Photo of the Day: Late Summer, Riverside Park, NYC

Stretching four miles from 72^nd Street to 158^th Street, Riverside Park is a welcome oasis from the worst of New York’s heat and humidity. But I have to admit that, when I first encountered it more than four decades ago, much of its verdant loveliness was lost on me.

What I felt, when I took a jogging course called “Fitness and You” as a Columbia University undergrad freshman, was misery.

It was the third class, when we ran a 2½-mile loop in the park, that nearly did me in. More specifically, it was the hills leading from Riverside Drive to the Hudson River shoreline below.

It didn’t help to hear our instructor scream “Charge up that hill!” to me and a couple of other laggards.

So three weeks ago, when I found myself back on Morningside Heights to meet school friends, I basked in the sun and breathed in the fresh air of the park. But I was far more inclined to join the couple on the bench in this photo I took than the fellow maintaining his conditioning.

Photo of the Day: Joggers, Onassis Reservoir, Central Park

I took the attached image three years ago this week. I had not been aware of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir from my prior park visits in the 1980s, so I was pleasantly surprised by its beauty. 

As I recall, the general atmosphere in New York’s Central Park was not as sticky as it was today.The lack of awful humidity made the runners’ exercise seemingly more bearable. Still, looking at this picture now—and remembering the individuals I saw back then—the term “mortification of the flesh” does spring to mind.

Photo of the Day: Fall Flashback, Dupont Circle, DC

I guess the jogger in his shorts is a dead giveaway that this photo wasn’t taken since Storm Jonas hit Washington last weekend. Instead, I took it in the third week of November, when I was on vacation in our nation’s capital, staying in the picturesque neighborhood of Dupont Circle.  Certainly in mid-afternoon when I snapped this, the temperatures were, by comparison with now, balmy.

Photo of the Day: Joggers and Skyscrapers, NYC

Yet another in a series of photos I took this past Saturday, on West Street in  New York—in this case, looking south, on the esplanade along the Hudson River.

Quote of the Day (Comic Liz Miele, on Marathons)

“I run marathons. I’m not bragging when I say that, because I’m not good at them. I’m actually still finishing the last one.”—Stand-up comic Liz Miele, “Joke of the Week,” in Time Out New York, October 9-15, 2014

(Take a look at the date when this issue came out--nearly a year after the 2013 New York Marathon!)