spokesNspin

On Saturday, I drove to New York City.  Yes folks you heard it right.  I drove to New York City.  I would never dream of such an adventure on my own.  I have my friend  to thank for attempting such a crazy thing.

She had business there and said she had done it before.  So if she was willing to navigate, I was willing to drive.  What was going through the back my mind was “What the hell am I thinking?’

 The trip had a rather inauspicious beginning when I took a wrong turn before we got off the DC  Beltway and we drove for 15-20 minutes before it came to our attention. (Note: I was the driver not the navigator)

Here are my thoughts on the trip.

It was easier to drive in NY than I thought it would be.  No more difficult than DC and easier in some respects.  There is certainly more parking.

I would say it seems to be much safer to be a pedestrian in NY than in DC .  In DC cars rule.  In NY the pedestrians seem to rule.  I was surprised at the number of bicyclists I saw.

The aggressiveness and number of people on the street hawking services surprised me.  There was a Chinese Massage booth. As we walked by, the woman started to massage my back.  It felt really good.  I kept walking and she literally grabbed my shoulder and tried to pull me back to her booth.  She gave me the evil eye when I walked back past the booth a few minutes later.

I thought the futile honking was funny.  Cars would honk when there was no possible solution to the problem that had them stuck. What’s the point of honking?  But I loved it.  In fact, I loved it so much that I determined to make sure that I took the opportunity to honk at least twice before I left the city.  It was very rewarding.

It is most certainly an interesting place to watch people.  The number of languages  that one can hear while walking around is amazing.  The many variations of attire were also fun to look at.  Where do these people come up with such clothing schemes?

Here is a pic of me in Times Square.

It was a fun trip.  But let me tell you that up and back to NY in one day ain’t no picnic folks.  It rained for almost the entire drive both directions.  Fortunately we didn’t get rained on in the city.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 8:16 pm and is filed under Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.