My New York age is 33

I don’t know how I feel about my real age being younger than my New York Age.

(via Robin)

One of the things I’ve talked about on this blog is my absolute love of what I affectionately call “Street Meat”. You know those random food carts around the City. Not the hotdog guys, the guys making chicken and rice, gyros, and various other more substantial meals. I have a favorite of these at Broadway and 40th street. I practically ate there every day I could. It was $4 for a large chicken and rice with a small side of salad. I’d have them mix in a little lamb for a final price of $5. This was by far one of the cheapest ways to get really full in NYC. And after I became a daily fixture, they were really sad to hear I’d be leaving the City.

I had a friend of mine check with the guy to see if he would be open the weekend we went and get this, the guy opened special just because I was coming! When we got there he said he opened because he needed to train a guy on a slower day, but he drove in special to be there when I’d be around. I was touched.

I finally remembered to gets some pictures of things this time as I realized some of you have no clue what I’m talking about, so without further ado:

This is me and the “Street Meat Guy”. Sadly, I’ve never been able to understand his name.

This is him at work making my order. These carts have a grill, a deep fryer, and a place for drinks.

Finally, the finished product.

It started with our departing flight. We got rushed into boarding the plane and after finally getting arranged in our seats, on a plane with malfunctioning air conditioning, the following announcement is made:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have good news and bad news. The good news is your flight isn’t cancelled. The bad news is that the flight that the pilots for this flight was just diverted to Alliance airport. It will be at least an hour before they will be here and ready to take off.

We are offered to de-board the plane if we want, but if we do, we need to take anything we brought on board. Since we were loaded down with a lot of baby stuff and our backpacks, we decided to wait it out on the plane. Well, 45 minutes later, we’re told that they still haven’t taken off to come to DFW and that it would be at least another hour before they got there. At that point, they recommended that everyone get off the plane. We decided at this point, that was probably the best idea.

Once we finally got on the plane, with a flight crew, Brenden actually fell asleep before take off. So I held him for the first 2 hours or so of the flight asleep on my arm. It made getting a drink and other things an adventure. Once he did wake up, he was in a good mood and made faces with the people sitting around us. Little did we know, we’d need every last ounce of his good mood before we got off that plane.

We land just fine at Newark and start to taxi to the gates. I noticed we stopped quite short of them and then we get the following notice from the flight deck:

I’m sorry to add insult to injury folks, but we were scheduled to park at Gate 34, and unfortunately Gate 34 is currently broken. The ground crew is working on it, but in the mean time, we’re waiting for one of the planes at gates 32 or 33 to pull back and we’ll park there. Sorry for the additional delay.

So we finally get out of the plane at 3:30 PM EST when we were scheduled to arrive at 1:00 PM EST. Gotta love the airline industry.

We had plans to meet with the people I used to work with at 5 PM. Needless to say, we were a bit late for that after getting a taxi and checking into the hotel and getting into the City. But we did make it and had a very good time seeing those folks and them meeting Brenden. Afterwards, we called up some more former co-workers, who had also moved on, and met them at Ruby Foo’s in Times Square. After some delicious Pan Asian food, Maggie, Brenden and I headed back to the hotel to crash as we were all very tired from a long day of travel.

The next day, we made a plan to meet up for lunch with my childhood friend John and his family. They have a new daughter that we hadn’t seen and of course they hadn’t seen Brenden either. They have the cutest little girl and their older boy had definitely grown and was a lot more talkative than I remembered when we lived there.

After lunch, Maggie wanted to go to Century 21 before our dinner plans with some of our dog walking friends (Mark and Valerie, and Suzanne). We went there and braved the crowds, which by the way, were huge as it always gets just before Christmas in NYC. Before coming back to New Jersey, we stopped and looked at the new photos they had put at the World Trade Center site. No matter how many times I see it, when I start to think about it, the events of that day still bring tears to my eyes.

Once back in Jersey, we grabbed a bottle of wine and met our friends at this great Italian cafe that was in our old neighborhood. It was quite an evening as there were two huge parties there making a lot of noise. And this wasn’t the largest of places. The food was amazing as was the conversations. Mark and Valerie were also gracious enough to offer to baby sit Brenden on Sunday, more on that later. They all walked us back to our hotel and we settled down for another good night’s sleep.

