight and rained during the day as is proven here in this skyscraper photo we took to start off the blog.
    We’ve been using the New York Subway to get around and despite its reputation we feel it’s safer because you avoid any heavy objects or light aircraft that may fall from the tall buildings.

    It seems New York is still very nervous about falling buildings, security is everywhere and severe. For instance getting onto the Statue of Liberty ferry you go through airport type security to get onboard. Then when you are on Liberty Island you go through the same thing again, then when you enter the statute pedestal you can’t take the bags that have already been x-rayed twice, you have to put them in a locker.

    Police are everywhere in the streets and in huge numbers.
    Other official security people are everywhere too, all heavily armed. I don’t think New Yorkers or Americans will get over the Twin Towers for a long time and it was eerie first arriving here because... anyone who saw live coverage of the planes flying into the World Trade Centre as we did will remember you could also hear he sound of the jets as it happened.
    So we were looking out over Manhattan and it seems the flight path into New York City goes right over the Hudson River. In the afternoon this causes the suns angle to casts perfect shadows of the aircraft flashing across the face of the buildings, it uncannily appears they are crashing into them, this illusion is further created by the roar of their engines overhead.

    Terrorists, Gorgo or over sized apes haven’t kept the tourists away though, the lines to some galleries have proved that. We stood in a queue that was about a quarter of a kilometre long for the Metropolitan Museum of Art only to last five minutes inside. The only art we experienced was the art of packing as many people into a building as possible. The Guinness Book of Records should have been there or maybe a talent scout for a circus auditioning people for the clown car act, where about twenty crawl out of a mini minor unfortunately our experience wasn’t that funny.

    This was all good though, we just walked around the streets and through Central Park which gives a better feel of the city. We rode the subway and met many helpful people along with lunatics, weirdos, extroverts, introverts, religious fanatics and people damning the lord everywhere.

    The architecture was good to see especially smaller stuff like the old apartment buildings with the fire escapes on the outside.
    We had fire engines and police vehicles flashing past constantly with their sirens wailing, we heard cab drivers blasting horns and hurling abuse, we avoided everything from trucks and buses to skateboarders going through red lights when we were on the crossings, we saw sad homeless people pushing shopping carts full of their rubbish past multi million dollar apartments overlooking Central Park on Fifth Avenue.

    So we got exactly what we expected of a day out in this city and it was a surprisingly good experience except for the homeless, the beggars and the people trying to eke some sort of living out of a dog eat dog city.    Read more

  • TravelerLA to NYC
    1111
    Day 17

    NYC #4 Central Park

    October 4, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    I wanted to go to the Central Park Zoo but Rhonda said she had, had enough of exotic animals, she reckons every time you look up you see some creature swinging off a skyscraper so we settled for just walking around enjoying the beautiful park.
    As far as seeing critters go, the place is lousy with squirrels, cheeky little buggars too, they snatch the food right out of your mouth but the jokes on them, nuts last the winter, organic chicken sandwiches don’t.

    There are domestic critters here too. A huge thing in NewYork is dog walking, this is a profession catering for people who live in small apartments, work long hours so they have no time to exercise the mutt but still insist on having a fashion statement in the form of fur.
    There are basically two or three breeds that are on trend right now the trouble is they are quite different types and sizes.

    Central Park is the ideal place for a dog walker to exercise the dogs, they have one lead that divides into individual ones that attach to each dog. This makes a nice neat controllable device that works beautifully on paper. The problem is when an issue arises and this is usually started by the smallest and yappiest dog there is trouble.
    You watch a dog walker strolling through Central Park, walking under the trees or wandering by the lakes and you think, this is money for old rope. Then one of them gets a bit cranky or another would rather be sitting by the window, in the sun in its 14th floor Maddison Avenue apartment instead of being dragged around the park with a group of useless flea bags.
    This is the problem if there is trouble. When a group of dogs are tied together, others that were quite content and didn’t really want to get involved get caught up in the moment and then it’s on. Most don’t really know what they are fighting about but at this stage it doesn’t really matter they’re here they might as well have a go.
    From a distance, sitting on a park bench under a shady tree this looks pretty funny watching it all happening, seeing we have nothing else to do because the squirrels stole our lunch.

