Fire Island
01 September 2002
It's Labor Day here which is the long weekend which marks the end of Summer. Fortunately for us the best weather of the year in San Francisco is during the month following Labor Day which I guess is technically "Fall" here. We had three very hot and sunny days for the long weekend and spent some of the time outdoors, though we've both had plenty of sun in the past month.
At the start of August we went to stay for a week on Fire Island with friends we had met back in January, Bruce and Billy. Fire Island is a 35 mile long sand-spit off the coast of Long Island in New York State. This picture shows how narrow the island is in parts. It was taken from the roof of the house and looks along the island towards The Pines. It was a 90 minute train ride and short ferry trip from Penn Station in downtown Manhattan, though our journey took a little longer as after the overnight plane trip from San Francisco we didn't try to make all the connections "tight", instead having breakfast in New York and lunch in Sayville where the ferry terminal is.
We stayed in the small community called "Water Island" which is a collection of about 40 houses with access only by boat from Long Island and then on foot along wooden boardwalks between the houses. Walking on the sand is prohibited except on the beach in an effort to keep the dunes as stable as possible. The weekend we arrived was the "Pines Party", an annual party held at The Pines which is the next community along the island from Water Island. It was about 40 minutes walk or about ten minutes in Bruce and Billy's boat.
The Pines Party and the following week during which we spent quite a lot of time at The Pines were a lot of fun. We met a lot of people we knew from elsewhere in the US, particularly those from New York as Fire Island is a sought-after Summer holiday destination. The Pines was very busy; there are about 600 houses there and almost no hotel or other overnight accommodation so almost everyone staying there was either a homeowner or sharing the rental of a house for the Summer or was a houseguest.
Access to The Pines is also only by ferry and then on foot, but there were a few shops and restaurants and a gym there. It was also very busy, but the equipment was somewhat antique.
Here I am with Billy at the gym. It was warm and fairly humid both day and night, so not a lot of shirts were worn on the island.
From Fire Island we returned to Manhattan where of course we ran into people we knew from San Francisco in the street (Michael, Richard and Alfredo). We stayed two nights with friends in Chelsea, Jake and Mark, and took the opportunity to look at the site of the World Trade Center:
Here Robert and Jake are standing in front of the hole and building site which is the former World Trade Center. The crowds wanting to view the site had dwindled in the months since the attack and we did not need tickets to get to the viewing area. The picture does not really convey the size of the hole; it's only about six storeys deep but covers a large area.
We arrived back in San Francisco just in time to visit the Russian River, an area North of the city where friends, Gina and Erika, had invited us to come with them to Guerneville for the day. It was a very pleasant end to a week's holiday.
Unfortunately the return to work was not so pleasant. I discovered that my visa renewal had been further delayed, meaning I could not visit Australia as planned at the end of August. The next viable dates are the last week of October and first week of November, so that is the current plan.
I had to go to San Diego the following weekend for the World Congress on Pain where I was a coauthor of some research being presented in the poster displays. The weather was overcast so I actually spent most of the time at the conference and learned a few things about chronic pain. I also bumped into David Scott from St Vincent's in Melbourne; it was good to see a familiar face in a conference where I knew almost no one.
Robert's return to work was also unpleasant. There is considerable uncertainty about the future of the San Francisco office of the company he is working for as things are very tough in the tech industry here. He has survived several rounds of layoffs, but each time the axe has swung a little closer. Because of the nature of the work visas we are here on, if he finishes work he has to leave the US, so we are having to do what we can to make contingency plans. I find this uncertainty very upsetting, so I hope things will be sorted out within the next few weeks. On the up-side he passed the latest semester of his Master's.
I know the pictures I send give the impression we're doing no work at all, but it's because I try to focus on the fun and interesting parts. To show I do some work the rest of the time, here is a clipping from the Anesthesia newsletter showing a selection of the foreigners in the department. Incidentally I am wearing exactly the same shirt and (Robert's) tie as in the photo on my home page from the St Vincent's Anaesthesia Department dinner in January 1999. One wonderful thing about coming to another country is that no one has seen your old clothes.