Sunday morning, we took the whole family to Central Park. The one big thing we wanted to do while there was to get hot chocolate at this place we had always gotten it while we were living there. Sadly, we found that it was closed at least for the day. We’re hoping not forever.

After that, we made our way back to New Jersey to drop Brenden off at Mark and Valerie’s and made our way back into the City. We ate at our favorite place in Chinatown where we got their amazing steamed pork buns. After that, we headed off to see the New Jersey Devils play the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. I was in hockey heaven as it was a hockey game at MSG and also one of the biggest rivalries currently in the NHL. ( My wife is the best for letting us choose hockey over broadway ) New Jersey ended up embarrassing the Rangers 6-1 and the crowd got “rowdy”, with a fight breaking out two sections over.

We went back to Jersey to pick up Brenden from Mark and Valerie. They had a good time watching him and came to the conclusion that they weren’t ready for the work it takes to have a baby. Not that Brenden was bad or anything, just that they didn’t realize the amount of energy needed.

For Monday, we planned a lot of stops. First we hit FAO Schwartz, then the new 5th Ave Apple Store, Rockefeller Center to see the tree, then M&M World, then we had my favorite meal in the whole city: Street Meat. Yummy! Then we went to see the Macy’s windows and finally headed back to the hotel after a very long day.

On our final day, we went to go see Maggie’s former co-workers at a place in New Jersey. They were very excited to see Maggie and Brenden. After hanging out there, we left for the airport, where we had another fun adventure flying home. Luckily, we were only delayed an hour this time.

Overall it was a great trip. It was really good to see everyone and for us to be able to have a good time bringing the little one along. He won’t remember it, but we have plenty of pictures to prove he was there:

Brenden asleep on the plane

Brenden and Maggie in Central Park

Brenden and I in Central Park

The skating rink from Serendipity

Brenden bundled for NYC

Brenden really, really, liked this mirror in our hotel room

Brenden plays on the piano at FAO, the one in the movie Big

Final score of the hockey game

The Macy’s Windows

Finally, Brenden and I spend a little recoup time waiting for the plane ride home

Sometime in August of 2005, Maggie and I were checking out books at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square. She sees a poster/catalog like thing for “The New Yorker Festival“. We take it home and start flipping through it and then I notice “Oh my God! Stephen King is going to be doing things at this thing!”

So here’s my chance to get to see my favorite author do a reading and participate in a panel discussion. I jump online to get tickets. Much to my dismay, I can only get tickets to the panel discussion. I buy them and then start trying to figure out how I’m going to get into the other event, which is a reading with another author, Michael Chabon ( He wrote “Wonder Boys” ).

I start keeping my eye on Craigslist. And I get lucky, a pair of tickets comes available for face price. I’m all set. Maggie agrees to come along even though she’s had a rough day at work and I’m probably annoying her more because I’m giddy with excitement. We get to the reading and find out seats, which are at the end of the row.

While we are waiting for the event to begin, Stephen King comes walking in and stops at the end of our row to talk to someone in the aisle. He’s within reaching distance. But I stay my hand and just sit back and take in that I’m a couple of feet away from him.

Mr. Chabon goes first and reads the first chapter of his soon to be published book, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel“. It was quite entertaining and I’ve been looking forward to the release of that book. It was supposed to be last April, but it got pushed back a year.

Mr. King comes on stage and reads a chapter much deeper into a novel he’s just completed the rough draft of called “Lisey’s Story“, which you may notice is the book I’m currently reading. The chapter was very good and spooky, making me really want to read that book as well. And to think I wouldn’t be able to read it until this fall.

After they were both finished, a short Q&A session was conducted and I stood up and asked them who were their major influences. Funny thing, Mr. Chabon immediately said “Stephen King”.

The next day was the morning panel which included several authors who created their own worlds for their books to take place in. This was a very good panel hosted by the Fiction Editor for The New Yorker. I think the most amazing thing I learned during this was that shortly after 9/11/2001, Stephen King wrote a short story about a guy who played hooky that day from his office at the World Trade Center and afterwards the things of people he worked with started showing up in his apartment. I thought it was a brilliant story idea but amazingly, he was turned down by The New Yorker. It floored me that a writer as established as Mr. King could still get rejected.

