The Great American Road Trip: Day 78

Emily and I woke up pretty early because she had a meeting with a client - after a cup of coffee we got on the subway and went into Manhattan. I didn't have much of a plan in mind, so I decided to walk up to the main branch of the library. I watched the ice skaters in Bryant Park for a while, but when I went around to the library I found that it didn't open until 10am! I started walking south on 5th, looking for a place for breakfast, and wandered across Lucky. What do you call one of those restaurants where it's kind of a buffet but they serve you from behind the counter and cook some things to order? The menu was an interesting combination of American/Mexican/Chinese food, but the breakfast portion was heavy on the American so I enjoyed a second cup of coffee along with ham, eggs, and toast, served with a wonderful spicy pico de gallo. Clearly a "Lucky" choice - not gourmet but tasty and perfect for a late breakfast.

I returned out into the cold to continue down 5th Ave and found the Museum of Sex, which of course made me chuckle and remember the time my friends and I had gone in, giggling our heads off, when we were 18 and in the city on a school trip. It looked like it had changed quite a bit since the last time I'd visited, so I went in and took a look around. I don't actually remember much of what they had on display last time, but the whole thing was really quite fascinating and informative, particularly the exhibit on the study of sexual habits and curiosities of various animal species. My favorite "huh, I didn't know that!" moment was when I read that, at least to a biological researcher of the less-obviously gendered species, they consider the individuals that produce the relatively larger sex cells to be the females, and the ones that produce the smaller sex cells to be the males. I guess that makes sense, especially when you're talking about things like banana slugs or paramecium. (still a biology student/nerd at heart)

It was past 10am and I started heading back up towards the library, but the wind got the better of me and I got on the subway instead. I ended up on 42nd St - Times Square! I walked around a little and even went into a few shops, but quickly left the bustle behind and went to look through the Bryant Park "Winter Village" shops instead. The library was calling my name, and I was immediately in awe as I walked through the marble hallways and arches, staring at the painted ceilings and grand banisters. The library is host to a small bookstore, a coffee shop, and a small exhibit room that is currently hosting "Why We Fight - Remembering AIDS Activism". Reading "And The Band Played On" while I was in Burkina had been such an eye opening experience for me about what the early years of HIV/AIDS looked like, and I'm glad I had read it because even though I don't think I'll ever truly understand what it felt like to live through those times, I do feel like it gave me a much better context to understand this exhibit. Growing up in a time when HIV infection was talked about in association with drug cocktails and undetectable viral loads, I had needed a window to see and understand why activism had been so vitally important, and for why it still is today particularly now that AIDS is seen as a chronic condition instead of a fatal disease.

I would have happily explored more of the library, but I needed to get back to Brooklyn to pay my parking while Michel was on his work shift. I was trying to get my phone to give me directions for which train to take but for some reason Verizon doesn't seem to have very good coverage in Manhattan - there were a lot of places where I was on extended network and couldn't use my data plan (does this seem odd to anyone else? Shouldn't NYC of all places be just swamped in service by all of the major providers?). But I managed to figure it out using the good old fashioned map, and my phone finally pulled through to tell me a better stop to get off at just before I went too far underground to get service. I had thought the Boston trains were pretty far underground but I did get spotty reception from time to time on them. Here it's entirely gone after the first flight of stairs, and with some stations you can suddenly find yourself quite a ways underground without realizing it until you get off the train, try to find the exit, and have to walk up 2 or 3 levels just to transfer to another train or to get out of the station at ground level.

I paid for my parking, walked back to the house, and blogged for the rest of the afternoon - productivity! (that was the day where I put up four entries in one day)

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