Ice Station Debra
Dave meets up with an old flame in New York but his visit coincides with the city’s coldest weather for a century. No wonder so many of them drive Land Rovers…
Life for me has never quite been the same since last summer when Debra, an old girlfriend, used the power of the internet to get back in touch – 34 years after we had last spoken. Making up for the lost years has been complicated by the fact that we live 3500 miles apart, but Debbie spent a week with me in the UK in October and now it was my turn to visit her in New York.
Over the years I’ve travelled to many countries around the world, including America, but had never been to the Big Apple. However, it has never been far from my thoughts since 1983, when Debbie returned to her native city. I thought of her and smiled when the Pogues and Kirsty Maccoll topped the UK singles chart in 1988 with Fairytale of New York; then thought of her and despaired as the tragedy of 9-11 unfolded. Had she been in the twin towers on that shocking day? I thought I’d never know. It wasn’t until August last year that I learned she had worked in the World Trade Centre, but wasn’t there on that day.
But now I was about to experience New York for the first time. I flew out early on Christmas morning – would this be a fairy tale of our own? I’d have over two weeks to find out.
It was 10.00 am when I eventually emerged from the arrivals hall at JFK Airport. A beaming Debbie was there to greet me and drive me to her apartment on the east side of Manhattan, in a Toyota she had borrowed from a friend. Living in the middle of the biggest city in America, she didn’t bother owning a car of her own. When she visited me in October, she had been bemused by the fact that I owned two Land Rovers.
“Why would anybody want two cars?” she’d asked. “You can never have too many Land Rovers,” was my retort.
Now I wondered how I’d cope without any at all for 18 days. I needn’t have worried, because everywhere I looked there were Land Rovers – or, to be precise, Range Rovers. As it was Christmas morning, the freeway and streets were quiet, but on the 30-minute drive from the airport I spotted plenty of full-fat L405 and L322 models as well as Sports and Evoques. They were outnumbered by Jeeps, by only just.
“I don’t understand why people living in cities drive big 4x4s,” said Debbie.
“Maybe they’re expecting some bad weather,” I joked. “There’s no better car for getting through deep snow drifts.”
It was a joke that was to come back and haunt me. Back in Debbie’s apartment, we switched on the TV and the weather girl warned that New York was about to experience its coldest weather for years, with temperature expected to drop down to zero degrees Fahrenheit in the next few days. Americans still use the Fahrenheit scale that the UK dropped a few years back to march in tune with the rest of Europe. But I did a quick calculation and discovered that 0 deg F was minus-18 deg C! That’s the same temperature as a domestic deep freezer.
To cut a long story short, the temperatures actually dipped even lower than that and the cold snap – the longest and most severe experienced in New York for over a century – continued until the day before I departed, on January 10! I have never experienced cold like it, especially on the windy days when the wind chill factor made it feel even colder. The Hudson and East Rivers, which are
saltwater, actually froze.
Yet, wrapped up in as many layers of clothes as we could muster, we went out and had great fun. Every trip was an adventure and there were plenty of cosy bars to drop into to thaw out. We spent New Year’s Eve in one of Debbie’s friend’s apartments, overlooking the East River and its ice floes.
A week later, when a huge blizzard swept down the east coast of America, the deep snow drifts accumulated faster than the city’s army of gritters and snow ploughs could cope. New York ground to a halt, schools were closed and motorists were warned to keep off the streets. Even JFK Airport was closed for more than 24 hours.
This was when we had the most fun of all. As most of New York huddled in their apartments, Debbie and I explored the near-deserted streets. It was hard work trudging through the deep snow, but a great way of seeing some of the most iconic sights in a very different light. Unfortunately, the 102-storey Empire State Building wasn’t to be one of them. The blizzard was so dense that it was impossible to see more than a vague outline of the world’s most famous skyscraper – built in 1931 and the world’s tallest building until the North Tower of the ill-fated World Trade Centre was completed in late 1970.
Ironically, my best view of the Empire State Building – as well as the Statue of Liberty, the Chrysler Building, the Brooklyn Bridge and every other iconic structure in this great city, came a few days later, from the observation platform at the top of the Freedom Tower (aka the One World Trade Centre), which was built in 2012 adjacent to Ground Zero, when the twin towers had stood until September 2001.
During the snow, there were even more Range Rovers out on the streets – outnumbered only by the snow ploughs, which struggled to open up the city’s road network to ordinary cars. Even the familiar yellow taxi cabs were all but absent.
As well as Range Rovers, I spotted several Discovery 3 and 4 models, and just a couple of Discovery 2s. Freelander 2s were also relatively common, but sadly I didn’t spot a single Defender or Series Land Rover.
New Yorkers certainly enjoy their bling, as evidenced by the number of aftermarket versions. The most distinctive was a stretch Range Rover I spotted on a side street. I was busy taking photos when its very large black driver emerged, towered over me and asked me what I was doing. “I’m an English Land Rover, fan,” I grinned ingratiatingly before beating a hasty retreat through the snow.
There wasn’t any vehicle in sight at all as we crossed a snow-covered Central Park, which looked surreal under its unaccustomed white blanket, but in the streets outside the Dakota Building, where the great John Lennon was gunned down by a nutter in 1980, there were again plenty of Range Rovers parked up. I wonder if one of them was Yoko’s?
They say pictures can tell a thousand words, so hopefully the images on these pages will help sum up my New York experience. Fingers crossed, Debbie will be back to visit me in the spring… when I hope it will be a bit warmer.