There was a chance to get Stephen King to sign my The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7), but the time they had scheduled to hand out the wristbands for that free event was the same time as the panel. I was bummed, but I did get to see my favorite author twice! Here’s a very shaky shot I got during the panel. I was taking this shot incognito:

His T-Shirt says “I Make Stuff Up”.

One final note as a “full disclosure”: All the book links in this post and on the right hand side where I have current and previous read include my Amazon Associate ID, which means if you buy the book using those links, I get a small cut.

Should be a lot of fun, if a bit chilly. Not to mention our first flight with the wee one. Yikes! (But I’m sure we’ll be fine)

On our way to Niagara Falls, I talked Maggie into letting us stop at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY.

For those of you that don’t know, this is the restaurant where Buffalo Chicken Wings were invented. And before we left Texas, I had become addicted to chicken wings in a bad way.

The best place in Dallas has to be Pluckers with great tasting sauce and huge wings. So, I was very excited to be moving to the New York area thinking I’d be in the middle of some sort of Chicken Wing Mecca. Sadly, I am not. I’ve tried several different wings places here including the charming Pluck-U and the decent Atomic Wings, but neither lived up to my expectations.

But undaunted, I still had very high expectations for the place that originated the dish. And thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed. The wings were fantastic and I could understand where the Pluckers guys (all formerly of the Buffalo area I believe) had gotten the base taste for their sauce. The wings were huge. I guess the only thing I didn’t like was how dry the wings were as they didn’t seem to have a lot of sauce on them.

I highly recommend a visit to the Anchor Bar if you’re a lover of all things Chicken Wings, although be prepared to wait, as it seemed to be a very popular place. For good reason.

Niagara Falls is about a 7 hour drive from where we live in New Jersey through parts of Pennsylvania and Upstate New York. We drove across the top of the Finger Lakes region. We made a stop in Buffalo on the way there which I will be writing about later (hint: It has something to do with Buffalo Wings)

After that small detour we made our way to the border. Now, I must admit that this would be my first time to leave the United States which I know is pretty lame. But I was a little nervous crossing the boarder, which seems silly especially with it being Canada. I had our Passports ready to go, and was shocked that the guy didn’t even look at Maggie’s. He just asked what our nationality was, what was the purpose of our visit and how long we would be staying. Then let us on our way. I was floored.

So we get to our hotel and check-in. We had originally booked a City View room, meaning we would be facing away from the falls. I asked the clerk if they possibly had any Falls View rooms left. She checked and only had a “River View” left. I said we’d take it and up to our room we went. We actually ended up with a partial view of the falls as you can see here

For Saturday morning we had made reservations to ride the Wet Jet Boat from Whirlpool Jet Tours. This ride is an open jet boat that takes you through a class 5 rapid (on a scale of 1 to 6) a few times getting you very, very wet. They also pull up beside a class 6 rapid to show it to us, but can’t go into it because it’s entirely unsafe. These rapids are downriver from the Falls, but are caused because of the thousands of years of erosion by the falls that carved the gorge the river is going through. As it was explained to us, the rapids are compression waves which aren’t caused by rocks, but by the amount of water being pushed through the gap causing a lot of pressure. I’ll be posting a picture later that they took of us plunging into the rapid.

On the way to the Jet Boat place, we took a nice little ride through the Canadian wine country. So many vineyards…so little time. Here’s a picutre we took of the Niaraga River on it’s way into Lake Ontario

That afternoon we drove up to Toronto, which I will be posting about later (hint: I got to see something I really, really cherish there)

That night we had dinner at a nice German restaurant and then tried to get some cash out of the ATM to go the casino next to our hotel. Needless to say, I know where ever ATM is in Nagara Falls now and well, lots of them were having problems connecting with our bank. So we finally gave up and went up to our room and crashed.

The next morning we went for some Tim Horton’s because, well, when you’re in Canada, going to Tim Horton’s for a doughnut is a requirement. After the Tim Horton’s, we tried an ATM at a 7-11 and low and behold, we were able to get Canadian cash out….Casino here we come!

