Start Spreadin' The NOOOOOOZE

Ok, so we have this trip planned since Christmas for a trip to New York City to see the New York Yankees. I am not much on baseball, but I figured it would be a good excuse to go up to the Big Apple and hang out in Manhattan for a few hours, eat some good food, maybe take in a few sites, but some of the fake designer purses, and then go to the game. So, I decided to go with my father-in-law, my wife's uncle and his 2 sons, and a friend of the family.

My wife's cousin planned the trip. We had the flights, hotel, and game tickets booked. Thursday night before we were to leave the next morning for our 6 a.m. flight to NY, someone actually looked at the tickets. Guess what.... Yep, the tickets were for the wrong day. We were planning on being in the city for May 4th and fly out on the 5th. My wife's uncle then said, "well, we might as well not go if we can't go to the game. Why don't you see how much damage it will do to cancel the trip." Well, of course, I am thinking, "Hey, I didn't set up this mess. My intent was to go to New York and the game, if I don't get to go, then technically, I don't owe anything." Of course, I probably would have paid anyway to keep from starting a family war.

Well, we ended up finding out that it would be just as expensive to cancel the trip as it would be to go. So, we go online and find some tickets which were not as good as the ones that we were holding (behind homeplate). These were located somewhere near the top of the Empire State Building. BUT! We had tickets to the game. So now what with the existing tickets? Well, I tried to sell them on a 1 day auction on E-bay.

Ok, so now we are set. We decide to leave for the airport at 5 a.m. for our 6 a.m. flight, as my wife's cousin only lives about 10 minutes from the Nashville airport. Upon arriving at the airport, we discover that it may be the busiest day of the year for this place. My wife's cousin assured us that he had "never seen it this busy." We got checked in ok, but there was a little bit of a traffic jam at security. The lady standing at the main security gate said, there is less waiting around the corner. Yeah, by about 4 people. Now I have been on some tight schedules before at airports with security, but it usually isn't a big deal because you just run to the plane. Oh yeah, I forgot that 2 of my fellow travelers were rather large people that aren't running anywhere. Fortunately we were flying JetBlue which was kind enough to wait on us because they knew that we had checked in already. Everyone got on the plane without breaking a limb or having a major coronary.

The plane was very nice. I had never flown JetBlue, but was really impressed. There was plenty of leg room. The crew was very friendly. They also had Direct TV and XM radio on the flight at no charge.

We got into JFK airport at our scheduled time and after some direction were able to make it to our hotel room in one piece.

More to come on our day in Manhattan and all things NYC...

Till next time...
J.