New York - Day 1

I couldn't believe I was flying to a different city SOLELY for the purpose of attending baseball games. Having it be Yankee Stadium and New York was just a bonus.

Our flight was scheduled to take off at 1 PM. We would have plenty of time to see some of the city once we landed. Hell, I was excited when we were waiting by our gate at the airport.

I love how you can pass and interact with people from all over the world. There's thousands of people coming and going to hundreds of different places. O'Hare is one of the busiest airports in the world, so that makes it that much more interesting to me.

I can't really say much about the flight. It was a short one; we were in the air for less than two hours. I flipped through the SkyMall catalog for most of the time. I really wish I had a pillow that's always cold, a 35-in-1 golf club, or some other incredibly practical item that I saw in there.

The captain made the landing announcement right on time. My side of the plane would be getting a great view of Manhattan. I almost couldn't contain myself. I've said before on BaseBlog that I love skylines, but this took it to a whole new level. We were later informed it was the most photographed skyline in the world, so it's a pretty big deal.

I pulled out my camera when I actually saw Yankee Stadium from above. I wasn't quick enough to get that, but there are still some pretty damn good ones.

My very first view of Manhattan

After we went a little further, the wing got out of the way. I saw everything.

That's THE REAL Central Park! Right outside my window!

Those were the best pictures I got from the air. We looped across Manhattan and headed back up to land at LaGuardia. I snapped this one right when we got on the ground:

Just from the air, it looked huge. It sprawled everywhere. It was an urban landscape in every direction for as far as I could see.

Thoughts raced through my mind as we walked to grab a taxi just outside the gate. There were 10 million people in this city, doing 10 million different things. I was just a tiny piece in the puzzle.

Before this weekend, I had only been on a cab once before in my entire life. For as much as I like to think I have a great handle on how to live in a big city, I had no idea what to do. Just hop in and tell him where you're going? Do you have to hold a conversation with them? What do they even charge?! Regardless, I knew it was another thing to add to my list of things I did on this trip; ride in a New York City cab.

It was pretty jerky at times, the usual cutting in and out of lanes. Our particular driver liked to yell at pedestrians to wait for the crossing signal.

We got to our destination, 43rd and 10th, in about 30 minutes during rush hour. Not too bad considering it's just over 10 miles from the airport.

Our friend Carl was the one who graciously invited us to stay with him. Long story short (if you haven't read this entry already), he's building an extension to the number 7 subway line, and has an apartment to stay at during the week. Today (Friday that is), he was at a business meeting....in California. He was on the 9 PM flight that night. Take into account the 5 hour ride plus the time change, and he was looking at landing close to 5:30 AM. He left a key with the front desk, and we went right up.

Stupidly, I didn't take one picture of the inside. For one guy during the week, it was more than enough. A pretty decent sized living room with two bathrooms and a guest bedroom. That's probably one of the more spacious ones in the city, too.

The intersection closest to the apartment.

After dropping our bags off, we went exploring. As I mentioned, we were only staying four blocks from Times Square. Obviously, that's the first place we went.

I won't show too many pictures, because they were all pretty much like this one:

Ads EVERYWHERE.

The amount of people mulling around was ridiculous. We walked down the block to see if we could find something interesting. This was, after all, one of the most populated areas in the city.

Some street performers were easier to look at than others.

He had 'THE NAKED COWBOY" written on his ass and sang Western songs.

My favorite part was seeing the New Year's Eve ball. After seeing it so many times on TV, it was crazy to be standing right in front of it, where millions of people ring in the new year.

At every hour, the Toshiba screen played a countdown from 10. Ha.

Here's a few more I took, just to make sure I got one of everything.

And just one more, of me and Dad.

By now, we were starved. We could have gone with the boring option and eaten at a chain restaurant, but we wanted to live like real New Yorkers. Our first choice was a hot dog from a street cart.

(Taken at a later time, but all of them looked pretty much like this).

On our walk around the block, I saw something that I bet I will never see anywhere else. I mentioned it was crowded in the city, right? (On a side note, they had no alleys either. So they just threw their garbage right on the curb, inside rodent resistant bags. That was probably the nastiest thing I saw).

When you can't build out, build up.

How the hell do they even manage to organize that?! Talk about being boxed in.

We were still looking for some food, and opted to try some New York style pizza. We asked a very Italian looking man handing out flyers in Times Square where the best pie was around the area. He told us to go here:

We asked for a hole-in-the-wall type of place, and that's exactly what we got. They had enough room for a total of 5 people to stand and eat, so we went to the ledge outside. As for the pizza:

I got a Lasagna slice, and Dad got a piece of the Grandma. (Anybody know exactly what's in the Grandma?).

We continued exploring after we ate.

(The last one was the building we were staying in).

We wouldn't have walked so much had we not known exactly where we were at all times. We only knew where we were because it's SO EASY to get around with the street names. They were all just numbers! East to West were long blocks, and North to South were short ones. If you were at 46th and 6th, you knew exactly how long it would take to get to 53rd and 11th.

It was a little bit screwy, though. The apartment was at 520 West 43rd Street, between 10th and 11th. It would make more sense to be 1050, right?

The addresses go by distance from Madison street; the first street due East is 6th, so we were in the 6th block over from Madison. That's the part that was most confusing. Anyways, it was great. It was so much easier than memorizing names.

Can you spot our apartment?

If you've been a normal reader, you're well aware that Zack Hample lives on the Upper West Side, which was just a few miles from where we were staying. As soon as I found out I would be in the city, I sent him an email asking if he was going to the game Saturday or Sunday. I was thrilled to get a response back.

Hey, Ryan-

Thanks for checking out the blog and getting in touch. I have no intention of being at Yankee Stadium for those games, but right now, I *am* planning to be in New York that weekend. I might have a writing group meeting in the park on August 4th. Would you want to swing by after the game and say hello?

-Zack

I couldn't believe how easy going he was. I was dying to go meet him, especially when he gave me a chance like that.

The park he was referring to was Central Park, which is about 4 square miles. Even if Dad agreed to take valuable time out of our trip, I wouldn't want to waste my time searching for hours. I would have to think of something else if I wanted to meet up. I send an email back and told him that may or may not happen, and asked for the location of his group just in case. As of Friday, I didn't hear anything back.

After we got back to the apartment, we just chilled out. The Yankees were taking on the Mariners in the opening game of the series. We watched a little bit of that, along with some Olympic diving.

It was almost time. Time to check another ballpark off the list, and to add to my lengthy baseball resumé.