After an hour of gambling where I did fairly well at a blackjack table, Maggie and I made our way to the Maid of the Mist tour. This is the boat Jim Carrey’s character in Bruce Almighty goes on for his “live shot” at the beginning of the movie where they announce the other reporter has gotten the anchor position. Anyway, they take you right up to the falls with the mist blowing on you and you can feel the power of the falls, it was amazing.

After that, we walked back down the river and Maggie grabbed these two shots of the falls, the first is one of the Horseshoe Falls (also known as the Canadian Falls) where you can see a Maid of the Mist boat in the middle of the poole. The other shot is of the American Falls. The rainbows caused by the mist are beautiful.

Finally, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe so I could get a shot-glass and then we made a stop at the other casino and had another hour or so gambling away. I had another decent run on the blackjack table.

And then we hit the road and got quite the hassle from the US Customs Agent coming back into the country. Kept asking us questions and basically made me feel like he doubted we were legit. But he finally let us pass and we were back in the country.

So anyway, once I realized who I thought it must be, I considered if I would approach him. I decided that I wouldn’t go up to him on the train, only if he got off at my stop. And as it turns out, he does get out on my stop. I turn around and say “Hey, were you in Sweet Home Alambama and Little Black Book?”

He looks a little shocked that he’s been recognized, and I feel a little dumb because at this point I hadn’t looked up his info on IMDB, so I had no clue what his name was. He nods and says “Yeah, that was me.” I reach out and we shake hands and I tell him he did a great job and keep up the good work. And then we went on about our business.

I know he’s not huge, but it was certainly cool to A) be able to recognize someone from the movies dressed normally and B) that he was cool about being approached.

So there we go, my celebrity list:

Michael Bloomberg and Kevin Sussman

Now if I could only figure out where Matt Damon, Claire Danes, Edward Norton, and Tim Robbins live in New York so I can “run into” them.

So I get up Saturday morning and by the time I’m ready and get my bike out, it’s like 10:30 AM. I ride my bike to the PATH station and drag it down to the train. I get over the the World Trade Center station and then start the process of dragging it out of there. Finally, after carrying my bike up a couple of flights of stairs and back down another, I’m on the other side of the street and ready to ride.

The path provided along the highway is actually quite nice. There are lanes in both directions and lights at intersections specifically for the path. While this follows the West Side Highway, it also means the bike path follows the Hudson River. It was nice to watch the boat go along and to pass by the very large Cruise Ship dock at 42nd St.

Now, I was really pushing it on my bike at about 14-15 MPH and I was feeling really good. My goal was to reach at least the George Washington Bridge and possibly a little fruther. That would take me almost the entire distance of the island.

In my mind for some reason I think about going Uptown (or North for those of you not familiar with Manhattan) as going Uphill and going Downtown as being downhill. Well, I was kinda right, although most of the route was very flat. Towards the bridge though, some of the terrain started going uphill, which by that time meant some pain for my legs. But in the back of my mind I was thinking about how nice it will be when I come back the other way since it will be downhill.

So I finally get to a good turn around spot at around 12 miles (which is just past the bridge) and I start to come back. The downhill portion at the beginning of this part is certainly nice. But once I reached the flat part again, I realized I was going to have a tough time going back ( and for certain that going downtown is not actually going downhill ). The minute I hit the flat I was immediately slowed by a nice head wind. Nothing strong mind you, but just enough to really slow you down and put some pressure on pedaling.

The only thing that kept me going coming back were little milestones, like “If I can just reach 42nd St, I’ll be fine”. Once past there, it was “If I can just make it to 14th St” and so on till I got back down into the named streets of downtown.

Finally I made it and then realized that I was going to have to carry my bike back over the road to the PATH station. I dragged the bike up the stairs and back down, then rejoiced in using the elevators at the PATH station.

Once I got back to the Jersey side of the Hudson, I got back on my bike for the final ride to our apartment. Once I got inside, I went straight for water (I’d finished the 2 bottles on my bike). I also weighed myself and found that the bike ride had taken 7 pounds of fluid off. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get it back.

All in all, it was a great ride and I look forward to doing it again. Maggie and I have been doing an 8 mile ride to Liberty State Park and back, and I want her to at least try the West Side Highway ride to at least 42nd St. I’ll post here if we get to do that.

