The Fourth of July

What Independence Day is all about:

- Watching a 145-pound Japanese man eat 44 1/2 hot dogs in 12 minutes in the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.

- Making an appointment with the chiropractor because The Cyclone is a seriously dangerous relic that needs to be razed before it kills someone (me!). It’s been three days and my neck still hurts from the whiplash I got from the first drop. Rollercoasters should seem unsafe but actually be safe.

- Going to the super-crowded beach at Coney Island to dip our tootsies in the water with half of New York City. As Steven observed in Prospect Park, the scene was the kind of multiculturalism you often find in NYC. Well, almost. Economic stratification is still alive and well in America’s melting pot…the racial demographic resembled the subway much more than Central Park West. Jonah summed it up well when he quipped, “it’s so crowded here, why don’t these people just go to the Hamptons or Nantucket?”

- Fireworks. The display in NYC was fantastic…we saw several types of fireworks we’d never seen before.

- Watching Zoolander.

- Visiting the Met. Except for a brief visit to see the da Vinci exhibit this spring, I had never been there. An excellent museum on many levels…we’ll definitely be going more often from now on.