My wakeup call came at 4:53 a.m. in the form of a car alarm. The brothers both slept right through it, but I'd been mostly asleep since around 9 p.m. I say mostly because Karl came home from his gig and noodled around on the guitar, which woke me up but only for a short time. When you've been up for 24 hours, it doesn't take long to go back to sleep. Anyway, I was caught up when 5 a.m. rolled around.
Then there's the problem: What do you do when you're awake at that hour and it's too early to wake everyone else up? Especially if you're in a New York studio apartment? The answer is, you look through the books on the shelf, you watch the sky lighten outside, you take a shower. I haven't been this far north in a long time, so it's strange to see the sky already lightening at 5 a.m. The view from Karl's apartment is nothing like what I'd expected: There's a forested hillside across the street. The northern end of Manhattan is surprisingly green.
I woke them up at 7:30 and then after a while, we went out for breakfast, then took a stroll down to Inwood Hill Park. It's a really pretty day, but already starting to get warm. We watched kids playing Little League baseball, people playing tennis, walking their dogs or just walking or jogging along the paths. Very calming.
Now we're getting ready to head off to Yankee Stadium for today's game...
