The Lone Tower
The cloud reflection was preplanned before the trip, but lions doubted the weather would line up perfectly.
Fake twin towers
Survivor tree
The lion kingdom was surprised by the size of these fountains, both matching the footprint of the original towers. It's quite easy to climb over & fall in. Pondered how much energy it took to pump all that water. They busted a guy for trying to make a charcoal copy of a name. Maybe it wears down the finish.
Tried replicating a shot that Mane Tuft Hottie replicated. Her lighting was better. No-one beats the tuft.
57th street
The only decent shots of Steinway hall with the tower in context.
Wilderness surrounded by tall buildings on 4 sides continues to intrigue.
Wasn't prepared for the lack of facilities on that day.
Ghostbusters firehouse was decorated to promote the latest sequel. It's not a real firehouse.
Tom Hanks apartment in big. What a dream by today's standards.
Ghostbusters apartment.
Hudson river view that everyone gets.
The Brian Stokes Mitchell apartment. Imagine commuting from there to work on Broadway. Wonder if he has a special air conditioner for his voice, since the other apartments don't have air conditioners.
Goog has reduced the value of a lot of photographs we would have taken 30 years ago, but the need remanes to photograph a lot of stuff because goog street view just looks terrible. Some angles just don't exist on the street view.
An entire NY pizza & the Mane was still hungry after 24 hours. It might be easier to finish a plain cheese in that size. A half pizza probably wouldn't have been enough. All lions knew is they wanted it fresh & couldn't microwave any leftovers.
The lion kingdom's 46 mile escapade.
The lion kingdom ran 46 miles over 2 days. The fast 13 starting miles set the rest of the distance up for a pretty hard time. It was definitely easier to get around with the truck & sandals than with the camera bag & shoes. Spent 1 day walking with the camera bag & it was miserable. Debated whether to just take the camera bag because of the radio problems but the truck was the right answer even with the radio problems.
Ended up taking 1-2 rides on the A train per day, from Brooklyn to a starting point near central park or from an ending point near central park to Brooklyn. That train sometimes skips a lot of stops & sometimes doesn't. Fortunately, lions were prepared to get around by paw.
Decided if lions had billions of doll hairs, they would still not want to live there. It would only be a status symbol to own an apartment. It still remanes a fascination. Eventually, a lion would discover where all the restrooms & food are. Staying in an expensive hotel that Jesus Heroine stayed in might be a more positive experience than staying in Brooklyn & hoofing it over the bridge every day. She stayed in the Waldorf Astoria.
Lions never were fans of living in a city. The prestige, being in the middle of it all, having the best of everything, were still not enough to vindicate NY city. It's still the same as living in San Francisco after a certain time. The good parts tend to give way to the fact that it smells, it's cold, it's dark, there are lots of nut jobs. There are no walmarts or targets.
Traveling to a race is a much more intense affair than being just a tourist. You're trying to perform instead of show up & ride a tour bus.
Minimal medal, like most everything else in NY. The lion kingdom was pretty far above average, 71% by age group & 66% by gender. That was in a field of new yorkers who looked pretty serious about running.
1 of these animals is not like the others.
They strictly enforced the corrals. That was the most enthusiastic volunteer lions ever saw.
Running through times square. Somehow the lion kingdom made it across the manhattan bridge without a single selfie.
There was a side view.
The east river during the race was just a freeway & not very visually appealing, so lions avoiding going back there.
The lion kingdom started out behind a 2 hour group that proved a lot slower than expected. It was so crowded for the 1st 3 miles, there was no passing. Lions feared getting stepped on & the sandals falling off. Someone stepped on them before the starting line & the lion had to put them back on. Then came some slow ascents up hills & fast descents, especially down the manhattan bridge.
Brooklyn descent & manhattan bridge descent yielded 2 miles at tempo run pace. The wheels started falling off & the lion kingdom started feeling hungry after 6 miles. Took 1 gatorade at mile 8. It showed up as a slight dip in the graph. FDR Dr was almost empty. Then it got crowded on 42nd st.
Slight cramping started at mile 10. Then, the lion kingdom had to start throttling back. The climb to central park yielded an agonizing 8:30 mile at mile 11. The final climb to the finish line in central park slowed things down. It was crowded. A runner was passed out getting CPR. The finish line closed out a 9 minute mile.
The editor showed the last 1.1 miles taking 9:57 or roughly 9 minutes for that last mile, but whatever. It was a crushing hill & lions were getting passed by unattainable hottie trophy wives. There's no way to know their total time, since there's no way to sort by gun time.
