Our flight home from NYC wasn’t til 3:30 in the afternoon on Friday Jan. 20th so we had plenty of time to do some final things before leaving.

Well, plenty of time isn’t necessarily the right word. We had some time, anyway, and I really wanted to go to Central Park. We didn’t have time to explore very far into the park, but my Central Park craving was satisfied.

We stopped at a lovely little park gift shop and bought some stuff. Randy is excellent at buying great things; it’s a gift that he should somehow be able to monetize. I guess there’s not a big demand for personal shoppers here in Springfield.

So many horse-drawn carriages were waiting. I think they charged $10/minute or something bonkers like that. It might be fun to try at some point in my life.

I wanted to show him the new glass-fronted mall across Columbus Circle and he adjusted the lighting on his camera to take this shot of me and I think it’s so cool, very artistic.

Because we had a luncheon engagement we didn’t have time to linger. Next time! Not to mention all the shops on the Upper West Side, or the Upper East Side for that matter.

It wasn’t very crowded. Cool place.

We met Becky Garretson at the Brooklyn Diner and had a great lunch. Randy keeps in touch with people, which is a good thing, and I wish I had that ability. She and her husband Dick live there now and he comes back to Springfield to play in different orchestras for shows. Becky and Dick used to live right across the street from Kevin and me when we lived in Westchester but I only remember being in her house once. So I’m also terrible at connecting with people right across the street. It’s never too late to change, or so they tell me.

Our Uber to the airport was driven by a woman from Pakistan, the first female Uber or cab driver I’ve ever encountered. She was very nice and the traffic was so light that we got to the airport in record time.

I continued my NYC Burger Consumption by having a cheeseburger and a shake at theLa Guardia Shake Shack. I’d read at the Shake Shack for such a long time and it was quite tasty, and it seems it wasn’t any more expensive than burgers we’d had in town.

Since our incoming flight only had 40 people on it, Randy hoped it’d be that way coming back. “No,” I assured him, “That was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

I was wrong. Forty people on this flight, or maybe forty one. How crazy is that? Delightfully crazy.

I haven’t spent much time looking out the window on airplanes but this time I opened my compass app and realized it showed the altitude, which I found fascinating as we ascended.

I won’t post every single photo I took but you get the idea, if you ever feel like it while sitting on a plane.

As we started our descent into St. Louis I looked out and the clouds looked so much like the ocean, with one white island there in the distance.

It’s nice to always be above the clouds where the sun is always shining.

…But soon were were in the middle of them,

And then back to the wintertime grayness. That’s the mighty Mississippi down below.

When I finally made it home it felt like I’d been gone a very long time. Kevin survived just fine, caring for our herd of cats.

Today it’s sunny and going to get pretty warm, especially for mid-February so I’m going to go for a run after a while. Great day for it.

Ok then

G.