Early Sunday morning found the xTreme team headed for the pedestrian path of the Brooklyn Bridge to take in several views of Olafur Eliason's very large scale public art exhibit, the "Waterfalls". Although the one contructed under the bridge tower itself was not visible from the top of the walkway, it proved a fantastic vantage point to snap some shots of the water cascading off the tower constructed at Pier 35 on the East River as well as the one on Governor's Island.
With the temps hovering in the high 80's and the humidity near the saturation point, we started our descent at noon. As the risks of dehydration increased by the minute, we made our way down the wood planked walkway, unsure of the tradeoffs between quickening our pace and sweating more versus slowing down but spending more time in the elements. Fortunately we never had to discover if we made the right choice as we came upon an enterprising local who had hauled a cooler full of ice cold Poland Spring water halfway up the span.
Rehydrated, we quickly descended to Centre St. and eleven blocks later we were kicking back, ordering omelets and mimosas at Ivy's Bistro on Greenwich St. Following our usual protocol, the team performed a post-expedition post-mortem to identify what mistakes were made so we can avoid them in the future. After several rounds of analysis (and several more rounds of mimosas) the consensus was that when it is really, really hot outside it is good to have some water with you. Cold water is even better! So, although the team skirted with danger on this trip, something good came out of it and you can be sure that we will be packing some serious water when we do the Mt Hood xTreme climb on July 13.
