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.