Satin Island

Or rather Staten Island. Damn. I should've taken my camera -- the view of the Statue of Liberty from the ferry. Ellis Island. The funky waterfront baseball stadium. Cozy homes on suburban streets. Perkins Family restaurants (didn't know they made it out this far east). Willowbrook Park's tame ducks and geese -- you could almost reach down and pick 'em up. The carousel therein that opened its motorized shutters in time to reveal itself. Bagel Time convenience store. The wildlife refuge on Travis Road that isn't open on the weekends (what's the point of that?). I ran through a nice cloud of gnats, too. The Staten Island mall, in all its standardized 1980s americana glory -- chain store after chain store secluded along a rapid near-highway. Long stretches of nondescript road that led to Blue Heron Pond park -- a lovely little oasis of greenery on the Island. No herons, though, today. Some dragonflies. Back along Hylan avenue (until it turned into a hellish, pothole ridden strip mall). Right turn onto some random street that opened up into the classically named "New Dorp High School" (not New Dork, as I'm sure they are constantly called). New Dorp High School has -- I'm quite sure -- the largest soccer field in the greater New York City area. It looks like you could fit 20 or 30 simultaneous soccer games on the single field. This nice field turns into a recreation area, which turns into a boardwalk on one of the most uninhabited beaches (today was in the upper 80s, and humid, and a handful of people were hanging around in beach chairs). Further down the boardwalk, more people were clustered, though, so at least some people make it out on a hot day. From the boardwalk, down to Bay St. and back to the Ferry terminal. Altogether a good outing. But the jury's still out on Staten Island.