Driving in Traffic

I still can't upload pictures, and truthfully, I don't have that many new ones. We spent most of the day today on the road to and from Connecticut. Our business meeting was in Shelton, so we headed out pretty early this morning to rent a car for the drive and then tested our skills on the streets of the city.

The plan was for Alvin to drive while I navigated. Shortly after entering traffic, Alvin decided that "when in Rome" was a good idea, and he moved one hand to the horn and started driving like a NYC cabbie. My plan changed to navigate while hiding my eyes and puckering every part of my body that could pucker. I swear I got six inches thinner and pulled the driver's side door in at least a foot when he decided that there was enough room between the car and truck driving side-by-side in front of us. I really thought that Mitsubishi Galant was wider than the dividing line between lanes, but I was obviously incorrect in that assessment.

Kudos to Alvin, though. We got to CT and back to Manhattan alive and without any new dents or dings in the car. There were already several when we picked it up, and the guy at Avis said that they don't even worry about minor stuff like that in NYC. He said, "As long as it has four wheels and runs when you return it, we're good."

Since that took up most of our day, we didn't get to do much more sightseeing. We did take a cab down to Ground Zero, though. It wasn't really what I expected. I was thinking more of something like the Vietnam War Memorial. A somber garden with a plaque of names or something. In fact, it was just a big hole in the ground. It looks like they are really in the process of building a nice memorial there, though.

After that, we walked to the end of State St. and considered taking a ride on that Staten Island Ferry. Given the time to get across and back, the fact that were both starved, and the fact that we could see the Statue of Liberty from where we were (the whole point of going to the ferry in the first place), we opted to pass on that adventure. Instead we bought subway passes and rode back up to Times Square.

Having ridden on metro trains in Paris, DC, Rome, Chicago, and Dallas (if you can even count that), I think I can safely say now that they are all pretty much the same. It did take me a couple of minutes to figure out how the subway lines were marked on the map, but after that we were on our way. I think Alvin asked me about three times if we were on the right train when the conductor said that we were on the train to Queens, but it all turned out good when I told him to get off at the 42^nd St. stop.

Back to where our adventure started, we were on the hunt for a Cadillac windshield. Based on the advice of another coworker, there is supposed to be a huge window that looks like a Cadillac windshield and behind that window is a great restaurant with a view. We never found the windshield and we never found the restaurant.

The backup plan was to go to a steak house in the W hotel on Times Square that my dad recommended. We went to the W hotel in Times Square and they informed us that the W with that restaurant is actually eight blocks away. No dice there. We were hungry.

We ended up at a local chophouse about a block off of Times Square and had a pretty good meal. Of course, by that time, the McDonald's was sounding like fine dining to my stomach. Regardless the food was good and the waiter was sufficiently rude to make me feel like it was authentic New York.

By the way, if you ordered an appetizer that was chips with a cheese and spinach dip, would you expect it to be basically queso? And if you asked the waiter if that's what you were going to get would you expect him to know what you were talking about? I would. This guy maybe had never heard the word queso before because he just kept looking at me funny when I said it and then repeating to me (complete with hand motions of him dipping a chip) that it was "chips and cheese that you can dip in." Alvin thought it was pretty funny.

Anyway, we are planning to get breakfast around 8am tomorrow and then head out to airport to see if we can fly standby on an earlier flight. I'm coaching Abbie's softball team and we've got a game tomorrow evening that I'd like to be there for. I'm definitely going to have to budget for a return trip with Leah, though, so we can do all of the touristy stuff.

Oh, one last thing. Alvin and I decided that we've already done all of the important things in life in just the past two days. We've hailed a New York cab. We've ridden in several New York cabs. We've driven in New York traffic. And we've ridden on the New York subway. Our lives are virtually complete.