Posted on January 18, 2010 - by admin
NYC and Connecticut Trip
Marlyse and I took our annual trip to New York City and combined it with a trip to the ski slopes and visiting family in Hartford, Connecticut. We have learned how to navigate throughout the busy city but this time there was a bit of a twist. I had my six foot snowboard bag where I also stashed all of my clothes making this bag close to 50 pounds. Marlyse had a big camping bag where she somehow was able to make it a carry-on!
We arrive in NYC and trying to cut costs, we take the local bus…with a snowboard bag and huge backpack. The drop-off is in the middle of Harlem where we have to find the subway. Because Harlem is a very active neighborhood, there are tons of cops everywhere. I think around every 15th person was a police officer so I felt fairly safe walking throughout crowds with an awkward six foot long bag! Made it to the subway train and we get to our hostel. Our hostel room ends up having its own bathroom so it seemed like it was a hotel room, not a typical hostel with either a shared room or a shared bathroom.
Next, we begin our trek to west midtown to find where the New York Dream Center is passing out food and jackets to the homeless. We are walking in the general area where we should be at but there are cop cars, fire trucks and ambulances everywhere in the streets! Focused on finding where the NYDC stationed its food table, we see a guy handcuffed with around 10 police officers surrounding him. Later, we find out there was a shootout in the streets! We must have missed that by minutes. We walk for an hour going a block in each direction of the coordinates we were given and still no luck in finding it.
We just about give up searching when we finally see a table with food on it and around 10 homeless in line. Come to find out, the shootout made the NYDC van take an extra 45 minutes to get to its destination. Marlyse and I get to know some of the staff as well as help pass out food and jackets and then one of the staff members invites us back to their dorm after we were finished. We actually had no plans because we wanted to hang out with the NYDC as much as possible while we were there. So, we load up in their van, go back to their dorm and get to know 10 of them that were there at the time. Later, we all went over to the pastor of NYDC’s house where they were having a party due to some people leaving and some people joining. It was great to see a similar ministry to the TBDC and meet people with parallel passions and desires.
Friday early morning Marlyse and I walk through freezing temperatures to the train to take us to Grand Central. It always looks like a shorter distance on the map! It was a 30 minute hike to get to the 1 train! We get to Grand Central and get train tickets to New Haven, CT which took 2 hours. Then we rent a car and drove another 2 hours to Mohawk Mountain for me to snowboard and Marlyse to learn to ski. We got on the slopes at noon and stayed till 4. All schools let out and the place was flooded at 4 with tons of kids so we decided it was time to go! Drove an hour and got to Marlyse’s cousins house.
This family has three very energetic kids that want to do everything all at the same time. The also all want to talk to you at the same time and will continue repeating themselves until you’ve caught all of their stories, questions, comments or what game they want to play. While we were there, we went to O’Rourke’s Diner which has numerous combinations of eggs, omelets and pancakes. We love finding unique/local places to eat when we are out of town! Then we went to the Gillette Castle otherwise known as the Sherlock Holmes castle. We also played a lot with their cat and tried to get it interested in Catnip!
Early Sunday morning we leave Hartford and head towards New Haven all to find out the car rental place isn’t open. I drop Marlyse off at the train station with our stuff and I return the car followed by a mile run to the train station so we don’t miss our train. We missed our train. Our goal is to be able to attend the NYDC church service that starts at 10:30 but we’re in another state! After being late to the train station, navigating through NYC’s subways then hiking to the theatre near Union Station WITH all of our gear, we made it about 10 minutes late!
Being able to be there was important to me. I wanted to experience as many different aspects of the NYDC as possible while we were there this year. Marlyse and I made quite a few connections that will turn into long distance relationships. For a ministry just recently starting four months ago, we had a lot of information for them to help them with their process since we were in the TBDC for six years.
After dropping off all of our gear at Astor on the Park, the hostel we’re staying at, we jump on a train towards Brooklyn. At this point, it’s a drizzling, cold and wind blowing day. We get to experience it all! There is a lot in Brooklyn that we’ve been missing. While we were walking, we saw a few people coming out of this unlabeled warehouse. Curiosity made us want to see what it was. It was a huge warehouse for wall climbing and tons of people were in there! That was the find of the day! After seeing that, it made us wander what other warehouses full of surprises have we walked past.
The final adventure of the night was going to an indie movie theatre that also showed live shows and live bands. This place is called BAM and I wish they had something like this in Tampa! Monday morning, we wake up, get breakfast then walk through Central Park for about an hour. Instead of trying to navigate through all of the public transportation with all of our gear, we pay the fare and get a taxi to the airport. We’ll see you soon NYC.
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