Leaving New York
November 30, 2009
Sometime last July we were returning home to New York City on the New Jersey Turnpike and we started to talk about what we would miss most about the City. The first thing we both said was walking the dogs in Central Park…but after that we were unable to come up with a single place, event or thing that we would miss the most. We kept coming back to the idea of people. The friends we have made and the feeling of all the interesting lives that swarmed past us every day and everywhere. Walking down a city street in the late afternoon and sensing extra shadows cast by people who once lived and worked there. A world full of people unseen and anonymous… as we have been.
All went well and we drove north up Broadway and left the city via the George Washington Bridge by noon. However, before the departure we spent three nights parked in front of Starbucks camping out and sleeping in 
the motorhome. Lots of friends and neighbors stopped by to visit and say good-bye. It was fun and sad at the same time. Each night we would sit in the dark and watch the people pass by outside our window and drink red wine. Halloween night was especially entertaining… until about two am when the drunken yellers left the closing bars. They can be pretty noisy.
Our original plan had been to head down to Cape May, New Jersey for a few weeks. Get organized in our new home and watch the migrating birds until journeying on to DC for the Thanksgiving holidays. A strange quirk of fate took place. The Eisenhower Memorial Commission for whom both of us and now just Bernie have worked for years decided that they needed Bernie to work for them 
night and day for a while. How long we do not know…but until a few days ago we have been parked on the hill in front of our daughter’s or at the Medieval Library where we sometimes work. A few days ago we moved to a campground near the University of Maryland and the subway where we could open up our slide-outs and have our full living space.
