New York Minute

Being on the road gets me thinking a lot. There's only so much reading of
romance novels I can take. On the trip up to ny all I could think was how
excited I was because I'll be really seeing ny as a tourist and not just be
going along on someone else's accord or to see a musical for the day. I
also was excited because I would finally see the ny office and meet a few
of my co-workers. Among them I finally got to meet the ever knowledgeable
john willoughby, the new guy david garcia, and the uber lady's man david
jata. Jata was kind enough to take steph and I out to a couple of bars and
clubs on friday night. The nightlife in ny was extremely different from the
dc scene. For one, everything stays open late almost till the sun came up.
Secondly, there was no smoking in bars. So much for the excuse of it being
smokey. I had a few drinks that night and relished in the moment of living
a typical new york friday night. Well, it was fun while it lasted and no
sooner was the night over when I decided to go back to the hotel to get
some rest for the next day.

Saturday was a perfect day. It was partly cloudy with temps in the low to
mid 80s. A slight gust of winf blew occaionally as steph and I perused the
streets of ny to get to pier 83 on the west bank of manhattan. This was the
first day of being touristy. One of the things that reminded me of the
downfalls of being a tourist was the massive line to get tickets for the
circle line tour. Luckily, steph purchased the city pass so were able to
bypass the long line of families. The ccruise was a 2-hour tour on a boat
that navigated its way from the west banks of manhattan down to the famous
statue of liberty and to the east river under the brooklyn, manhattan and
williamsburg bridges. During the trip, an mc gave us the 411 on the history
of things off of and over the hudson river. The trip was a bit long for me
but crusing the bay and looking at new york from another angle with the
ocean brreze in your face was a refreshing display of tranquility in the
city that never sleeps.

Following the boat cruise, steph and I navigated our way through the
complex subway system that is the metro transit authority. Ah, the new york
subway--reminiscent of many movies shot on location. It has an aged look
with its hanging leaves of paint and the dank smell of years of b.o. And
body fluids amassing the hot air within the underground tunnel system. The
trains too displayed its age and advertisements of the local gangs and
"artists". Each car appeared longer than the cars in the metro. Also, there
looked like 8 cars to a train compared to dc's 6 and 4 car trains. The
inside of the train didn't look much better than its exterior. Uncarpeted
floors and plastic-looking seats made for a less-than-pleasant trip to the
museum of natural history. At least I'm able to say I experienced riding
the rail system in ny.

The museum of natural history was just like any natural history museum.
Stuffed animals from all over the world were shown through glass
encassings. Information anout dinosaurs and the history of human beings
always attract camera-toting civilians too. So about an hour of aimlessly
wandering around the museum, steph and I decided to have a late lunch with
her friends from long island--john, heather and their 14 month old child
david. We strolled around soho and ate at a local pizza joint. I learned
that locals call a whole pizza a "pie". Interesting. I also could have
sworn that there was the italian mob eating at a restaurant one block down
from us. The guy that was being overly loud and obnoxious sounded like vin
diesel but looked like fat joe. He was surrounded by a party of females and
whaling locqatiously to some joe bloe driving in a porche convertible.
Scary yet exciting.

After the calming sex and the city like perusing around soho, steph and I
decided to rest up a bit before heading out to the empire state building.
We both read more romance novels while our feet rested from all the walking
we did throughout the day. When the sun went down and the times square
lights lit up, we hauled ass and made our way to the empire state building.
En route to our destination, we stopped by the skechers store to buy a pair
of shoes. Hey, how often can you say you went shopping in times sQuare at
10pm on a saturday night? After purchasing a brand new pair of shoes, we
continued our trek of 13 blocks to the tallest building in ny. Again, a
massively long line greeted us at the lobby but it was all good because we
already had our pass, saving us about 30 mins of stagnant time. We made our
way into an elevator shooting straight up to the 80th floor at a grueling
20 mph and not so smooth speed. After all the ear-popping and overly said
comments about how fast or high we were going, we reched the 80th floor
only to get into another line to go up 6 more floors! Well, we went up 80
floors so 6 more couldn't hurt...except the trek up those last 6 floors
seemed to take FOREVER. After what seemed like eternity, we reached the
86th floor observatory--a breath-taking scenic overview of a well-lit city
by the bay. It seemed like I could stay up here forever and a day. The
night was cool and airy, the lights visible for several miles out to every
direction, and the feeling so priceless that truly no words could have
expressed what I was feeling looking out over nyc. At that moment, I
couldve cared less about going home the next day or the fact that I had put
in a ton of OT for the last 3 weeks of work. This was the defining moment
of this trip. This made it worth the 5.5 hrs riding on the bus worth it.
Not even having sex with a hot guy could give me such a feeling of
contenment and peace.

Deferred gratification brings such sweet pleasure especially after a
gruelling year of nothing but satisfying the needs and wants of everone
around me. I don't get a lot of 'me' time. In other words, this was a
much-needed mini vacation for me. I would like to come back to new york
someday and experience and enjoy other aspects the city has to offer. But
for now, as I'm typing this out on my ride back to dc, I'm feeling the
satisfaction of accomplishing my mini vacation goal without letting myself
go rampantly wild in a city that considers that one kind of norm in the
grand scheme of life in the Big Apple. Till we meet again, new york!