Always a pleasure to bite into the apple, starting to build up the appetite for our trip there next week. We'd taken to visiting in early Septembers, for the weather and remembrances surrounding the 9/11 anniversary, but this year the LP load was too bulky and I couldn't get away. No worries though, as Oct brings with it a whole 'nother dynamic, this one diamond shaped, as those boys in the Bronx rev it up for that Red Sox clash.

Oughta be epic, sure getting billed as such, but regardless how bball turns out we'll have a memorable trip. For one thing, young Sophie will be getting her first face time with the family -- grams & gramps, assorted aunts, uncles, & cousins, should be nuts-- with her all of 7 months, 14 pounds, five teeth and countless noises. new ones everyday. That'll occupy the latter half of the journey, the Jersey end, which is full for the boardwalks, the diners and newspapers, the lovely drivers. But the first half will be purely city, with an agenda of pursuring the new.

Funny how the tendancy is to blow off the tourist sites in one's backyard, as I did growing up in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, Twin Towers. Never hit the former, came close to ascending it on that fateful Sunday when last we went there, Sunday the 9th of Sept, year 2001, me, Mai & good pals Eric & Gary; one look at the steep cost of admission - $16 - scuttled plans to hit the WTC observation deck, we settled on Krispy Kremes in Tower 2 instead. In those days to come that week, I often thought of those shadowed faces I remembered, the doughnut bakers dutifully flipping, a lone large security guard hanging loose by the ticket booth.

For this trip, we'll be focusing on a number of things we either haven't done yet, or have cropped up among all the numerous new offerings NYC's sporting in the early days of its 21st Century. Of the former, Ellis Island is jumping out, for the chance to show Sophie the spot where her great-great-great granddad came into this country, fleeing the potato plight, and to dig around for more details on the murkier lineage of the family's other side. If the day is clear, the Empire State might get summitted; I've done it but Mai hasn't and we're both down with Art Deco regardless. In the interest of exposing Soph to the masterworks, art museums also beckon; we're too early for the new MoMa but perhaps the Whitney, the Frick, or, weather permitting, the Cloisters. As we're staying in Chelsea, a new experience for me, we might just bop in & out of galleries, checking out the latest.

But as with all itineraries, this one's subject to change; safe to say if a pair of bleacher seats blow our way, surely Soph can check out the views of Jersey the next time