Sunday, 14 Sept '08
I slept for twelve hours, due in no small part to not getting much sleep the last two days. One strange thing is that I slept like a baby, whereas at home I wake up many times during the day. No doubt that was due in part to not having Max around, but it seems like there is something else involved. Maybe that I actually slept during the night, when people are supposed to sleep?
As soon as we got up Chris and I headed downtown to find a store where he could buy some pants. For some reason he only brought one pair with him. While wandering around looking for a suitable establishment, we stopped for breakfast at McDonalds. It wasn't your typical midwestern McDonalds, that's for sure. It must have been in a not-so-nice neighborhood. I say this because the only way to get behind the counter, which was walled off at both ends, was by going through a security door with a punch code lock.
After we at we continued our meanderings. We walked past Madison Square Garden, where we saw lots of cops. I don't know what, if anything, was up. Nothing obvious anyway. There were a lot of bums around as well, with all their worldly possessions in plastic bags or bulging knapsacks. There were street vedors too, lots of them, selling all kinds of cheap junk: handbags, umbrellas, watched, shoes, pretty much anything you could imagine. I don't remember for sure if Chris got his pants this day or not. If he did I didn't make a note of it in my trip diary. I do remember stopping at a K-Mart, the first multi-story department store I'd been in in a good long while. The menswear area was two floors below street level, and I think there were floors above the ground floor as well.
I was surprised at the number of local markets as well. Every four or five blocks it seemed there was a little grocery store.
We had lunch at Connolly's, an Irish pub. I had bangers and mashed, while Chris had fish and chips. Bangers and mashed is just sausages with mashed potatos and gravy. A simple dish, right? At Connolly's the bangers and mashed comes 'plated', like it was some kind of gourmet meal, complete with garnishing. Continuing the trend of ethnic mismatches, although Connolly's was an Irish pub, there wasn't an Irishman (or woman) in sight. Our server's name was Masha. I thought she was German based on her accent, while Chris guessed she was eastern european.
After lunch it was back to the hotel clean up before heading back downtown to see our Broadway show. That show was 'Wicked' at the Gershwin Theatre on West 51st Street. 'Wicked' is a musical based (rather loosely) on the novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire. I knew very little about the show, other than it existed and was supposed to be very good. We were seated in the mezzanine and had an excellent view of the stage. The seats were a bit farther away than I might have preferred, but considering Chris paid $86.00 apiece for them, I wasn't going to complain.
The set was impressive, with lots of wheels and gears and levers. Quite industrial looking, and topped off by a huge mechanical dragon. Without giving away the story, 'Wicked' tells the tale of Elphaba, who would become the Wicked Witch of the West, and her college friendship with Glinda, who later became the Good Witch of the North. The songs were excellent, and often very moving. The dancing was just as good. I don't remember a single goof, anywhere. In short, a superb performance by a fine cast and crew. It was the fastest three and a half hours of my life, and I gave serious thought to seeing it again before we left. Afterwards, I picked up a copy of the novel, which I read over the course of our stay.
That night we had dinner at a place called 44 SW Ristorante. I had a veal dish that was excellent. The best part, though, was watching the people passing by outside (we were seated by the windows). Typical New York bumper to bumper traffic, and lots of pedestrians. One of them was an odd fellow who seemed a bit off his rocker. He walked past us, then reappeared going the other direction, and then came back on his original heading.
Another interesting item was the deliveries. Square footage was at a premium I guess, for this place took its deliveries curbside and sent them down into the basement through a steel door covering steep, narrow stairs. Based on the number of such doors I saw during the trip (and what I saw down them if they were open), a lot of places in New York have the same problem.
After dinner we strolled around Broadway and Times Square just enjoying the fact that we were in the Big Apple, before heading back to the hotel.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
New York, Day One
Saturday, 13 Sept '08
Chris and I were roused from our beds at five a.m. by both alarm clock and wake-up call. After the usual morning preparations we were off to the airport. By the way, Chris drives like a total maniac, even in city traffic. I was in fear for my life several times during a trip that was barely two miles, if that.
I have to say that going through security is much faster and easier when you're a first class passenger. The actual process of going through the check-point takes the same amount of time, but you get to cut to the head of the line, while the plebes of coach class glare hatefully at you.
I'm making that last bit up. If the people in line that day were anything like me when I was standing in the coach line, they barely noticed us.