    It’s was almost as funny as some of the lines from the excellent buskers who work Central Park
    Some black guys were doing comedy and gymnastics. This will lose something in the translation but they were putting themselves and everyone else down.
    They were getting members of the audience to be involved in their act and it did look pretty dangerous so they warned that if the person moved they would die or worse turn black.

    When they asked for money, which they really deserved some people quickly turned to leave and so one of the performers started yelling out to them “hey don’t leave just like my father did, y’all come back and support your family” this was their style all through the routine, it was hilarious, but I know, you had to be there, their talent and timing even their voices pulled a lot of simple stuff off.    Read more

  • TravelerLA to NYC
    4
    1
    Day 18

    NYC #5. Brooklyn Bridge

    October 5, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C

    Though the US is still in a National State of Emergency since 9/11 the police are still very decent even when they arrest you. We both couldn’t have been more pleased with the friendly way Rhonda was carted away by this officer.
    I’m chuffed, seeing I was the miscreant but I’ve learnt one thing in life and that is... if anything goes wrong blame Rhonda.
    You might be critical but look I’m free to continue seeing the sights and writing this blog instead of rotting away in Guantanamo Bay.
    The good thing is at least she saw the Brooklyn Bridge so the day wasn’t a complete waste and I’m sure she will have free access to this blog.    Read more

  • TravelerLA to NYC
    1
    Day 18

    NYC #6 Ground Zero

    October 5, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C

    The contrast between visitors at 9/11 memorial was pretty wide. There were the happy holidayers, smiling and taking selfies like they’re at Disneyland and then there where those who searched for names with tears in their eyes.
    Amongst all the names of those killed you would come across ones like “Jane Doe and her unborn child” and every now and then a name would be accompanied with a white rose, these are placed there on the persons birthday.

    The reasons Al Qaeda hit the World Trade Centre are complex but one of them is that they were in the financial district of New York. Not too far away is Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange.
    Since 9/11 the US has been in a constant National State of Emergency, this is why security is so intense and probably the most severe we have seen is around the stock exchange building.
    As an individual you can’t get anywhere near it and if you tried in a vehicle the barriers they have erected would stop a tank. The police presence is huge as we said earlier because you see it everywhere.

    We’ve no idea what the memorial is supposed to mean, it looks gloomy with water falling into an abyss so we don’t think this helps the people who come to remember the ones they lost.
    We prefer the version where they projected lasers to the scale of the original towers into the sky.    Read more

  • TravelerLA to NYC
    1
    211
    Day 19

    NYC #7. Brooklyn Street Art

    October 6, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C

    If you ever want to whinge about your lot in life, catch the subway train to Bushwick in Brooklyn and see how the other half live, that’s why I had to tell Rhonda, “today it’s a mystery tour”, if she knew where we were headed it would have ended up been a solo trip.

    After crossing the Williamsburg Bridge in to Brooklyn, New York becomes dirty, crumbling and depressing and the only activity there seems to be graffiting so there was barely one surface of the landscape that hadn’t been attacked with a spray can, the only place you couldn’t see any was where rubbish was covering it up.

    Sunday seems to be looney day on the subway, it’s not that you don’t get a fair share of them during the week but the weekend must be allocated as their special time and they make full use of that honour too.
    Everyone knows of the standard ranter and raver, the crazy ones you definitely don’t want to approach but there’s a quieter sub species that get around too. Their craziness seems to have turned more introspective though their dress sense give them away.

    There was Sir Lunatic who was a cross between an English Knight and Merlin the Magician, either this was his persona or he didn’t have the outfit to complete either character so a little mix and match was used to create his own unique one.
    The sword part of his outfit was pretty neat, he had the stabbing bit right but then the hilt was made from a crystal ball. The armour was a mixture of armour, magicians robes and court jesters gear. I gave him 10 out of 10, a very good effort or the day.

