HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HEIDI

MY SOULMATE OF MORE THAN A THIRD OF A CENTURY

Heidi Johnson-Wright entered this world on September 11, 1964.

I’m posting this the next day for two reasons – I was on the road yesterday and my Sunday posts get the highest readership.

I could write so many things, but this online birthday card will focus on my love of travel and how I never would have made it to New York, Los Angeles or Chicago – let alone vast parts of South and Central America, Mexico, Turkey, France, Italy, Morocco, the U.K. or Egypt without her encouragement.

We were born hillbillies, or at least I was. A station wagon trip through the Smoky Mountains was as exotic as jet setting to Paris in my family.

Heidi set the tone with our honeymoon – the Wrights took Manhattan.

Yes, we stayed in a bland and gigantic chain hotel in Midtown and went to Cats (we love felines, but the Broadway play was pretty darn safe and tourist-friendly).

We returned another time to the Drake, a legend – also in Midtown – as a residence of many an old-time performer and the Swissotel where Donahue put his guests up back in the day. It was torn down for a super tall tower for billionaires.

We found out about Affinia Gardens, a residential hotel with a full, albeit shabby, kitchen and amazing wheelchair access. The room was on the ground floor, so no relying on an elevator for full access to our suite. We lived like to residents of the Central Park area.

Our shabbiest visit was to the famed Chelsea Hotel. We were checked in by legendary manager Stanley Bard and bedded down in a careworn room among the art and artists.

A friend told us about the most-loved (but not most expensive or famous) hotel in all of Manhattan. The late, great Wyndham. Not to be confused with the chain of the same name.

For decades, a husband-and-wife team ran the Wyndham more like an apartment building. Countless A-list celebrities lived there year-round or for months. We spotted a few, as we rode an elevator so old it had an elevator operator. The location was footsteps from the Plaza, but with prices we could afford and no pretension.

We stayed in Chelsea a few more times, near the developing High Line. And we slept at a gilded Midtown palace once – getting a free upgrade because the lower priced sister property near Grammercy had a ramp so steep to the lobby that entering the proper was a disaster waiting to happen.

Another time, we stayed way downtown at a chain property – at a deep discount – and watched crews rebuilding the ground zero site.

Along the way, we visited every museum, road the subway via the fraction of accessible stops, dined from dirty water hot dogs to Michelin starred impossible to get tables to funky Vietnamese fried fish Bahn Mi style sandwiches from a parking garage.

We were going to celebrate Heidi’s 57th in New York for a week.  Booked it in June when it looked like COVID would be under control. But the traveling Wrights will have to wait another year to fly safely.

Happy Birthday, Heidi, my love.