I had the opportunity this week to go over and visit my cousin Sheri in New York. She was working over there and had a hotel room that she was willing to share and I thought it the perfect opportunity to get to hang out in a city that I really can't afford to go to on my own. She was staying at the Marriott in Brooklyn Heights which is only a couple of train stops into Manhattan.
I got into JFK on Wednesday night and took the subway to Jay street where the hotel is and hung out with Sheri. Thursday we got up and went to lunch near the hotel at a really good Indian restaurant. We got some banana appetizer that was excellent. It was breaded like a sweet hushpuppy stuffed with banana. YUMMY!
Later that afternoon, as Sheri slept before her work, I went into Manhattan and met up with the old roomie, Sal. It was great to see him for a few hours as we always seem to have a good time even when we're doing nothing of note. We walked around and looked at the windows in all the big stores, Macys, Bergdorff-Goodmans, Sacks, and Lord & Taylor plus walked over to Rockefeller Center. I was surprised at actually how small "The Rock" really is, it looks much larger on TV.
We were wandering through the streets of New York looking for a Lebanese restaurant but realized that we were going the wrong way so we just decided to find something as we walked and happened upon a Cuban restaurant. It was very good. I got the baked chicken special and we had a couple of fresh made sangria! Afterward we walked up to Rockefeller Center and treated ourselves to a dessert and some nice hot tea!
Thursday was when the mess began. The weathermen had been talking about a late Thursday ice storm that would be tough for the city to deal with so I made arrangements to be on a plane out of LGA early Thursday afternoon, a 1230 flight to be exact. I got a message early Thursday morning that the 1230 flight had been canceled because of maintenance so I made a decision to go to Minneapolis and back into Detroit. I raced out of the hotel, grabbed some money out of the ATM, got a Town Car and headed to the airport...where I realized that I had left my ATM card in the machine at the hotel!! I now had to manipulate all of the following on cash.
The airports in New York are famously bad about backing up and when weather is added into it all bets are off. I got to the airport and loaded the plane where we closed the door on time but sat for about 30 minutes before pushing back and going to the deicing pad. This is where we sat for three hours and two deicing attempts. Finally, we gave up and returned to the airport where the flight was canceled. I was able to write a check to the company for cash because one of the ladies had sold a good bit of snacks and liquor during her trip which was very fortunate and I thank her again for doing that for me. I was stuck and going on call and had to get back to Detroit. There wasn't anything going! Fortunately, one of the guys in my crashpad was also trying to commute to Detroit and I went back to his apartment to coordinate the next step. We both bought interline tickets on American (these are reduced fare tickets for airline employees to fly on other airlines, they are also called ZED fares). We checked the loads for the flights and realized that our chances of getting out were slim so we both began thinking about what we could do.
After a great nights sleep (which I needed as I have been fighting off a cold!) Todd, the crashpad mate, had a great idea. His family all lives in the Buffalo are and his Grandmother has a car that she is unable to use so he figured out that we could take jetBlue from JFK to Buffalo and then drive to Detroit which is what we wound up doing. Unfortunately in the rush to get out of his apartment, I left my phone charger and my phone died half way to Detroit. We finally arrived back in the Motor City two days late at about 130am Saturday morning.
It was a heck of a trip, I'm not sure I'll be going back to NYC anytime soon as that was a whole lotta drama! The fortunate thing is that we made it back here before Detroit gets hit with this huge storm that is coming our way this afternoon. At any moment we are expecting the skies to open up and the snow to begin to fall. The area is expecting around a foot of snow so getting back to base was of utmost as we will all probably be called out to get the airline back on its feet. BRACE!
So, I'm hunkered down in the hotel, BRING IT ON!
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