New York

I guess I'm keeping up with my two-months-behind theme, and then some. I am so good at this.

Brady left me and moved to New York in September. We decided a way to ease the pain of being apart was to have a 3-month plan: I'll fly out for New Year's, her birthday in April, my birthday in July and Halloween (our favorite holiday). This requires little effort on her part, so I may have to rethink the plan. After she'd come home to CO to be with family and friends for Christmas, we flew back to NY together.

I'd only ever been to NY once before, on the 2nd half of my honeymoon in 2009, so it was still a fairly new place to me.

We waited in the freezing blowing winds in a 20-min line for a taxi, then we were on our way to her apartment.

Chill out, Kirsten. It's just a taxi.

We went to dinner at a bar close to her apartment, then rested up for the long day ahead.

Brady's apartment was being rented to out-of-towners the evening of the 31st. We got ready that morning and had to get out and keep ourselves busy on the streets until 1:00pm the next day.

The first of many subway rides

We went to lunch at Zucca in Chelsea. We fueled up because we were in for a long afternoon-night-morning. It was delicious.

Brady said Diet Coke dehydrates you, which we needed for our night without a bathroom. And umm...we also needed a basket-o'-bread. And pasta.

We stopped at a market to buy some food and drinks for the evening, and then it was on to Times Square. I wanted to do the whole New Year's in Times Square thing, mostly to have a life experience or something--and I couldn't be in NY for NYE and not go to Times Square. Brady was sick and not super excited for the night ahead, but she sucked it up for me. We took the subway to a stop close to Times Square, and every street was blocked off. This was at like 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon. We walked to 47th, and the cops had barricaded it and were saying, "Walk up to 49th," so we did, and the same thing happened there, then at 52nd, etc., and each time they had just barricaded it off and were directing people farther up. We started running in hopes of getting through before the next street was closed, and we finally made it to one where we squeezed through as they were putting up the last metal fency thing. We had to maneuver through the streets at this point to get back to Times Square, and started to see mayhem up ahead. People were at a full-out sprint because cops were closing off the route, and this was our last chance. We sprinted in our seven layers of clothing, with a purse and a bag of food each, and after being herded like cattle by some cops, finally ended up here:

The seven hours that followed are kind of a blur. We became dark and cynical almost instantly. They played the same Taylor Swift song about 15 times on repeat, and then another Taylor Swift song on repeat, then Train warmed up for their performance for about an hour (I hate, hate, hate Train), then a bunch of other tweeny pop songs played in a cycle. It was pretty cold, but we'd brought hand warmers and layered up, so it wasn't too bad. A drunk guy peed in the street right in front of us. We were also pushed around a lot by a group of approximately 1.2 gazillion people with no sense of personal space. #1 rule: In Times Square on New Year's Eve, you have to stand your ground or you will get trampled like Mufasa. I thought of that occasionally, when I'd look up at The Lion King broadway advertisement right next to us. It was quite apropos. We eventually were leaning back with all of our weight on the people behind us because they had squished us so much that we literally couldn't move. I couldn't adjust my boot when my three pairs of thermal socks had cut off the circulation to my toes, so I just tried to wiggle my toes for those few hours. We'd set our bags of food on the ground (uphill from the pee stream, don't worry), and couldn't get them because there was no way to bend over. I knew I'd get run over if I tried to squat down to get them, even if there was enough room to do so. I nearly had claustrophobia-induced panic attacks on several occasions, and would have to look straight up and pretend I was in open air. Luckily, I was taller than most of the people around me. After three or four hours, we'd been leaning back and standing our ground long enough while the people in front of us had inched up, and I was able to grab our bags and fix my boots. We'd chosen snacks at the market that were filling but wouldn't make us thirsty, so we'd bought apple chips and tortillas, along with Diet Coke and bottled frappuccinos. I'm not proud of that, but it did happen. With three hours until midnight, we each grabbed a tortilla.

I don't even know how we wasted those seven hours, but we sang a lot, tried to decide what to do about our temporary homelessness, made fun of people, took pictures and did dance dares, one of which I caught on video:

We took a few photos and realized we had these faces for most of the evening...

Then, interviews and performances started up, and we were entertained/scared for our lives for the remaining two hours.

Brady just said, "I can't pull my hair out!" I had helped put her scarf on her, but she couldn't bring her arms up to pull her hair out from under it. I helped after I was done laughing.

Oh! And every hour, they made us practice the countdown as though it were the real countdown to midnight. Because I guess counting backwards from ten, even with a giant screen showing the number you're supposed to be shouting, is hard for some people. By 11:00, our 7th countdown, we were very much over it.

We started to cheer up in the last hour, when there were only minutes left until the New Year. They went through the rest of the performers, and finally the last countdown of the night was shouted as we rang in 2013:

Yeah, I'm a freak. Leave me alone. Brady didn't even know what Auld Lang Syne was when I asked if she knew it.

