I  just spend 4 days and 3 long nights with my family in New York and I lived to write about it. We stayed at Le Parker Meridien on 57th Street and 5th Avenue and the entire family including the 8 year old woke up at 4AM to the garbage being picked up, for hours.

Garbage pickup in Manhattan is based on Nietzsche's idea of eternal return - the idea that the universe and all the events therein have all happened before, and will continue to recur ad infinitum. The author Milan Kundera of "Unbearable Lightness of Being" calls this re-occurrence "heaviness." In the area we were staying the garbage was picked up every night starting at 4AM and lasted until 7AM. It seemed that garbage trucks were picking up large garbage bins and slamming them down on the ground that created some of the loudest bangs we had ever heard. With 8 million people stuck on a little island the process continues ad infinitum. Any illusions that we had about living in the city were all but erased in this trip.

We took the kids to Central Park so they can play in the play grounds. When we were walking inside the park our 8th year old commented "This Park is just like our bike trail in Ashburn." Right there and then we realized how lucky we are to live in Loudoun County with its wide roads, natural beauty, relative safety and cleanliness. And the few playgrounds that millions of kids need to share in Manhattan, we have more of them just in our backyard. Good to be back.