As breakfast was to be served on the flight, we went straight to the gate, and didn't have long to wait before boarding was announced. As you are well aware, the seats in first class are much roomier than coach seats: wider and farther apart, so you can actually be comfortable. There was one little detail that caught my eye: the seat arms all had ash trays in them. Smoking has been banned on domestic flights for at least a decade, right? If not longer? Tells you how long it's been since that jet had it's interior overhauled. I had a good view of the galley as well, which was quite interesting. It was very compact, naturally, barely the size of a closet, but it had at least two ovens, a coffee maker, several compartments whose functions I couldn't figure out (probably just storage), a counter, and two carts underneath that. I had barely got my carry-on bag stowed and myself seated when one of the stewardesses (I know, flight attendant is the PC term, but I don't remember the last time I saw a male flight attendant) came around asking if we wanted anything to drink. She served me coffee while the coach passengers were still filing through the first class cabin!
One odd thing about sitting so far foreward in a plane is the difference in the sound of the engines. It's hard to explain, but it was as if I was hearing only the sound of the big high bypass fan at the front of the engines, and maybe the whistle of the intakes, as opposed to the roar of the exhaust that you get when sitting farther aft. It was a little unsettling, to be honest. This is because I have a tendancy to try to guess what the pilot is up to based on what the engines are doing: "We're still in our climb out from take-off, why did he cut power?" and so forth.
Take-off was accomplished without difficulty, and once we reached cruising altitude, meal service began. It might be twenty years since I last had a hot meal on an airplane. Regardless, breakfast was very good. We had scrambled eggs with sausage and potatoes, fruit, and a bagel with cream cheese. The eggs and sausage were especially tasty.
By the time breakfast was over the pilot was on the intercom telling us that we were less than an hour out from the Big Apple. I would normally watch the approach with great interest, but we had a nearly solid undercast the whole way, and I only caught a few glimpses of the city as we came in.
JFK was an airport, not much to tell there. The part we were in was rather drab, actually. Baggage claim was the usual boring wait. The AirTrain, as it is known, was more entertaining. Our tickets were five or ten bucks (can't remember) and included a ride into the city on the Long Island Railroad. From the AirTrain we got a good look at the airport, and saw a lot of relics from the Silver Age of air travel (the sixties and seventies), namely the British Airways Terminal, the Delta(?) Terminal and others. Some were in the process of being demolished (the old Pan Am Terminal), while others were being built or remodelled.
I should mention that the AirTrain was packed that day, so I didn't have the best all around view, but once we got away from the airport proper the scenery changed for the worse. Still on the airport itself were large areas that seemed to be abandonded, followed by industrial/commercial areas with their typical scatterings of abandonded machines/junk, weeds, etc. When we reached residential areas things improved, but I was struck by how old all the houses were. Block after block was nothing but run down two stories in desperate need of remodelling or outright replacement. There were window air conditioners everywhere, and I couldn't help but wonder how much energy got wasted in that neighborhood alone, just because the houses weren't properly insulated.
We arrived at the end of the line for the AirTrain, the LIRR's Jamaica Station, where we transferred to a train headed into the city. It was even more crowded than the AirTrain had been. It was a fairly quick trip, maybe half an hour tops, with only one stop before the end of the line at Penn Station. Again, the scenery was interesting, mostly from a "look at how old and dingy everything is" point of view.
At Penn Station we purchased subway passes. Actually I bought them, two seven day unlimited passes for $25 each. There was a large crowd of people at the automated ticket machines, but they were mostly crowded in front of the ones that took cash. Hardly anyone was using the debit card only ones. Odd. With our passes in hand Chris led me to a Blue Line train for the ride to the hotel. The New York Subway system is very old, dating to the late eighteenth century, and it looks the part. Of all the stations I visited, most looked like their decor dated from the 1930's. Most stations have four tracks, two express and two local, and at least two levels. As the lines run under the streets for the most part, you can hear traffic above and trains below, all on platforms supported by thickets of steel (or maybe iron) posts. The platforms are lit fairly well, but look out and it's dark and gloomy. And hot. It was hotter in the tunnels than it was outside, which tells me that the people who designed the subway over the years didn't give a lot of thought to ventilation.
