Was able to catch an earlier flight for a $50 change fee and got home around 10:40 last night. As I emerged from the WTC Path station into the warm & humid NYC night, the events of the prior day were already starting to distort, my brain unconciously reorganizing memories to fit some pattern of rational behavior. Having reached the summit, all of the doubts and fears of the last few weeks at once seem so unnecessary. Yet common sense tells me that attempting this climb so late in the season with no mountaineering experience to speak of was an act of folly and I was lucky to escape with just a few blisters and sore knees.
Heading west on Vescey St, past the giant pit where the twin towers once stood, I decide to forego the shorter bike path route home and cut through the World Financial Center to the waterfront. As I hike the six blocks south along the Battery Park City esplanade on this clear and still evening, I contrast the gleaming outline of the Jersey City skyline across the Hudson with the spectacular vistas I experienced when I was 28 hours younger. I feel the need to make some kind of qualitative comparison. Fortunately my right brain takes charge, granting me permission to crown both as World Champs, like unbeaten heavyweights from two different eras.
Eddie the night doorman acknowledges my entrance with a twitch of his NY Post, a movement imperceptible to anyone who has lived in the building less than four years. Was that gesture a signal that now I am as I was? Did the Rutger Hauer replicant character in Blade Runner get it right when he tells Harrison Ford "those moments are lost forever, like tears in rain"?
Nahhhhh...., Ive got the photos to prove it!
