GOVERNORS ISLAND RE-VISITED

Some summer a few years ago I visited Governors Island three times.  The island is closed to the public during most of the year but is open between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  It is basically a big park, with no vehicular traffic other than island staff or from special events.  It is a great place to stroll, run, or bike.  I loved it, but following summers things just didn't work out and I didn't go once.  Today, I used the excuse of volunteering for the Get Outside on Governors Island (GOGI) 10K foot-race to visit the island.  I helped with some cleanup of a little mess the Recess Badminton Game from the day before, then helped direct the runners toward the festival area as they got off the ferry, and finally as course marshal near the Brooklyn Ferry dock.

I cannot remember much from previous visits, but the biggest change is that now the island is mostly inaccessible to the public.  The island's shape looks like an ice cream cone and the cone itself is now off-limit.  Only the ice cream scoop is usable.  No more making a loop of the entire island.  You just have to wait a few years.  From what I've seen in the past on the island, I think it will be worth the wait.  Cone or scoop, just find the time to visit the island.  You will enjoy it!

Supermoon and Lady Liberty.

Here comes the first few hundreds runners from the 7 AM ferry!

Some lead runners charging up the cobble-stone hill.

Turn, turn, turn, there's a season for every reason, or something like that.

AT&T Street Charge, with iPhone 4 plug pulled out.  There's also a micro-USB connector on the other sides.

StreetCharge pole near Clayton Road.  The techs told me there's some other pole on Yankee Drive or something like that.

NYC, IT IS EASY TO BE GREEN

Contrary to Kermit's claim, it is easy to be green, especially if you live in New York City.  There are many good news in recent months and weeks.  Some weeks ago my brother took some old electronics to an e-recycling event hosted by Tekserve and he got a coupon in return.  He had no plan to buy anything from Tekserve but thought I would so he gave it to me.  And so I did, a stylus that works on the iPad and other iDevices.  Sure Steve Job would turn in his grave but hey it does work.  The coupon lopped $10 off the cost of the stylus, I ended up paying only $5.  Next we have the long-awaited bike share program that despite some noises is used by many people.  There's even talks of paying for the program to expand quickly into parts of Brooklyn and Queens that won't have subway services for weeks because of scheduled repairs to fix problems brought about by Hurricane Sandy.

This week it was announced that NYC may soon get food scrap recycling.  Food waste takes up to 35% of the waste stream.  The City pays by the ton to get the garbage trucked elsewhere for dumping, so cutting the size by 35% will save us some money.  The latest green good news is that there are now some Street Charge stations, for people to charge their electronic devices, from solar-powered connections, for free.  Of course one would have to have common sense and not just leave their devices unattended and invite others to steal them.  Hey, we do have ATMs on the street, people can withdraw hundreds of dollars, so having one's iDevices out in the open is not that crazy of an idea.

I followed some URL and found out that there was supposed to be a Street Charge station in my nabe, over on 21st Street or thereabout and Surf Avenue.  I made it part of my afternoon run but alas it wasn't there.  I found out later on that it's scheduled for a July 2 installation.  So while I didn't get a photo of the Street Charge station, earlier in the run I found this nice public sculpture.  Let's say Nemo was found and it was not good news.

NEMO!

In other unrelated news, I helped PPTC out at the third race of the Al Goldstein Summer Series.  I started at the New Registration table then when the race was under way, I ran with the back-of-the-pack runners.  I took some time out to use the restroom of the nearby Central Library, then again to try to contact the owner of a cell phone a friend found.  It was a guy visiting from Haiti and my three years of high school was not too useful, but I managed to find the settings to change the language to English then things got better.  I both met the guy and caught up with the last runner, now a speed-walker, not the stroller woman any more.  When I got back to the finish line, look who's helping with the award ceremony - Mr. Al Goldstein himself!  I did see him walk earlier without the use of the cane, too.

You can call me Al.