Getting off our train at the appropriate station Chris and I hiked a good long way to the hotel. We stayed at the Milburn Hotel, on 76th Street a half block off Broadway. The Milburn is a very nice hotel, and our room was quite nice. The only drawback in my eyes was that the bathroom was tiny. We also learned that there were two Red Line stations on Broadway, one four blocks south, one three blocks north, that were much handier than the Blue Line. This is because blocks in New York are rectangular: two or even three times longer east-to-west than they are north-to-south, and the Blue Line runs under Central Park West, three blocks east of Broadway.
We had lunch at restaurant called Niko's Mediterranean, at the corner of 76th and Broadway. I don't remember what I had, but it was tasty. After Lunch we went downtown. We went to Ground Zero, but there wasn't much to see. For whatever reason the Liberty Towers construction site is mostly screened off from easy viewing. We also took in Battery Park City, a very nice neighborhood on the Hudson River, Times Square, and the Great White Way (Broadway between 42nd and 53rd Streets). As evening wore on it began to sprinkle, gradually intensifying. To escape, Chris and I ducked into a hole-in-the-wall pizza place (run by Arabs, or a people of similar ethnicity (Pakistani? Persian?)) and had supper for less than twenty dollars, the second cheapest meal I would buy in NYC. After that we went back to the hotel. I was exhausted, and went right to bed.
And my cheap cell phone, which I had purchased specifically for this trip, still wasn't working.
Chris and I were roused from our beds at five a.m. by both alarm clock and wake-up call. After the usual morning preparations we were off to the airport. By the way, Chris drives like a total maniac, even in city traffic. I was in fear for my life several times during a trip that was barely two miles, if that.
I have to say that going through security is much faster and easier when you're a first class passenger. The actual process of going through the check-point takes the same amount of time, but you get to cut to the head of the line, while the plebes of coach class glare hatefully at you.
I'm making that last bit up. If the people in line that day were anything like me when I was standing in the coach line, they barely noticed us.
As breakfast was to be served on the flight, we went straight to the gate, and didn't have long to wait before boarding was announced. As you are well aware, the seats in first class are much roomier than coach seats: wider and farther apart, so you can actually be comfortable. There was one little detail that caught my eye: the seat arms all had ash trays in them. Smoking has been banned on domestic flights for at least a decade, right? If not longer? Tells you how long it's been since that jet had it's interior overhauled. I had a good view of the galley as well, which was quite interesting. It was very compact, naturally, barely the size of a closet, but it had at least two ovens, a coffee maker, several compartments whose functions I couldn't figure out (probably just storage), a counter, and two carts underneath that. I had barely got my carry-on bag stowed and myself seated when one of the stewardesses (I know, flight attendant is the PC term, but I don't remember the last time I saw a male flight attendant) came around asking if we wanted anything to drink. She served me coffee while the coach passengers were still filing through the first class cabin!
One odd thing about sitting so far foreward in a plane is the difference in the sound of the engines. It's hard to explain, but it was as if I was hearing only the sound of the big high bypass fan at the front of the engines, and maybe the whistle of the intakes, as opposed to the roar of the exhaust that you get when sitting farther aft. It was a little unsettling, to be honest. This is because I have a tendancy to try to guess what the pilot is up to based on what the engines are doing: "We're still in our climb out from take-off, why did he cut power?" and so forth.
Take-off was accomplished without difficulty, and once we reached cruising altitude, meal service began. It might be twenty years since I last had a hot meal on an airplane. Regardless, breakfast was very good. We had scrambled eggs with sausage and potatoes, fruit, and a bagel with cream cheese. The eggs and sausage were especially tasty.
By the time breakfast was over the pilot was on the intercom telling us that we were less than an hour out from the Big Apple. I would normally watch the approach with great interest, but we had a nearly solid undercast the whole way, and I only caught a few glimpses of the city as we came in.
JFK was an airport, not much to tell there. The part we were in was rather drab, actually. Baggage claim was the usual boring wait. The AirTrain, as it is known, was more entertaining. Our tickets were five or ten bucks (can't remember) and included a ride into the city on the Long Island Railroad. From the AirTrain we got a good look at the airport, and saw a lot of relics from the Silver Age of air travel (the sixties and seventies), namely the British Airways Terminal, the Delta(?) Terminal and others. Some were in the process of being demolished (the old Pan Am Terminal), while others were being built or remodelled.
I should mention that the AirTrain was packed that day, so I didn't have the best all around view, but once we got away from the airport proper the scenery changed for the worse. Still on the airport itself were large areas that seemed to be abandonded, followed by industrial/commercial areas with their typical scatterings of abandonded machines/junk, weeds, etc. When we reached residential areas things improved, but I was struck by how old all the houses were. Block after block was nothing but run down two stories in desperate need of remodelling or outright replacement. There were window air conditioners everywhere, and I couldn't help but wonder how much energy got wasted in that neighborhood alone, just because the houses weren't properly insulated.