As an added bonus, I scored 4 tickets to a Yankees game that weekend versus the Cubs. Dad and Mary (that’s my step-mom) are avid baseball fans and were very excited to hear that we had gotten tickets. It was my Father’s Day gift to my dad. I think the only thing that could have made it better had it been the Yankees versus the Rangers, but alas, I couldn’t control the schedule of MLB.

We set all this up sometime in early May, so the countdown began and my excitement kept building. I think I was driving Maggie fairly crazy with it, but she understood. I had gone from seeing my dad every weekend to seeing him once in almost a year.

The only hitch of the trip was the morning of their flight when they got held up a security and missed their initial flight out of DFW. Luckily, there was room on the next flight and they only lost an hour. It could have certainly been much worse. So instead of meeting them at JFK and taking the Subway back to NYC and then the PATH to our apartment, I met them at LaGuardia and we took a cab to Times Square.

One of the things I try and have guests do while they are here is to enjoy a nice lunch of what I lovingly call “Street Meat”. It’s served by vendors all over the city and it’s nice and spicy chicken over rice with a side salad. They top it with “white sauce” which is just yogurt and mayonnaise and they also put some hot sauce on it if you want. There’s a particular vendor I really like that’s on the corner from where I work and I’ve always tipped them and they’ve always taken care of me when I needed it. On this day, they went out of their way to welcome my dad and Mary. They gave them drinks on the house and they also gave us all a taste of lamb (they normally add a small piece for me because I usually ask, but it was very nice of them to throw it in for my parents as well). We took our lunch and ate it at Bryant Park which is across from the other corner from where I work and I think they enjoyed it. At least, they told me they did.

Now that we had full stomachs, it was time to make our way to my apartment with the luggage. This wasn’t so bad and they handled the Subway and the PATH very well. To get home, I always have to pass through the World Trade Center site and they were moved when they saw it. The walk from the PATH station to the apartment is about 8 blocks and well, my dad has bad knees. So we had to stop a few times, but he really enjoyed the view of New York from our side of the Hudson.

Finally we got home and then they relaxed while we waited for Maggie to get home. Once she did, we made them dinner and then we took another walk to look at the city from across the Hudson. It as a nice night.

The next day was the day of the baseball game, so after breakfast and piddling around for a little while, we started making our way to the game. Luckily we got on the 4 train early on the way to Yankee Stadium because by the time we got there, the train was packed. We were running a little later than we expected and I thought we were going to miss the first pitch. As we were walking down the train platform, there was a fly over with F-15s which would have been during the National Anthem.

We got inside rather quickly and found our seats in the bleachers. Amazingly, we hadn’t missed the first pitch. The game was pretty good, although the Yankees killed the Cubs (none of us like the Yankees much). The best highlight was seeing Derek Jeter hit his first career Grand Slam. (Even seeing a Grand Slam is amazing, let along the first by a player you would have thought had hit one before.) We did have to leave the game a little early because dad was getting a headache from the kid sitting behind him constantly screaming. It was starting to annoy me too and make my head hurt as well.

So we got on the Subway and headed to Grand Central. From there we took a cab to Times Square, which royally ticked off the cab driver since it was like only 3 Avenues over, but I told him to shut it and gave him a generous tip to make it worth his while. Once in Times Square, we decided to eat at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. location there. It’s a Forrest Gump themed restaurant that was a tasty meal. After that, we decided to head to the Empire State Building and waited a couple of hours in line to go to the top. It was a nice view, but even being warm on the ground, it was still cool up there. I just wonder if it ever gets hot up top? We wrapped up the day with a cab ride home and everyone came home and passed out.

For Sunday, we went into the city and went on a Circle Line tour of Manhattan. We took the 3 hour tour that goes all the way around the island and we all learned a great deal of NY history. After pushing them hard for a couple of days, we decided to take Sunday a little easier and headed home.

Monday was their last day and we mostly spent it getting into the city and then the Port Authority Bus Terminal to catch a bus to the airport. I hung out with them and had lunch and then waited for them to go through security at the airport and then I started my way home on the bus.

I think a good time was had by all and it was a great visit but over way too soon.