Day 2-Pleasure before business

We woke up and partook of the delightful waffle bar that our hotel had. Tim and Brandon had left Boston at around 7:30, and we were planning for them to arrive at about 10:30. The plan was to let them stay with us on Saturday night, and I was a little concerned that we might get caught allowing them to stay in our room.

I sure do seem to worry an awful lot. It’s hard to say how many times I have neglected to act in a way that was productive or good because I was worried or afraid of what might happen. Now, almost every time I start a trip to a new place, I worry and wonder if I’m not leaving home for the last time, or getting on a plane for the last time. It’s silly. They say it’s like rocking in a chair, you do a lot, but you don’t ever seem to get anywhere doing it.

Anyway, Tim and Brandon arrived, parked, and came up to our room without a hitch. We left for the city a short while later.

Times Square was where the shuttle left us and we wasted no time in getting to Niketown so that Brandon could buy the new kit. Surprisingly enough, there was a photo booth in this store as well. I forced Tim and Brandon to pose for it, and I did it for a second time. The results were much better this time around and we took off in search of lunch.

The ideas were good, but too much holding of the right arm in that crooked position. I'm kissing the badge in the upper right one...

We stopped by some famous Deli that Brandon suggested, and we saw a ridiculous line. I believe it was the Deli that Dave Letterman always hangs out at, but I wasn’t certain. We quickly decided to go somewhere else and ended up at none other than Famous Original Ray’s Pizza. It wasn’t at the corner of 1^st and 1^st (Seinfeld reference), but it did sell delicious, and expensive, pizza.

We shared in some college basketball talk with a family of Kentucky fans that had traveled to Newark for their team’s game. They recognized my BYU beanie and we talked about Jimmer and the Cougs’ loss to Florida. They were very nice and I was happy for them that their team won in the next round too and got to the Final Four. Final Outcome, at the time of writing, is still undetermined. After lunch, we set off on foot toward Central Park.

I had hoped that we would take the subway, because Ryan and I had bought unlimited passes for 7 days on the subway at about 29 dollars. It was really a pretty wise decision because it took us almost anywhere we wanted to go. We just walked up to the turnstile and swiped the card. This is where things got tricky, because the turnstiles seemed to be like Goldilocks. Swipe too slow and it rejected you; swipe too fast, same result. Swipe it just right and you get the good kind of beeping and you proceed through. You also weren’t allowed to use your card at the same stop within 18 minutes. This wasn’t a problem though because if you go through, and realize you’re on the side of the tracks that goes the wrong way, you just take the train down a stop and find the right side, and swipe the card. This happened to Ryan and I on several occasions. We weren’t certain if this saved us money in the end, but it certainly would have had we spent another day or so there.

Back to Central Park. We walked there, and just decided to have a stroll through the park and see what was going on. As we walked into the park, I started to cross the crosswalk when we got a walk signal, only to see that a horse and buggy had decided to make a left hand turn across our crosswalk. Now, if this was a car, I might have kept walking, because you know a car is like a computer, it only does what it’s master tells it to do. However, horses sometimes can have wills of their own, so I stepped back quickly and let it pass by fairly close to me. I’m not afraid to lose a game of chicken with a horse….

Statue of some guy in Central Park

Walking through the park, I was amazed at how many joggers there were. There were also people spread through the park playing various instruments in the hope of making some money. We snapped pictures of a few statues. Brandon wondered very early on if we would be able to find the pigeon lady from Home Alone 2. This movie would prove to have a real impact on the rest of our day. He also wondered if Central Park “had that tunnel in all those movies where bad things happen to people.” Of course, I have not quoted him accurately, but that was the gist of his message. We looked at a few tunnels and we seemed satisfied that we found a tunnel or two that was used in a movie. We then engaged in a lively conversation about some Jodie Foster movie where something horrible happens to a character in a tunnel in Central Park and it causes her to seek revenge. After a debate about the title of the movie, Ryan confirmed that it was, indeed, called The Brave One.

Whew, we could all rest easy that night knowing that this trivia question had been resolved.

We made it out of the park, and decided to head up to 30 Rockefellar Center, but we were distracted on the way by the famous FAO Schwartz, site of the famous big foot piano from the movie Big.

We went in and had a look around, and it was truly the biggest and craziest toy store I had ever been in. Tim made the comment that they designed the place like a casino…..difficult to find the exits, with distractions galore. I was particularly awed by the life sized Chewbacca and C-3PO made entirely out of legos.

Seriously, who learns how to do this stuff? There were some other fun things there, but the time had come to move on.

On the way to 30 Rockefellar Center, it became clear that Brandon was suffering some kind of foot discomfort. Apparently, the shoes he brought were old and didn’t fit him properly. He decided he needed to go back to Niketown and get some shoes so that he wouldn’t have nasty foot pain. Ryan and I went ahead to 30 Rock, becoming momentarily distracted by a very interesting Anglican Church.

Fortunately, the shoe purchase went off without a hitch and we met at the Ice Skating Pond near 30 Rock.

30 Rock area

Someone (probably me) decided that this was the place and time where we would pay to go up and get a view of the City from high up. This view cost 22 dollars. Since I can only imagine that the daily costs for this operation were labor, and electricity to run the escalators and elevators, I imagine they make quite a profit off us. This isn’t even counting the gift shop at the top. The view from the top was quite impressive.

Tim constantly complained about not being able to see the Chrysler building clearly, because the view of it from 30 Rock was blocked. It was quite entertaining to watch him go from floor to floor and from view to view trying to get an unobstructed shot. He really loves that building. For good reason too, I suppose.

The early afternoon was transitioning to the late afternoon, so we decided to head back to the hotel to prepare ourselves for the game. A quick stop to snap a picture or two with the National Debt Clock and of the NewsCorp buiding (aka the Fox News building) were our only distractions, and before we knew it, the pleasure portion of our trip was over and the business portion was about to begin.

Our country owes a lot of money....

News Corp....where are the Red Eye guys???