We arrived at the end of the line for the AirTrain, the LIRR's Jamaica Station, where we transferred to a train headed into the city. It was even more crowded than the AirTrain had been. It was a fairly quick trip, maybe half an hour tops, with only one stop before the end of the line at Penn Station. Again, the scenery was interesting, mostly from a "look at how old and dingy everything is" point of view.
At Penn Station we purchased subway passes. Actually I bought them, two seven day unlimited passes for $25 each. There was a large crowd of people at the automated ticket machines, but they were mostly crowded in front of the ones that took cash. Hardly anyone was using the debit card only ones. Odd. With our passes in hand Chris led me to a Blue Line train for the ride to the hotel. The New York Subway system is very old, dating to the late eighteenth century, and it looks the part. Of all the stations I visited, most looked like their decor dated from the 1930's. Most stations have four tracks, two express and two local, and at least two levels. As the lines run under the streets for the most part, you can hear traffic above and trains below, all on platforms supported by thickets of steel (or maybe iron) posts. The platforms are lit fairly well, but look out and it's dark and gloomy. And hot. It was hotter in the tunnels than it was outside, which tells me that the people who designed the subway over the years didn't give a lot of thought to ventilation.
Getting off our train at the appropriate station Chris and I hiked a good long way to the hotel. We stayed at the Milburn Hotel, on 76th Street a half block off Broadway. The Milburn is a very nice hotel, and our room was quite nice. The only drawback in my eyes was that the bathroom was tiny. We also learned that there were two Red Line stations on Broadway, one four blocks south, one three blocks north, that were much handier than the Blue Line. This is because blocks in New York are rectangular: two or even three times longer east-to-west than they are north-to-south, and the Blue Line runs under Central Park West, three blocks east of Broadway.
We had lunch at restaurant called Niko's Mediterranean, at the corner of 76th and Broadway. I don't remember what I had, but it was tasty. After Lunch we went downtown. We went to Ground Zero, but there wasn't much to see. For whatever reason the Liberty Towers construction site is mostly screened off from easy viewing. We also took in Battery Park City, a very nice neighborhood on the Hudson River, Times Square, and the Great White Way (Broadway between 42nd and 53rd Streets). As evening wore on it began to sprinkle, gradually intensifying. To escape, Chris and I ducked into a hole-in-the-wall pizza place (run by Arabs, or a people of similar ethnicity (Pakistani? Persian?)) and had supper for less than twenty dollars, the second cheapest meal I would buy in NYC. After that we went back to the hotel. I was exhausted, and went right to bed.
And my cheap cell phone, which I had purchased specifically for this trip, still wasn't working.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
New York, Day Zero
I'm always paranoid about having forgotten something whenever I go on a trip, heck even when I go to work. I can't tell you how many times I've stopped as I was backing out of my driveway, so I could double check that I'd shut and locked the side door, or left the coffee pot on, etc. I guess I have a touch of O.C.D.
Anyway, I got off work at 6:30 a.m. on the morning of Friday, 12 September, went home, and commenced with last minute laundry, packing, cleaning, and so on. I'll bet I counted the contents of my suitcase three times that morning and early afternoon. The same held true for my carry on bag (or my man-purse, as my brother Chris likes to call it).
At about 3:30 p.m. Chris showed up, we threw my stuff in his car, along with Max. I did one last walk around to make sure I had left nothing undone, and we were off.
First stop, The Animal House, the kennel where I board Max when I go on trips. Chris and I jokingly refer to it as 'the death camp' since Max always seems to lose weight and shed like there's no tomorrow every time I put him up there. Once Max was safely dropped off, Chris and I were off to Minneapolis.
I've made that particular trip so many times that the only entertainment I get is to note how and what kind of new buildings there are at certain points along the way (mostly between Owatonna and Faribault, an area of apparently vigorous economic development). I did get and give into the urge to check one more time that I had brought my wallet with me, and I had.
Chris and I get to Minneapolis, find a hotel near the airport and get a room. It was a Comfort Inn, or something like that, with an attached Outback Steakhouse. Naturally we had dinner there. When it was over, since I had agreed to pay for all meals during the trip, I get out my wallet. Only to discover that it was the wrong wallet!
