I gather too much “content.” Photos and hastily scribbled notes. What to do with it all? Here are some bits and pieces from my latest trip:

New York City

iPhones: most of the people I hung out with were doing everything on their iPhones. Calendar, directions, mail. I upped my data plan and am starting to use it more. One thing I’m working on is talking into the phone and having it come out as text. Rather than using MacSpeech Dictate (with headset speaker) as I do on my MacPro in the office, I open up the mail program on the phone, open “new message,” hit the microphone icon at lower left, talk into phone and then email it to myself and voila! words into text.

Subway I’m now riding the subway all over. I get a $20 metro card. Watched a big rat run down the tracks in one station. There’s no graffiti on the subway trains these days.

Rum drinks at Caracas Restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: “Dark & Stormy” with dark rum, ginger beer, sugar cane syrup; the “Morning After Mardi Gras”: rum, coffee, hot milk, vanilla, sugar cane syrup. Good rums: Pampero Anniversario, Zacapa

NYC Bike Program You see racks of the blue bikes everywhere. This is a big deal. Aimed at cutting down cars. You pay an annual fee, pick bike up, drop it off at destination.

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It’s been over 90 degrees the past few days. Last night, after leaving the convention center, I had dinner at The Chop Shop, right near the High Line (on 10th Ave/25th St.), excellent sort of Asian fusion food, caught a cab cross-town to the 34th street East River Ferry, a surprisingly fast (and funky) ferry; the skipper was a cowboy, he’d roar into each dock, then reverse the props, and gently bump up to the landing gangplank.

   It was cool out on the river, a novel way to get to Brooklyn. I walked through Williamsburg to FADA, a French bistro and listened to 2 sets by the Baby Soda Jazz Band as they went through ’20s-’30s songs like Darktown Strutters Ball, Marie, I’ll See You in My Dreams, and the like. This is a great little band. The entire street wall of the place was open to the street and people walking by would either start dancing, or otherwise move to the music.

   In spite of the fact that Williamsburg has been “discovered,” I like it a lot. Great place to wander and explore. I’m told that Bushwick is now what Williamsburg was 10 years ago.

The city has just enacted a huge bike system. You pay $95 a year (or $25 for a week) and pick up and drop off these bikes all over the city.

“NYC Launches Largest Bike Share Program in the Nation — The privately funded Citi Bike bike-share program is launching with 6,000 bikes at 330 docking stations in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn” Click here.

After the dryness of California, the greenness of New York is vivid. Flying in, everything looked so green. Weather perfect here. The park was — voluptuous, if you will. What an incredible park. The bridges, stonework, lakes slabs of granite, green meadows. Half the city must have been there. Here’s the memorial to John.

And am I excited! Born and raised in San Francisco, the most beautiful city in the US, but, but…it never fails when the cab crosses the river and we enter Manhattan, my pulse kicks up a few notches. I like to take the red eye, can never can sleep on an airplane anyway, get in to the hotel around 8AM. Half the time a room will be available, but if not, I check my backpack suitcase (Rick Steve’s model that fits easily in overhead bin — I’m never checking baggage on a flight again — got my gear stripped down) and hit the streets. Years ago I discovered that if I go for a run in the park, after about 45 minutes and sweating, the jet lag is side-stepped. I stay up until that night — no naps –and voila, I’m on NYC time.

   I’ve probably been to NYC 50 times, used to go at least twice a year when Random House was our distributor. Hotels of note over the years: Gramercy Park Hotel in the ’70s; then for some years, the Pickwick Arms, in east ’60s, around the corner from Random with very small cheap (like $60) rooms. It’s been redone as the iPod or something. Then the Mayflower at the southwest corner of the park (my fave part of park), wonderful hotel, big rooms, European feel, good restaurant.

   I hit the streets with zest. All the years of running training have given me manuevearble street skills. Watch the traffic, not the lights, I tell my kids. In my fanny pack, a camera, notebook, pen, phone, glasses, magnifying glass, etc. Last week I was walking around in the Valencia district in SF with friends, a great part of the city nowadays, but it seemed bleak in comparison with, say, the Village, with its trees and density of people and shops and restaurants.

   Now as Hank Williams is singing Hey Good Lookin and it’s a windy clear day, I’m getting ready to go.

  Watch for dispatches from NYC next week.

Hey, Good Lookin' by Hank Williams on Grooveshark