We did some other useful work last weekend: helping our friend Terry move his furniture to his new apartment. Fortunately people in San Francisco only seem to move a couple of blocks, so the process was relatively quick.
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At the start of August we went to stay for a week on Fire Island with friends we had met back in January, Bruce and Billy. Fire Island is a 35 mile long sand-spit off the coast of Long Island in New York State. This picture shows how narrow the island is in parts. It was taken from the roof of the house and looks along the island towards The Pines. It was a 90 minute train ride and short ferry trip from Penn Station in downtown Manhattan, though our journey took a little longer as after the overnight plane trip from San Francisco we didn't try to make all the connections "tight", instead having breakfast in New York and lunch in Sayville where the ferry terminal is.
We stayed in the small community called "Water Island" which is a collection of about 40 houses with access only by boat from Long Island and then on foot along wooden boardwalks between the houses. Walking on the sand is prohibited except on the beach in an effort to keep the dunes as stable as possible. The weekend we arrived was the "Pines Party", an annual party held at The Pines which is the next community along the island from Water Island. It was about 40 minutes walk or about ten minutes in Bruce and Billy's boat.
The Pines Party and the following week during which we spent quite a lot of time at The Pines were a lot of fun. We met a lot of people we knew from elsewhere in the US, particularly those from New York as Fire Island is a sought-after Summer holiday destination. The Pines was very busy; there are about 600 houses there and almost no hotel or other overnight accommodation so almost everyone staying there was either a homeowner or sharing the rental of a house for the Summer or was a houseguest.
Access to The Pines is also only by ferry and then on foot, but there were a few shops and restaurants and a gym there. It was also very busy, but the equipment was somewhat antique.
Here I am with Billy at the gym. It was warm and fairly humid both day and night, so not a lot of shirts were worn on the island.
From Fire Island we returned to Manhattan where of course we ran into people we knew from San Francisco in the street (Michael, Richard and Alfredo). We stayed two nights with friends in Chelsea, Jake and Mark, and took the opportunity to look at the site of the World Trade Center:
Here Robert and Jake are standing in front of the hole and building site which is the former World Trade Center. The crowds wanting to view the site had dwindled in the months since the attack and we did not need tickets to get to the viewing area. The picture does not really convey the size of the hole; it's only about six storeys deep but covers a large area.
We arrived back in San Francisco just in time to visit the Russian River, an area North of the city where friends, Gina and Erika, had invited us to come with them to Guerneville for the day. It was a very pleasant end to a week's holiday.
Unfortunately the return to work was not so pleasant. I discovered that my visa renewal had been further delayed, meaning I could not visit Australia as planned at the end of August. The next viable dates are the last week of October and first week of November, so that is the current plan.
I had to go to San Diego the following weekend for the World Congress on Pain where I was a coauthor of some research being presented in the poster displays. The weather was overcast so I actually spent most of the time at the conference and learned a few things about chronic pain. I also bumped into David Scott from St Vincent's in Melbourne; it was good to see a familiar face in a conference where I knew almost no one.
Robert's return to work was also unpleasant. There is considerable uncertainty about the future of the San Francisco office of the company he is working for as things are very tough in the tech industry here. He has survived several rounds of layoffs, but each time the axe has swung a little closer. Because of the nature of the work visas we are here on, if he finishes work he has to leave the US, so we are having to do what we can to make contingency plans. I find this uncertainty very upsetting, so I hope things will be sorted out within the next few weeks. On the up-side he passed the latest semester of his Master's.
I know the pictures I send give the impression we're doing no work at all, but it's because I try to focus on the fun and interesting parts. To show I do some work the rest of the time, here is a clipping from the Anesthesia newsletter showing a selection of the foreigners in the department. Incidentally I am wearing exactly the same shirt and (Robert's) tie as in the photo on my home page from the St Vincent's Anaesthesia Department dinner in January 1999. One wonderful thing about coming to another country is that no one has seen your old clothes.
We did some other useful work last weekend: helping our friend Terry move his furniture to his new apartment. Fortunately people in San Francisco only seem to move a couple of blocks, so the process was relatively quick.
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