You see, my dear father had insisted that I take a smaller 'travel' wallet to New York, and had given me a couple that he had lying around. At first I just took them to humor him, but eventually I decided that it might not be a bad idea. I certainly didn't need to take everything I normally keep in my wallet to New York. All I really needed was my driver's license, First Citizen's and Bank of America debit cards, my Visa card, my insurance card, the number of the kennel, and a little cash. I made up such a travel wallet, and stuck it the pocket of the lightweight coat I was planning on taking along. When it came time to leave, while I was double checking, I grabbed my old wallet off the desk in my computer room, and forgot to bring my coat.
To make a long story short (too late, I know), I went back up to the room and checked all of my bags. No new wallet. Chris called home, thinking that our father could run over to my house, get the wallet, and bring it up or at least meet us part way. Unfortunely, Pops was out of town attending his high school reunion, and Mom didn't have a key to my house. So Chris and I drove back to Mason City (a two hour trip), snagged my wallet (and the coat) and went back to Minneapolis. We got back a little before midnight, hit the sack, and were up and on our way at 5 a.m. the next morning.
That was the one glitch for the entire trip, and it's a good idea Chris wanted to go up the night before, else I might not have discovered my mistake until I was at the airport.
Of course, this whole affair will no doubt make me even more paranoid as I get ready for future trips, but I'll just have to cope. And oddly, I don't suffer nearly as much, if at all, when I'm getting ready to make the trip back home. I just throw my stuff in my bags, take a quick last look around and walk out the door without a backward glance. Weird, huh?
Anyway, I got off work at 6:30 a.m. on the morning of Friday, 12 September, went home, and commenced with last minute laundry, packing, cleaning, and so on. I'll bet I counted the contents of my suitcase three times that morning and early afternoon. The same held true for my carry on bag (or my man-purse, as my brother Chris likes to call it).
At about 3:30 p.m. Chris showed up, we threw my stuff in his car, along with Max. I did one last walk around to make sure I had left nothing undone, and we were off.
First stop, The Animal House, the kennel where I board Max when I go on trips. Chris and I jokingly refer to it as 'the death camp' since Max always seems to lose weight and shed like there's no tomorrow every time I put him up there. Once Max was safely dropped off, Chris and I were off to Minneapolis.
I've made that particular trip so many times that the only entertainment I get is to note how and what kind of new buildings there are at certain points along the way (mostly between Owatonna and Faribault, an area of apparently vigorous economic development). I did get and give into the urge to check one more time that I had brought my wallet with me, and I had.
Chris and I get to Minneapolis, find a hotel near the airport and get a room. It was a Comfort Inn, or something like that, with an attached Outback Steakhouse. Naturally we had dinner there. When it was over, since I had agreed to pay for all meals during the trip, I get out my wallet. Only to discover that it was the wrong wallet!
You see, my dear father had insisted that I take a smaller 'travel' wallet to New York, and had given me a couple that he had lying around. At first I just took them to humor him, but eventually I decided that it might not be a bad idea. I certainly didn't need to take everything I normally keep in my wallet to New York. All I really needed was my driver's license, First Citizen's and Bank of America debit cards, my Visa card, my insurance card, the number of the kennel, and a little cash. I made up such a travel wallet, and stuck it the pocket of the lightweight coat I was planning on taking along. When it came time to leave, while I was double checking, I grabbed my old wallet off the desk in my computer room, and forgot to bring my coat.
To make a long story short (too late, I know), I went back up to the room and checked all of my bags. No new wallet. Chris called home, thinking that our father could run over to my house, get the wallet, and bring it up or at least meet us part way. Unfortunely, Pops was out of town attending his high school reunion, and Mom didn't have a key to my house. So Chris and I drove back to Mason City (a two hour trip), snagged my wallet (and the coat) and went back to Minneapolis. We got back a little before midnight, hit the sack, and were up and on our way at 5 a.m. the next morning.
That was the one glitch for the entire trip, and it's a good idea Chris wanted to go up the night before, else I might not have discovered my mistake until I was at the airport.
Of course, this whole affair will no doubt make me even more paranoid as I get ready for future trips, but I'll just have to cope. And oddly, I don't suffer nearly as much, if at all, when I'm getting ready to make the trip back home. I just throw my stuff in my bags, take a quick last look around and walk out the door without a backward glance. Weird, huh?
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