Leaving San Francisco at dawn (above) looks exactly the same as arriving in New York at dusk (below). Airports everywhere represent the same murky no-man's land, of course, and this is why a day of travel like today feels like a day pulled out of time and subtracted from one's life with nothing to show for it.
An enterprising young Town Car driver intercepted me at JFK and wooed me into his big black vehicle for the preternaturally smooth drive from Queens into Manhattan. He charged me about the same as I expected to pay for a cab, but it felt very East Coast to arrive at the old stone hotel on W. 79th at Amsterdam in a shiny oversized monstrosity, with doormen hopping off the curb to open my door and gather my luggage before the car had even come all the way to a stop.