Robot Claw – Page 45 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Maritime Metropolis Monday

October 15, 2024

We went on a cruise today, all around Manhattan Island. I didn’t even know this was possible until a few weeks ago, so I was looking forward to it quite a lot.

The cruise began on the west side at Pier 83, and took 2.5 hours to circumnavigate the island in a counterclockwise direction. There was a little mist at the start but this burned off and the weather was pleasant and sunny, and our views were good.

After rounding the bottom of Manhattan we cruised up right alongside ‘The Statue’ for a good look and photo op. There were other cruise ships scattered around as well: this is surely the big draw as far as NYC Harbour cruises go. This was the closest I’d ever been to The Statue and it was very impressive.

We cruised under many bridges – maybe a dozen – some of which were only about a foot above the top of the boat. We also went through a rail swingbridge, which carries the track that the train to and from Albany travels.

The tour including a guide who was a font of facts and figures and as a NYC resident for 40 years obviously knew the city inside out. He spoke about the city then, now and tomorrow and the great changes it had undergone since Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and of course the pandemic. Even today some of the iconic skyscrapers in the city (such as the Chrysler building) stand mostly empty with uncertain futures.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned was that NYC has a rail bridge that was the inspiration for a famous bridge elsewhere in the world. Here’s a photo (from wiki) of the ‘Hell Gate Bridge’, can you guess which other bridge virtually copied it:

After the cruise we had planned to go and see some of the Saint Columbus Day parade but food and shopping got in the way 🙂

Sunny City Sunday

October 13, 2024

We’re back in NYC for another birthday trip. It’s warm and sunny and unusually nice for mid October (back home it’s much colder).

The city is as lively as ever, possibly because there’s a major parade tomorrow (which we didn’t consider when we booked this trip). We just got back from Times Square and it was bonkers busy.

Today we walked over 10 miles hitting most of ‘our’ usual shops and just soaking in the city vibe. One church we passed was blessing animals today and we saw the minister blessing this police horse. There was also a child waiting in line with a little hamster in a cage. It was very cute 🙂

Those are paintings for sale in the markets near Union Square. They were all massive – about as tall as me, and the choice of subjects was… unusual. We not really sure if that is Jesus in the bottom left. What do you think? And which would you buy?

The hotel costs an arm and a leg but we always love staying here and to our surprise they put us in a newly renovated room with a wonderful view. They even gifted us a bottle of champagne and a balloon for the birthday girl!

We saw police setting up barricades on 5th Avenue for what we assumed was tomorrow’s parade, but then to our surprise a different parade started! It was the Hispanic Day Parade and we watched groups of people from various Hispanic countries dancing in national dress. It was quite spectacular and tomorrow’s Columbus Day Parade now has quite a bar to reach. Will we be able to watch it tomorrow? I hope so, but we have another activity beforehand which may get in the way. Check back tomorrow to see what happens…

Tree Removal

October 8, 2024

At the end of our driveway, right in the corner of the neighbors property, was a massive eastern white pine tree. It was planted when the house was built, making it older than Kristin and I, and had a trunk wider than me. Today it was removed.

It was an extraordinary process: four large trucks arrived, blocking our driveway and much of the street. They started by erecting this unusual cherry picker to take down some of the lower branches and to (I presume) make way for the bigger crane.

The foliage was so dense it was hard to see exactly how they dismantled it, but the crane you can see was ‘catching’ the large branches and eventually trunk sections as they were cut. The guy doing the cutting was somehow attached to the tree and not using a second crane. Maybe he climbed up? I bet he had nerves of steel.

It took most of the day – at least six hours. Most of this was taking down the top half or so, and the rest was much faster. The noise was endless and extremely loud, much of which came from the industrial wood chipper that they fed the branches into (the red machine on the right). Trucks came and went periodically, probably taking away woodchips.

The biggest noise was toward the end when they picked up and dropped the trunk pieces too big to grind – almost as long as a car – into the back of an another truck. Each drop sounded like a bomb going off, vibrated the house and scared the hell out of our cats.

But that was nothing compared to the cacophony of the robotic stump grinder:

The guy standing next to it controlled it remotely. It took quite a while – at least half an hour – for him to finish grinding the stump below ground level, and the noise was like a million wasps surrounding the house.

And then they were done! A dozen or so guys and a small fleet of trucks packed up and left. I can only imagine how much the entire operation cost.

I know the neighbor was sick of cleaning up pine needles (which were incredibly abundant last year) and concerned about branches or even the tree itself falling, but it’s a shame such a regal and aged tree is now just… gone. I’ll miss it, and I hope he plants something in its place.