Walking up Riverside Park today, I looked up at the sky as I always do. There's always stuff to see, whether it's clouds or just the blue of the sky. Today there were birds, and an airplane, and a temporary UFO.
Temporary, because after half a block I could tell it wasn't flying, just hovering. Too small and too close for a helicopter and totally the wrong shape for that - the right colors for a seagull but again, wrong shape. Then it moved a bit, and I could see it against objects and buildings and not just the sky, and that's when perspective set in and I realized I was looking at a drone. Coming down just off 79th street and West End Avenue, down into the street. Into the park. With the light to cross the street turning green.
So I set out to meet the pilot.
A very charming fellow, the kind who reminds me - and I should declare it here to remember - that I need business cards with my contact info for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is letting strange men I randomly talk to in public parks come find me later. He'd been a little confused over why I was headed right his way, especially after spotting his drone from a couple of blocks away, but softened up when I explained I was more curious than anything else.
I didn't know drones had such good GPS they can't take off on the Eastern side of Central Park because that's within five miles of one of the big airports, and he didn't know who Frederick Olmsted was, so we each got to be one of today's lucky ten thousand. We talked about the applications of drone photography, how he doesn't know his drone's name yet but he knows he's got a girl, how to narrow down UFOs into IFOs, and we soon went our separate ways, both of us crunching through the snow. I didn't get his name and he didn't get mine, but we had a good few minutes together just the same.
Temporary, because after half a block I could tell it wasn't flying, just hovering. Too small and too close for a helicopter and totally the wrong shape for that - the right colors for a seagull but again, wrong shape. Then it moved a bit, and I could see it against objects and buildings and not just the sky, and that's when perspective set in and I realized I was looking at a drone. Coming down just off 79th street and West End Avenue, down into the street. Into the park. With the light to cross the street turning green.
So I set out to meet the pilot.
A very charming fellow, the kind who reminds me - and I should declare it here to remember - that I need business cards with my contact info for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is letting strange men I randomly talk to in public parks come find me later. He'd been a little confused over why I was headed right his way, especially after spotting his drone from a couple of blocks away, but softened up when I explained I was more curious than anything else.
I didn't know drones had such good GPS they can't take off on the Eastern side of Central Park because that's within five miles of one of the big airports, and he didn't know who Frederick Olmsted was, so we each got to be one of today's lucky ten thousand. We talked about the applications of drone photography, how he doesn't know his drone's name yet but he knows he's got a girl, how to narrow down UFOs into IFOs, and we soon went our separate ways, both of us crunching through the snow. I didn't get his name and he didn't get mine, but we had a good few minutes together just the same.
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