    Probably a runner up was a woman who had very thick, long hair. I don’t know how she did it but she grabbed a bunch of about 100 hairs and dyed them fluorescent green the next 100 dyed blond, the next 100 left natural brunette. She then braided them all together into s sort of dreadlock style.
    Set against her metallic gold shoes and metallic robe type things she wore, maybe she could give Sir Lunatic a run for his money on the winners score... oh yeah, in her hair she had stuck a mass of flowers so maybe the hair style was supposed to represent the earth or something cosmic like that.

    There were quite a few others who weren’t really trying they just muttered and gesticulated to themselves constantly, both the knight and flower power lady did that so if the others put a little more effort into their costumes that would have raised their personal score.

    A lot of places that were once grand and have now fallen to pieces seem to get reborn, gentrified as money comes back in and this is usually by hipsters pretending they are slumming it but they don’t want dirt and poverty, they want art.
    So what happens first is, artists who really are slumming it move in because they can’t afford anything better. A group of them form a collective then go crazy all over the neighbourhood because the place is such a dump the police and anyone else couldn’t care less.
    The street art they create gives the place a real “vibe”. Hipsters thrive on vibe, they feel they are now part of the “artistic scene” so that’s hip. But now they need hip restaurants and hip bars and all the rest. This is just starting to happen in Bushwick and maybe it will kill off what they came here for but at the moment the place is still lousy with great street art.    Read more

  • TravelerLA to NYC
    11
    Day 19

    NYC #8 Brooklyn Street Art 2

    October 6, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C

    We took dozens of photos of the work done by the Brooklyn Collective so without getting carried away here are a few more.
    As far as getting there, we rode trains you are advised not to and walked places you are advised not to but everyone was friendly.
    English is a second language here if you have a second language so most of the time we got a lot of smiles instead of words.
    We got off the train at a station called Knickerbocker Station and walked down a street called Starr Street to where the Brooklyn Collective has created their main work but looking from the train the moment you crossed into Brooklyn you could see a lot of brilliant works amongst most of what is dross that’s scrawled everywhere. Rooftops are a particular favourite, they have a large surface that’s easily seen by the elevated train lines, you know those rusted metal structures that have cars driving under them.    Read more

  • TravelerLA to NYC
    122
    Day 20

    NYC #9 Fairwell & Adieu NYC

    October 7, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    Just had our last day of dodging dog walkers, red light runners, pan handlers, hustlers trying to sell you tickets to tourist attractions or sell you the actual attraction itself, though I did considered a pretty good offer on buying The Empire State Building, a real bargain for what they were asking.

    We missed our loonies today, there weren’t too many around, maybe because we didn’t ride the subway.
    I think they like it down there, the roar of the trains in the tunnels seem to set them off. They can yell inanities at the top of their voices and it doesn’t seem too out of place.

    The days of visiting the really famous tourist spots are over if you struggle with crowds.
    We tried lining up for a few of them then gave up and were all the better for it otherwise the only experience you remember is just how jostled you were.
    With the famous ones that you definitely have to see like the Statue of Liberty you just need to avoid the busy periods, earlier is good, it seems the world is full of lazy bastards who want to have a lie in.
    We know how they feel, it was hard for us to get up too but worth it because as we were leaving the crowds coming in were insane.

    What we mainly did instead was walk the city, catch the ferries and ride the subway with some sort of plan, usually this was disbanded because of all the other neat stuff we stumbled into.
    Today’s unintended discoveries were, A guy dragged a piano into Washington Square, his playing was brilliant. A guy dragged a trombone into Washington Square, well maybe he just carried it in but his playing was brilliant too.
    Finding off chance things like this as well as walking the Hudson River Park along the western shore of Manhattan, that was a good one, scenery fantastic, running into weird stuff 10 out of 10.
    The experiences go on and on but to save you from any boredom these few descriptions will do for now.    Read more

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