I'm In New York

We take a brief hiatus from the Chile Memoirs to travel to NYC. The big apple. One of the first songs I ever learned was about New York.

"NYC. Just got here this morning. Three bucks, two bags, one me." and while I came with a little more than $3, the rest pretty much applies.

Traveling here was torture. For as much as I travel, I hate planes. I'd usually choose driving over flying but as that is most often not an option, I fly a lot. This trip was terrible.

I woke up at 4:15am after having finally fallen asleep around 1:30. At five Johnson drove me to the airport where I checked in and discovered I had a middle seat for a three and a half hour flight. No other seats available. I would be sleeping sitting up obviously. At 5:40 I boarded the plane behind a man who had to weigh over 400 pounds. "Please don't let me be sitting by him... please don't let me be sitting by him... please don't let me be sitting by him."

I was sitting by him. I scooted as far to the right in my seat to give him as much room as possible as he overlapped both our seats. The man's arms rested a good foot and a half above me on his belly. I tried not to act too uncomfortable since I figured he was probably self-conscious about his weight and Lord knows he had to have known that the seat was too small for him.

And I forgot my earplugs.

I'm anal about my earplugs. I sleep with them at night. I use them on planes. And I forgot my beloved earplugs. So the crying baby a few rows behind me was difficult to tune out.

After take-off, I lowered my traytable and put my pillow on it and laid my head down. About ten minutes later I got bonked on the head when the person in front of me reclined.

Damnit.

I scooted as far back in my chair as possible, looked longingly at the girl on my right who had the window seat and was resting her head against it, and leaned forward again, cocking my head to the side so I could fit it on the traytable despite the lean of the chair it was attached to.

I wonder if this is going to affect my abililty to hold my head straight up at the wedding I have to officiate tomorrow night.

I did sleep though. On and off and with major pains upon awaking. But we landed, disembarked and began the journey of navigating the subway which first started with a tram and then a train ride.

Three hours and a gallon of sweat later, I arrive at my hotel.

Good God this city is complicated.

But I met two lovely people who helped me get to my destination. One girl saw me dragging (literally) my suitcase up a flight of stairs at the train/subway station where I had already dragged it up and down two wrong staircases. She picked it up despite my protests and asked me where I was going. I told her what I thought was correct and showed her my hotel reservations.

"Oh no girl, you need to get off here," she pointed to the map and corrected my directions. Turns out she is a designer for NY and Company who is originally from Nebraska. What a god-send. "You would have ended up way out of town if you'd gone the way you intended," she explained.

Once out of the subway, I emerged to find three more flights of stairs in front of me. This is not exactly a handicapped or luggage accessible city. I sighed and lifted my stuff up the first two. I paused to catch my breath and look around. Where was I?

"Can I help you with that?" some guy in a suit asked. "Um. Sure." I didn't even fight it this time. I let the man carry my bag up the remaining flight of stairs. He then pointed me in the direction of my hotel and said good-bye.

New Yorkers are nice.

Their city sucks. But they're pretty cool.

No, I'm sure it's lovely. I'm just not used to it taking three hours to move 18 miles.

Traveling. Ugh.