Some Various out of JFK and Roanoke VA

Three legendary aircraft, the Citation, the Enstrom copter, and the Cessna 170 lastly shown flying over Roanoke VA.....   I love the Manhattan flyover every time I do it, reminds me of my one and only visit in '99 when I was working at JFK airport installing and teaching business systems at the then JFK Hilton.  On one day off, me and my business colleagues took a taxi to Manhattan, splitting the cost.  Then we went to the Art Museum on central park.  They wanted to go bar hopping, I wanted to visit the World Trade Center (little did I know back then its fate).  I got to stand atop the WTC, on a wildly windy and clear day, I could see to JFK, to Connecticut, to Jersey, all over the place on that December day in '99.  The outdoor observation deck was a gathering of nations, accents from all over the place surrounded me, I took a snapshot of a British family and they returned the favor taking my snapshot, although I hated the pic with my freezing red face from the wind chill, and my wind blown hair. 

I was a nervous Nellie as I descended into the WTC's subterranean Mall to catch the "A" train back towards JFK, though it did not go all the way.  I had thought of all the iconic subway movies, including the seldom remembered movie of the week "Short Walk to Daylight", about an earthquake hitting Manhattan.  But I made it back to the hotel I was working at (where I met Alan Alda, he stayed there, along with the Jet Blue trainees).  I did not bug Alan Alda but enjoyed listening to him talking as he ate dinner near me, I moreover enjoyed the friendship of the Jet Blue Trainees--the airline was just getting ready to launch.  We'd drink together, laugh together, they knew I was a frequent flyer and aviation buff.   The pilots mingled easily and non arrogantly with the rest of the flight crew trainees.  I knew from their vibe and warm companionship, because they knew my two colleagues had to go home to prepare for a Y2K conversion since the Hilton paid for me to spend additional training time there, that their airline launch would be a great success.  And I am so so glad they saved the TWA terminal which I had gone thru on a couple of trips to Europe, it was so beautifully designed.

A week later I was on the opposite coast with just a Christmas day stopover to visit my wife and newborn daughter in Phoenix.  I did the Y2K conversion of a Best Western in Seattle (although I had proven during testing of the system I replaced that it was Y2K compliant, but we wanted our clients to be on Windows based systems back then).  It was the Y2K conversions that trained me to be a Windows LAN/WAN installer, which helped my later career when I wanted less travel, since I could travel 40-45 weeks out of the year from 93 to early 2000.  My daughter as she approached eighteen got to go atop the new WTC, I remember the early designs for it and I like the design that resulted from the architectural studies, especially because upper Manhattan now has tall towers, the new WTC has not been out landmarked by them, even though they are taller.

John