What did you do this weekend?

My first weekend in New York – it was a good start to city life.

Thursday evening (23 Aug) I went to a Mets game at Shea Stadium. I had a great time. I thought it would be a bit lonely going to a game alone, but it was not too bad. Certainly it is more enjoyable to have the time to spend with someone, but it was a good activity for an evening when I did not have anything to do…

The San Diego Padres were in town – they gave the Mets a good game. Wagner blew a save in the top of the ninth inning when he allowed two runs to score to put the Padres up by one run. The Mets were able to tie the game in the bottom in the ninth to send the game to extra innings. The second batter for the Padres in the tenth inning hit a solo home run to break the tie. Unfortunately, the Mets could not match them in the bottom of the tenth…

The New Yorkers are great fans. They can be brutal to their team and the players if they do not perform as expected, but all good fans are like that. A fair amount of boos sounded from the stands at Shea Stadium on Thursday when the Mets failed to capitalize on scoring opportunities. These fans are passionate about the game. It is fun to watch games with them. I especially enjoy riding the subway to and from games. It is fun to listen to the fans analyze the game and even talk trash with others. I am not strongly invested in any of the New York area teams (yet) so I can just listen and laugh at all the different comments. It is great!

Friday afternoon I met Rustin and his class from NYU Dental School in central park. They were meeting there for pizza and Rustin invited me to join them. We enjoyed some great New York style pizza – probably my favorite food in the city thus far, I love it! After we ate, Rustin and I rode the 1 train down to the South Ferry station where we boarded the Staten Island Ferry. The sun was out, but the sky was incredibly hazy. Nonetheless, we had a good time. The Ferry travels very near to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. When the Ferry docked in Staten Island they made everybody exit the boat. Rustin and I walked off the boat, around the ferry terminal to the boarding room and got right back on to return to Manhattan. Neither of us know much about Staten Island yet so we did not have much reason to explore on this occasion. When we got back to the subway I met a man who lives on Staten Island. He overheard Rustin and I talking about running. Fellow runners always can share a cordial and enjoyable conversation. He was telling me about some neat runs on Staten Island. I got his phone number. I am going to run with him sometime out on the island.

Riding the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty

Rustin and I nearing the Manhattan port

After our ferry trip, Rustin and I rode the subway to Canal St. I had experienced this street once before with Dad and Trent. Know what I was getting into this time, I had fun walking up the street. Everyone is out to make a buck – selling knock-off watches, sunglasses, ties, jewelry, etc. Rustin and I bought some boot-legged DVD’s (shame on us). They are movies that are still in theatres. They guys selling the DVD’s had a suitcase full of them. About five minutes after we bought the movies, we saw another group of guys down the street getting busted for selling the same DVD’s. I discreetly put our DVD’s into my shoulder bag and continued on. I am glad I could contribute to such a heinous crime ring.

What could be in that plastic bag? Certainly nothing illegal!

Making mom proud on Canal St.

We followed Canal St. into Chinatown. All the store signs slowly transitioned from English to Chinese characters with English subtext to solely Chinese. We found a small Chinese restaurant where we ate dinner. After eating dinner, we returned to America… I mean… we walked back to a subway and headed to our apartment.

Chinatown!

We put in some of the DVD’s we bought. We averaged about 50%. The video quality on half of them was good. The others are not even worth watching.

On Saturday the ward had a tubing trip planned. They chartered a bus to drive us two hours north of the city. We stopped in a town called Phonecia, NY. It was a nice, even quaint, town. There is a business there which rents out tubes to float down a local river. It is not a huge river – bigger than Millcreek and the Lava Hot Springs river, but nothing like the Snake or the Green River. There were some quick parts with so rapids – if they could be called that – but nothing too big. I did get dumped out of my tube a couple of times. It was fun.

We stayed and had lunch at a park in Phonecia. The area was beautiful. The hills and surrounding area were blanketed with shrubs and trees. It would be a fun area to find some camp spots – but only with a fully loaded Jeep!

The ride home is one I will not soon forget. The air conditioner on the bus was not working. We had 60 hot, wet bodies crammed on a stuffy bus. The temperature outside was more than 95 degrees with high humidity. Sitting on the bus doing absolutely nothing, not an ounce of physical exertion I was sweating like I do when I run. It was miserable. I had to laugh at the situation, otherwise I would have been even more miserable. When we drove into Manhattan I saw a marquee which said the temperature was 98 degrees. When I stepped off the bus it felt like I had just entered an air conditioned room – that is how bad it was. Despite the long ride home, I had a good time and met some new people.

The only way to escape the heat was to sleep.