When I was asked where I wanted to live, if money and visas were no object, I had two places in mind, Sydney or New York. I have been to New York three times. Once in my late teens when I stayed on Times Square in a wonderful hotel with my best mate from school. We staggered around Manhattan, our jaws scraping the sidewalk in awe of the incredible people, buildings, cultural references and settings straight out of our television. I was amazed by the scale, the sights, the smell and the deafening 24 hour noise - sirens, horns, shouting in various tongues and rattling air conditioning units. I loved every minute of it. It was like living in a Scorcese movie. I kept expecting de Niro to walk round the corner.
I went back when my dad retired and took the whole family. I loved it again and saw lots of new sights. I returned for a third time in 2004 to coach field hockey for a few weeks at a high school and play a few friendlies with the Rye Club up in the Bronx. I spent some time in Jersey City and a couple of weeks sight seeing in Manhattan. I love the city, but I don't know how anyone holds down a job. There is so much going on, work would get in the way. It's so vibrant and so full of life. My third visit was difficult as it was the only one I had made since 9/11.
One night after a narrow victory over Greenwich Field Hockey we went out to a Hungarian bar in the Bronx, on to club in Chelsea, on to a late night jazz club in the Village, where we managed to see a string of stars who had high tailed it from an awards ceremony in Queens. The crowd went wild, but none of us knew who anyone was! One of the ladies liked my accent and bought my drinks and danced with me for a while. I have absolutely no idea who she was. She thought I was a European ice hockey star, so I didn't want to disappoint her. Drink and tiredness got the better of me and before I could say goodbye I was whisked down a steep flight of stairs by my team mates and into the fresh air. We purloined one of the stretch limos that had just dropped more stars off. The driver said he had finished his shift, but seeing as he was Irish (he looked more Nigerian!) he would drive us back to Jersey and stop off to get more drinks for us at a Korean drugstore, if we didn't mind the untidyness in the limo. The entire team piled into the back and out of the sunroof. It was now going on for 4 in the morning, but we soon livened up when the champagne came out. Our new driver friend took us up 5th Avenue, showed us the Empire State Building, Wall Street, Mayor Gulliani's offices and then pulled up at a large fence with a bull statue and informed us that this was Ground Zero. There were large arch lights and flowers and pictures of lost loved ones pinned to the fence. I sobered up immediately. Some of the guys wanted their photo taken on top of the bull. I felt very uncomfortable and wanted to leave immediately. I don't know why I had developed such a bond with the city.
Several months later, I was at home in Belfast and was flicking through the channels when a documentary came on about volcanoes and Gran Canaria came up. I had just come back from Gran Canraia on holiday with a group of friends and had climbed Cumbre Vieja and was astounded at its scale. What came next in the documentary sent a chill up my spine. I was aware that Cumbre Vieja was dormant, but not extinct..... It appears that the Canary Islands, off the north west coast of Africa were formed after siesmic shifts and volcanic eruptions created the islands. A scientist was talking about stratovolcanoes and the prediction of mega tsunami. The scientist had lots of letters after his name as well as being a Professor of something I couldn't understand. He was explaining his model following the generation of mega tsunami from massive flank collapses of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma and of the volcano of Kilauea, on the island of Hawaii. The Professor speculated as to whether the volcanoes at La Palma and Kilauea would erupt, destroying the islands, causing the entire landmass to fall into the ocean, if this were to occur in the near future and whether they could generate mega tsunamis. They would and the enormous tidal waves created would travel across the Atlantic at tremendous speed and slam into the Carribean and up to 20 kilometres inland on the East Coast if America. AND THERE'S NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT.
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