Times Square on New Year's Eve: I would never recommend it to anyone, but I'm really glad I did it, if that makes sense.

All we wanted to do at this point was curl up and die, but our evening of homelessness was just getting started. After we finally got out of there, we first went to this temporary Gevalia coffee location that was open around the corner. It was kind of an old warehouse that was serving free black coffee--which we still enjoyed because it was warm and caffeinated--and they had bathrooms and heat, so that was our first stop. We peed and then found outlets so we could charge our phones. We got about 5% charge before they told us we couldn't hang around in there. Everyone was stingy with their outlets.

Brady looked up 24-hour diners, and we walked to City Diner. We each had two cups of coffee and some greasy diner food.

We were there a couple hours before we decided we should move on, because it was slammed and there were at least ten people waiting for seats the whole time we were there.

Our next stop was Europan Bakery, which is where we should've gone first because they had better food and no one was there. Okay, so I guess the photo shows there were other people there, but it was still pretty empty. We stayed almost four hours, waiting for Starbucks to open. We got a chocolate pastry to share and more coffee.

We charged our phones at Starbucks and had our 4th coffees while we transitioned from delirious giggling to exhaustion and silence, then back to giggling. 

Brady told me my hair was having issues. As the photo reveals, I also had lost an eyebrow at some point, and could barely keep my eyes open.

Then we went to my favorite place of the entire trip: The Grey Dog. Augh. Love it. They had amazing food and great music and we got our 5th coffees.

We were in the home stretch now, and only had a couple hours until we could go back to the apartment. We wanted to get pedicures at a cheap place by her apartment (more to sit and get foot massages than anything else) but when we got there, they were closed for New Year's Day. We walked a little more and ended at Urban Outfitters. We wandered around the store aimlessly and finally found a bench inside, where we sat until it was time to go home. This is when we took our mugshot photo...

We were going on 29 hours here.

We somehow made it back to her apartment, collapsed in her bed and, because we're never able to just be quiet and go to sleep, we had our usual pre-sleep laugh fest. It was downright ridiculous by the 30-hour mark. Brady had started losing her voice and we were singing Taylor Swift, since we'd heard it only like a thousand times that night. Here's a taste of what we were like at this point...

When we woke up that evening, we ordered some Thai food. We ran to the grocery store for medicine and snacks and came back to a really angry Asian man waiting for us with our food. We stayed in and watched Mike Birbiglia specials until we went to bed again. It's safe to say day 2 was kind of a waste, but awesome nonetheless.

The next day, we got ready and decided to go get the best NY pizza at John's on Bleecker. We walked through the West Village and my life was made complete when I. got. to. see... THE FRIENDS APARTMENT BUILDING OHM'GAHHH!!!

We had wanted to eat at that restaurant (which would be Central Perk, but is actually called Little Owl. Whatever.) for breakfast, but the wait was too long. We just had to hold out for John's.

Everyone carves their name at John's, kind of like how you can sign your name at The Sink in Boulder. Brady found her initials already carved in, so she was good to go. They really do have fantastic pizza, by the way.

I'm following my tweets from the week as my timeline for this post, and apparently we went to another restaurant next, which is not at all surprising. Haha. I'm sure we walked around and saw some sights first...

This was at The Crooked Tree. We got mango nectar with prosecco, bruschetta, and then a pumpkin pie crepe to split.

This was when I realized living in NY would be detrimental to my life. Only the best restaurants survive, so you're pretty much guaranteed amazing food all the time. We walked on the cobblestone streets of Chelsea and through the Chelsea Market, which is really cool, and then we got pedicures. Next, we went to Brady's friend's basketball game, where we were the only spectators in a dimly-lit middle school gym in Alphabet City, a.k.a. Ghettosville, where just outside I'd seen a guy trying to open the doors of every parked car he passed.

Some highlights of the rest of the trip were Serendipity (yeah, like the movie), where we got frozen hot chocolates in an opulent room...

What's that...peanut butter pie?! Dunno how that got there...

We only finished half of what we ordered, but it was still worth it.

We walked through Central Park at night and saw the castle...

We went to Dylan's Candy Bar and got a hot chocolate with Stoli caramel...

The last day, I undid about 1/1,000,000,000th of the damage I'd done that week with a 4 mile run in Central Park. I wish I'd done that every day. But I had to, like...get up early and stuff.

I started to get a bout of the flu or some horrific thing, so Brady ordered breakfast to the apartment, and she continued getting caught up on Homeland while I was curled up in the fetal position next to her. She called a cab for me to go to the airport and took care of me until I had to leave.

We had so much fun. It was an awesome, eventful week and I can't wait to visit again.

I'll be back with some of My Favorite Things, workouts and other stuff tomorrow and/or Friday, so I can leave you with some reading material while I'm out of town this weekend. Don't expect to hear about that trip until April, though. :)

Love ya'll!

Kirsten Leah