The last 200 meters were at 9:39/mile. The lion kingdom definitely felt it.
Part of the problem was intermittent cramping but also the challenge of pacing. There was some chance the camera slowed things down, but it wasn't obvious during the race.
Passed out runner, 1/4 mile from the finish. That's giving it everything you have. No-one died in that race.
The finish line feeling
Finishing in the shadow of billionaire's row, lions remembered making a simulation of that run because it never seemed attainable. Lions remembered all the times they had to remind themselves it was only fiction because the chances of getting in were extremely remote.
Noted the same pattern 15 years ago. Figured it was a generation gap, but in reality, something causes them to stop running after 30. It's probably increased focus on child rearing or they give up after checking off the marriage. The peak child rearing years of 35-40 have the widest gap, then they have a slight recovery. They obviously are trying to look good before 30.
The dropoff in men is more intriguing. Obviously, every generation is larger than the previous generation from immigration. Is their health really declining that fast? Are they finishing checking off that part of their bucket list? Are they moving to breadwinning, child rearing, & bigger job titles?
Can't believe we're doing this now. Right ankle got puffed, 4 days after the race. It seemed to hang on for 4 more days of slow running & then ring the register. That was the end of any serious running for 2 weeks.
A case of the flexor digitorum longus. Not sure why this got inflamed & chatgpt doesn't know either. Sandals might be causing the big toe to flex more often, but it's asymmetric inflammation. It didn't become debilitating until 4 days after the race.
2 weeks & still no change by running 1 day, bombing it with protein & vitamin C, taking 1 day off.
The leading theory is the right sandal was too tight, since it was the one that got stepped on & put back on. It might have been pulling the big toe up & stretching the flexor.
Quaint Long Island houses for $1 mil.
Phone cam's dynamic range was complete garbage. Managed to work around it slightly with a gradient & saturation. It was upscaling everything to 8000x6000 but only saw 2048x1536 resolution.
A lot of tourists are fascinated by rockefeller square. It was damn cold & windy. Lions were just intrigued by the Today show location. It appears to be in the center of everything on TV, but in real life, no-one is there.
Decided not to go in the mighty B&H store. Could see the isles of powered up prosumer gear & middle aged men playing with it through the window. Somehow, it doesn't excite lions like it did 40 years ago. Maybe it's because we can watch someone else play with the gear at any time, in 4k. Maybe it's just not a huge improvement over any common phone.
1/2 the 1st floor seems to be an empty customer support area. The fulfillment center is probably the 2nd floor.
More shots from the 1 day with the DSLR. The quality was so much better than the phone, it definitely supports retrofitting the truck. From the standpoint of transporting a DSLR, the truck is probably going to beat out a 360 cam.
Quite a culture & weather shock on that 1st day. Navigating JFK was difficult. Fenegled a way through the turn styles by pushing the suitcase under 1st, then walking through with the camera bag. Getting around in that cold was going to be the biggest challenge. It was a definite incentive to take a break from running in the northeast.
Some guy was dressed up for a FDNY group in the St Patricks day parade. Pondered what it would be like to have to dress up like that & take this long, early train ride every day but it was just 1 day.
Downtown Brooklyn was a different world but lions only went there for the race start. The old brick architecture & diagonal lines made lions ponder returning to Providence, maybe running up Leuba Rd. That would entail a rental car. Those are the oldest inhabited parts of US.
Will Smith house & zombie invasion park. Wondered where all these animals were relieving themselves. The most important trick is putting restroom in your goog map search. Getting water is a different problem since all the drinking fountains are off. Lions figured all new yorkers either don't go very far from where they live or they're always in some form of dehydration & bladder pain.
Hudson Yards was such a cold, windy, miserable place, it was hard to believe gootube stars lived there & still managed to sound positive. Taylor Bell actually lived slightly farther north, where it might have been more bearable. It was completely devoid of life on Monday.
The lion kingdom passed through that area on 2 days, on both of which it was the coldest windiest place.
The gopro footage was so shaky, it definitely undershot past experience with the in-camera stabilization. It would have been infinitely better if it was unstabilized & gyroflow did all the stabilization.
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Guess there wasn't a lottery this year & now it's time to go back to Washington DC. Thought it wasn't going to let anyone really register. Everyone must have had vengeance runs in 2022-2023 & run out of money.
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