Pub night in NYC

We left Philly with more than enough time to get to NYC. We are from Southern California, we know and understand traffic. It is a good thing too, or we would not have made the Mets game.

Original plan: take the NJ turnpike to the Lincoln tunnel. Search for parking for a while in Midtown. Take a subway out to Queens, watch the game, and then come back to Manhattan to party and spend the night with my college roommate Tyler.

Well, we did take the NJ turnpike to the Lincoln tunnel, and that is about it.

Everything was going great, then we got to the tunnel. Let me first say, whoever thought it was a good idea to put our biggest city on an island deserves a gold star. Top gun thinking Dutch. It took us an hour and twenty minutes to get from the turnpike to the toll booth. For those who aren’t familiar with NYC this means that it took us 80 minutes to go a little more than a mile. Meaning that we were going less than one mile per hour. Or, for those who like analogies, a man traveling on a motorized scooter, like a Rascal, could travel about 12 times faster than us. So we decided it was time to go to plan B, which sounds like the worst plan in the world, but it had to be done. Knowing that the subway ride from Midtown Manhattan to Shea Stadium would take 35 minutes we knew we needed a new mode of transportation. So plan B was to go through the Lincoln Tunnel (we had no other choice at this point) drive across the entire island, go up about 20 blocks, get on the Queensboro bridge, and drive 110 blocks through Queens to get to the game. We had about 40 minutes to accomplish this feat. It was the 6 o’clock hour on a week day. This is where my mom may want to stop reading because this is where, for the first time in human history, safety took a holiday. I popped in a special rocking mix, featuring some rocking tunes from some rocking bands such as AC/DC and Guns and Roses. Nothing pumps me up for the impossible quite like ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’. I came storming out of the tunnel, like those people rushing for the $30 DVD players at Wal-Mart around Christmas time. I immediately made an illegal left turn and ran 2 yellow lights. Bingo. The problem with this town is that a) there are a million pedestrians at 6 PM on a weekday (literally) and b) the landscape is quite distracting. But we don’t make excuses, we play like champions. I took a hard left on 6^th. This is where we realized something special was about to happen. An ambulance pulls right in front of me. Suddenly I was Bruce Willis in Die Hard 3: Die Hard with a Vengeance. I’m sure there is some law about the following distance behind an emergency vehicle, but we had to get to Queens, for the next few minutes we were like Rascolinov, we superseded the law. So we found our blocker and we were following him to the end zone, or at least until 50^th street where the ambulance turned. It was right about here where we spotted an ATM, because we were going to park at the stadium we had to pay for parking, but we had no cash because the Lincoln tunnel stole it all. So Geoff gets out in the middle of the street, goes to the ATM, I continue up the street. I couldn’t stop, but fear not, I had no intention of violating rule #9. He got the cash and sprinted up the street, he hoped back into the mini-van 4 blocks up from where he got out. Simply, heroic. A few questionable maneuvers later we end up on the bridge. Once we got into Queens it was smooth sailing. We hauled down Northern Blvd. and pulled into the Shea parking lot just in time. If I had to go from the Lincoln Tunnel to Shea Stadium at 6 pm on a week day in 38 minutes and I tried 100 more times, I am confident I would fail 100 times. We should commission someone to make a statue of our mini-van and put it on top of the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Geoff was masterful in his navigation, the finest wingman I have ever flown with, and I had a Zen-like focus it was almost as is the van and me became one. Something special happened that day.

Shea Stadium was the first stadium we went to that was pretty much just how we expected it. It is a little too big for the size of crowd they have and a little too plain. All the new stadiums are much more open and inviting. There are sights to see around the whole ballpark. Here the only attraction is the ball game – and it was the Mets vs. the Pirates. What a delight. The first half of the game was actually better than the box score will show. The Pirates starting pitcher, Duke, should have had a perfect game well into the late innings except for the two bonehead plays his right fielder made. I guess that is why they call it is a team sport. If I was Duke I would want Barry Bonds back in the Pittsburgh right field, because then you are guaranteed to have a great defensive performance day in and day out. My friend from college MacKenzie met up with us at the game. This was the first game we watched with someone else. We had friends in Anaheim and Houston, but no one got to sit with us. It was rather enjoyable because there is only so many times Geoff and I can debate the aesthetics of left-handed pitchers. Furthermore, MacKenzie was conscious enough to follow rule #2.

Remember at the start of this post where I said the original plan was to stay with my college roommate Tyler. Well that was still that plan. Even after I left my 8^th unreturned voicemail in 3 days. Because, well, Geoff and I did not want to sleep in our van in New York City and we couldn’t afford a hotel room, we are on a budget. Let’s get some things clear first. One, Tyler was my roommate for 3 years in college, kind of a long time. Two, Tyler was the first to agree to host us, this was because he was the first person I asked, back in February I think. Three, Tyler has our schedule and has been told in repeated emails and phone calls which days we would be in town. So I am thinking Tyler is in the hospital with something serious, like a missing testicle. We were however graced enough to have MacKenzie still with us, and her apartment at Columbia welcoming us. It was so great we may even stay there with Uncle Brian joins us next week. We went out to a couple of bars and had a splendid time. Right before we left to get on the subway Tyler called me. Talk about a day late and a buck short. Anyhow he was more than enthusiast to meet up with us. The more the merrier – that the attitude of a rockstar. I told him I was wearing coaching shorts, a free t-shirt, sandals, a Dodger hat, and I had not showered in a while; was this going to be a problem? He said I was totally ok, no big deal. We met up with him right outside of the bar. He was wearing black dress pants, dress shoes, a long sleeve button up pink shirt, no undershirt. Thanks Tyler for the fashion tip. But all sarcasm aside it was really fun hanging out with some familiar faces, both Tyler and MacKenzie. Tyler was in vintage Mobley Pub-night mode. And I know there are only a few people out there who understand that reference but take my word for it, it is a funny side of Tyler.

We still crashed at MacKenzie’s place and then got up as early as we could for the long haul out to Cleveland. It is just so weird to think that we woke up this morning in Manhattan and now we are in Ohio. That’s the life of a roadtripper.