Top of the world ... again ...

27 April - Managed to extircate myself from the hostel at a farly decent hour and after a very crappy diner breakfast (i've been spoiled by the southern cooking where they make the best breakfasts that although the butter content does completely twist up my stomach the minute I stand up after finishing) I go on the subway and headed down to the south tip of Manhattan and had a little look at the Statue of Liberty but didn’t go out there because the wait was too long. Had a bit of a wander through the Financial District and saw the site of the WTC which is still just a big hole in the ground although the new building is supposed to be up and running in a few years. It certainly seems destined to become one of the holiest sites in the city - all of the New Yorkers i've spoken to about it seem to still be very affected by it - it seems that all of them feel that they were personallyattacked when the buildings went down and in a sense they were. Did a bt more wanderingthrough town including visiting a bike shop that one of my messenger friends from Vancouver used to frequent and tried t oswap out my Novex jersey to no avail. FOund myself a phone card an dcalled home for the first time in a while which was very nice although did receive some terrible news about the condition of my good friend Algren who it seemed could just not bear for me to be away from him. Knowing I had to do at least one serioutourist attraction whilst I was here I decided on heading up to the observatory deck of the empire stat tbuilding where I got a brilliant view of the city - i've been to the top of a lot of tall buildings in my life and generally they don’t impress me too much but this city certaily does have the best skyline of all of them so it was definitely worth the overpriced admission. Just as I was heading into the down elevator two cops sprang out of the elevator and sprinted up to the deck and when I reached the exit I found that the building hahad been shut down and the entire street was closed off. Within minutes there were dozens of police cars, fire engines ad amulances and thousands of gawkers (including me). Not completely sure what was going on but the general consensus was that a someone had decided to jump off the edge - a couple of people upon hearing this shouted out 'Jump' at the top of their lungs - man, this city is cold. I did fel a little bit guilty about the situation though - as I went up into the empire state, I felt myself secretly wishing that something exciting would happen - I kind of wish that every time i 'm in a major landmark or tall building - in any event, it was a little bit exciting but all's well that ends well so I shouldn’t feel too guilty. Made some tentative plans to hook up with a friend of one of my austin friends - but somehow also managed to get extricatetd into a plan to head out with a bunch of australians and the swedish girls from th eprevious night and they would not get heir asses into gear and it wasn’t until past midnight when we actually arrived at where we were supposed to arrive so my other meeting never happened. I was not very happy with the way the night panned out because chad sounded like somebody who would be really worth meeting and those swedish girls are the human equivalent of capsicin (in other words, a powerful irritant).