theMediaman.com

Feeling mostly healthy now. Besides a side-project I’m working on for my screenwriting group I’m ready to start writing about my trip to New York City.  Probably a good idea as my memories are moving from the short-term storage to long-term storage, and that’s never a 100% copy.

Simone and I only had about six weeks notice that she had won two tickets to the Future of Online Advertising (FOOA) conference in New York City. Both of us were ready to go, but neither one of us had a valid passport. They had expired within the last two years. We did the paperwork as fast as we could, got the signatures from respectable professionals, Simone submitted her paperwork through a Receiving Agent while I submitted mine right at a Passport Canada office. While I was told that it would be sent out “May 16th”, I received it on the 15th… about three weeks after I submitted the application. Simone just got hers yesterday (June 25), over two months after she sent it in. She blames the fact that her birth certificate says “Quebec” while mine says “Manitoba”.

Regardless of the circumstances, she had to take the bus from Bay St. Terminal all the way to midtown Manhattan. I’ve taken many bus trips over the years (including one that rivals what Simone went through) but I’m a little happier zoning out and having quiet time than Simone. She has more reasons why the trip was unpleasant, but that’s for her to discuss. 

Regardless, Day 0 (June 5) had her hopping on a Greyhound at 10:30 pm. The plane tickets were non-refundable, so it would have been a waste of money for me not to take the flight. She travelled all night and arrived the next morning.

Since she was going to be travelling very close to her suitcase, we concluded that she should take the massive, monster luggage and we’d both fit our stuff in there.  That way, I could jump out of the plane and into a cab at the airport going both ways without having to wait for my luggage.  In exchange, I drove her to the bus terminal (both ways) and got the monster luggage on, and helped her when she got back from Toronto. I’m not sure how fair she thought it was, but it also ensured that nothing got lost en route and sent to Fiji.

Day 1: A fifteen minute walk (but $45 cab ride) away from the bus terminal was our hotel. Sadly, it was worth the money to make sure she got there okay. By the time I made it to the hotel ($40 cab ride from La Guardia airport) she was already sound asleep. Not surprising, since the hotel room could only be described as ‘cozy’.

By some weird coincidence, the artist behind Real Life Comics was in New York this month. I didn’t meet him or anything, but he’s publishing a really great series of comics around experiences.  I’m going to be referencing them a lot over the next few posts. 

Once she had woken up, we decided that we had to start taking advantage of the daylight. We’re in New York City, and we’ve only got five more days before we have to start on our way home again. We went over our short-list of “To-Do’s” and settled on going up to the top of the Empire State Building.  It was, after all, only one block north.

We first grabbed dinner at an Irish pub named after Jack Dempsey. Irish pubs in Manhattan are like Tim Hortons in Canada… you can’t help but trip over them. There were only a select few beers on tap, but some worth giving a try.  I had a Brooklyn Lager, and I would have one again if I saw it on tap here. Simone was impressed by the homemade veggie burger.  I was less impressed by the shepherds pie, but I’m not really sure what a “fantastic shepherds pie” might actually taste like.

After dinner, we got into a 45 minute lineup to go up the fabled building.  The interior is still decorated in the distinctive Art Deco style. From the top of the building, you can see the top of the city. Roofs of every building in Manhattan, including the ones that would later stun us with their height when seen from below. We both got a lot of really great photos from up there (coming soon). I made sure to toss a penny off the top, and we (again) had a conversation similar to the one later mimicked in Real Life Comics.

We had a conference to wake up early for the next morning so we went back to the hotel, squeezed through the door into our room, and went to bed.

(Hopefully subsequent posts will not be as long, since I’ll only be covering one day at a time.)