A Year In New York

Some obligations on the West Coast are calling, so I jumped on a plane, first stop Philly. (The next few days I’ll be galloping from San Francisco to Seattle to L.A., and I’ll take you along for the ride.)

The propellers whirled to a stop and we were released onto the tarmac. This made me glad; walking on tarmac is the proper, romantic way to arrive somewhere new.

I turned back to survey our look at our plane and ye Gods, look at the sky!

The full blue monty, with herds of fluffy clouds drifting overhead and scattering to the horizon. No fire escapes or Plexiglas or brownstones or iron bridges making a clutter. Just sky. My fellow travelers marched in to the terminal and I stood there with the sun drenching my face.

The skycaps began looking at me funny. I headed into the terminal and discovered that indoors, Philadelphia International Airport is not as stunning; the carpets are threadbare and the walls are grimy. Poor Philadelphia. It is 81 miles from New York and 124 miles from Washington, D.C. and is the neglected bastard child.

But…but! If I wanted this view in Manhattan, I would need to claw my way to the 85th floor, working nights and weekends and obliged to play golf with guys named Skip or Brandon. And even then the penthouse would give me a half-sky, at best.

Here, in plain ol’ Philly, I propped my feet up on the windowbox, reclined into my cracked, splitting vinyl seat, and sighed with pleasure at my thousand-mile view. I might as well have been trotting the plains of Montana on the back of a horse.