Best Three Different Things

Thing One:

One day last week, when was it. Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon I found myself in Newark and then a few hours later riding across the George Washington Bridge for the first time in 4 and a half years.








Thing Two:

If you hadn't already heard, March is Teddy Roosevelt Month. We kicked this month of history off with a visit to the TR birthplace & museum & National Park. Guess what the most important thing I learned there was? That the Teddy Roosevelt Birthplace and Museum is NOT his actual birthplace. Sure, it occupies the same space, but his home was torn down and then about only 5 years later this replica of sorts was built. Major disappointment when I learned that.

At least there were stuffed animals, hunting photographs, and old-timey political cartoons there.







These mantle items and the wax fruit were Roosevelt possessions, though. So there was that.




The highlight of the visit: seeing the shirt Roosevelt was wearing when he was shot while campaigning to be President a second time. The bullet pierced his eyeglass case and the double-folded notes for his talk before entering his chest. Upon being shot, Roosevelt coughed into a handkerchief, seeing there was no blood he assumed his lungs had not been injured and went on to give a speech for an hour and a half (and, judging by the complete cleanliness of the shirt, he must have taken the time to pre-treat the blood stain) before heading to the hospital for a week.

Regarding the incident, Roosevelt said this:

I did not care a rap for being shot. It is a trade risk which every prominent public man ought to accept as a matter of course


Me and a stuffed Teddy doll.


Thing Three:

Saturday afternoon I was possessed with a desire to take a walk, probably my single longest New York walk yet. (If you click that link you'll go to my gmaps pedometer route. That's the reward of a long walk, getting to chart it out with the gmaps pedometer afterwards.)

Early in the walk I discovered something startling and horrible. Manhattan's single Arby's has been murdered!


Trip down Manhattan Mall Arby's memory lane: One. Two.

Anyway, along my walk I saw things I walked places I had never walked before (and many places I had walked many times before...going up and down the island it's so frustrating to have to choose from the same set of avenues)




I found this absolutely epic sledding hill. Very daring grade, very prominent pylons at the base. Excellent.