Walking along the Hudson

I met a friend for a walk along the Hudson today north of Sleepy Hollow. Weather was still cloudy and cool but it was not raining. We have known each other for years – she is a urologist as well and we reflected on our experiences over the years as the only woman in the room with urology colleagues and pondered how our lives might have been different if we had chosen a specialty other than urology. I can’t actually imagine myself in any other specialty. I am still fascinated by the bladder and what we demand of it.

From the 6 mile walk I drove a short distance to have lunch with a Pfizer colleague who is still with Pfizer. It was a lovely meal with his wife and daughter. His wife is a hospital nutritionist who worked through the Covid crisis in Westchester County. She indicated the hospital went from having 100 beds dedicated to Covid patients to one or two beds occupied with Covid cases. His daughter was in middle school and indicated she adapted reasonably quickly to the remote learning a year ago and feels like she learned well. She has been back in school 5 days per week for the past 2 months. This school is having class size no larger than 15 and they stay in the same group all day with the teachers rotating to the classrooms. Students have the option for remote learning which is how they have been able to maintain smaller class sizes for those returning to school

The day ended with the sunshine and rather than cycling as I intended, I met my friend from Pfizer on the upper west side. I found a parking place on the street that I could drive straight into. Score – I did not have to try to parallel park under pressure. We took a lovely walk in Riverside Park. He worked in Labor and Delivery last June and July and is still impacted by all that he saw in the hospitals last year during Covid. While I had hoped to cycle today, it just got too complicated with the time compressed to late this afternoon. We would not have been able to have as much conversation as we did walking. As much as I wanted to cycle in NYC I am glad we had enough time to catch up.

There seemed to be less people masked on the sidewalks today than Friday. I hope that cases and deaths will remain low as the masks come off.

Off to Sag Harbor tomorrow.