Gust-busted

Anatomy of a Gust-Buster umbrella

It started out innocently enough. CZ's classes at the tutoring center are on break, and the afternoon was rainy, so we took the opportunity to go to the American Museum of Natural History, where we saw the Silk Road Exhibit and watched an IMAX movie about the Great Lakes. But CZ didn't want to put my umbrella in her bag because it might get her book wet.

After the museum we ducked into an excellent nearby coffee shop, Joe, that I'd recently read about in the NY Times. It was a perfect afternoon for coffee, since we were cold and damp. I had a macchiato and CZ a latte, both with excellent steamed milk. We nabbed a 12" x 18" table, one of seven in the tiny shop. There were two people working on laptops, both Macs. A pale young man in huge blue-tinted glasses was talking with a girl whose T-shirt dress stuck out from her leather jacket at random angles. The shop was somewhat hip for the Upper West Side, but that doesn't describe us. We just like good coffee.

The wind picked up during the night. We could hear it rattling the cables against the sides of buildings and sending rain splattering loudly against the windows. CZ and I independently heard the roof deck furniture collapsing upstairs in the middle of the night. At one point the wind sounded exactly like an angry cat.

It was really a better day to spend inside reading, but we didn't. When Bob and I went to meet CZ for lunch at the music school as usual, he had the idea to go watch a nearby criterium race. (A bike race that repeats a short course.) Bob and CZ both convinced me to go, but I noticed that CZ conveniently had to go back to school after two laps. Bob and I stayed until the finish. As the wind was blowing sideways, we were soaked and cold, despite umbrellas, baseball caps, and hooded raincoats. We were the only spectators who didn't know someone in the race, I think. But I did enjoy watching the exciting finish in which two riders on a breakaway battled it out for the lead.

As we crossed Riverside Drive to head home, a strong* gust hit us head on. It tore off Bob's beloved Oregon cap and sent it sailing back across the street. I grabbed my own cap, which was coming off, and instinctively turned around. As I turned, the wind caught my umbrella and I found myself running back across the street toward the park involuntarily. "Wow," I remember thinking as I tried to put some drag on the umbrella, "I really don't think I can stop!"

I finally did stop, because I hit a waist-high metal railing, the umbrella wrapped around it, and I bent over the umbrella. I looked up to see Bob stomp on his now-muddy hat to keep it from disappearing over the park wall. Then I looked down to see my ventilated Gust-Buster umbrella, veteran of many Manhattan nor'easters, inverted, its metal spokes twisted and torn, and the shaft bent at a forty-five degree angle. Busted. We finally limped to a Broadway bus, and I spent the ride home trying to unbend the shaft enough to get the umbrella closed, much to the amusement of the only other passenger on the back of the bus. The umbrella didn't want to stay closed, and the windows were so fogged up that we missed our stop.

Now I was umbrella-less, which was just as well because this weather was beyond umbrellas. I stuck our jeans into the dryer, jammed my scraggly hair into a ponytail holder, and we went back out for CZ's studio recital. After the class, Bob wanted to go out to dinner, but not right away. So we went home, then back out to our neighborhood Indian restaurant, which turned out to be closed for a party. By this time it was pouring, so we ducked into the Thai restaurant next door, ordered something hot (in both senses), and amusedly watched dozens of people try to cross Broadway without getting their umbrellas ripped apart. Unsuccessfully.

I only wish I had a photo of all the splintered umbrellas that sprouted from every corner trash-can in the city this morning! At dinner we had estimated one umbrella per can, with four cans per corner, all over Manhattan. We underestimated. This morning we easily saw four per can all the way down to 64th St. That makes sixteen per corner, multiplied by ten-plus avenues and about 130 blocks before Manhattan begins to narrow to the north...that's a whole lot of mangled umbrellas!

Some streets had five or so umbrellas in the gutters between the trashcans. There were single spokes in the middle of intersections, drowned in puddles of water, no evidence of a shaft in sight. Some umbrellas were in two parts, shaft on one side of a tree, spokes on the other. Some looked like long-dead spiders you sweep out of corners in the spring, supine with their legs curled in. Usually the cloth was at least partly ripped from the spokes. We began to look with wonder on any New Yorker who still possessed a whole umbrella.

It's still raining, and there's more rain predicted for tomorrow. I think I will stay in. And call Gust-Buster. They claim to fix their umbrellas for free!

*Bob and I estimated that the gust was at least 60 mph. Since Gust-Buster umbrellas are tested to withstand up to 55 mph, we must have guessed right.