When I was trying to decide how I was going to get to Boston, I realized that I should probably arrive a little bit early as in the past, arriving from Asia has given me terrible jet lag for about a week after returning home and so I figured I would need to arrive in North America about a week prior to the race.  I could have just chilled in Boston but I knew that New York was a major hub for airlines, I had a few friends living there that I would love to see and I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO NEW YORK.  I grew up an 8 hours drive from New York and never made it to visit.  There were a few times when I almost booked a flight from San Francisco for a weekend when I was living there due to cheap flight prices, but I never made it.  I was pretty excited and planned to just walk around seeing the sites for a few days.

I reached out to my friends living there and it turned out that almost all of them were out of town while I would be there.  It was sad, but I knew I would be able to find something to do.  The one person that was around was a high school/Waterloo friend who grew up in the same town as me.  Bud was around and even had a spare room for me to stay in.  He had to work during the day and was getting up early to train for upcoming bike races, so we didn’t get to hang out too much outside of the house, but we did get to catch up a bunch while at home.  It was great to catch up and compare our notes on competitive road racing vs marathon racing and prep.  I arrived in New York on Japan Airlines connecting through Tokyo.  I love Ramen so much that even crappy airport Ramen had to be had if I was in Japan.  Turns out the airport Ramen was actually really good and I declared the layover a success due to the amazing ramen.

Anyways, I landed in New York JFK and took the subway into town.  My friend lives up by 146^th street station so it was a bit of a treck to get up there, but luckily the A train goes all the way up there so I didn’t have to change trains or anything.  When I arrived, Bud and I chatted a bunch and then I went off to find some food.  Bud suggested a diner down the street that had great comfort food for a reasonable price.  He used the words “Cheap” but as I quickly realized, that was cheap for New York but not for me who had gotten used to SE Asia prices.

The next morning I really wanted to go for a run before heading out to explore and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go outside, outside in central park or on a treadmill as it was pretty chilly the last few days and I was already starting to get sick so was worried that an outdoor run without the proper warm clothes could make me even more sick.  I left the house with the intention of going the treadmill route, but by the time I made it outside it was actually rather pleasant, so I went back to the apartment dropping some stuff off and then headed to the subway which I would need to take to central park.

Normally I would have just ran longer and made the jaunt to Central Park on foot, but because the marathon was so close, Taper was in full affect and I was only scheduled for a 10km max which is how long the Central park loop is and thus I had to take the subway to the park.  Central park was honestly not as big as I thought it was based on my experiences of golden gate park, but it was still pretty amazing just the same.  I couldn’t stop smiling for some reason.  I was running through central park in New York city, surrounded by beautiful buildings, and I was running the Boston Fricken Marathon in less than a week.  I was in a great mood and the run was great.  After a quick shower and change I was back out of the house on my way downtown for some major sightseeing.  I was pretty hungry and had a few famous new york food stops on my list.  Looking at the map of the things I wanted to see, I decided to stick to midtown on the first day and head south the next day.

I decided to go to the original Halal Guys cart as I love Halal guys and it would be cool to see how they started.  They did have a cart, but also several support carts as well, so they basically had the entire corner taken over.  The food was exactly how I remembered it and I made sure to put tons of white sauce and only a little red.

After my belly was full, I walked over towards time square, Rockefeller center and then to the empire state building.  Rockefeller center still had their skating rink set up and I was all set to go for a skate until I found out that it was $25 plus rentals in which case I decided that it was not worth that kind of money.

I walked through a few stores like Nintendo and some souvenir places and got some photo ops at time square.

It was a bit of a culture shock after spending the last several months in Asia but I re-adapted quickly.  I made it to the empire state building and had decided previously that I would only go up one of the towers because they were each over $20 and they would all provide similar views of the surrounding areas.  I was trying to decide between the new one world trade center and the Empire state building, but decided on ESB because it was more iconic.

I am sure I will be back to visit one world trade center so I am not that bummed about it.  The view was stunning and it was a pretty clear day, so you could see the full surrounding areas.  This visit to new York finally made it clear where all of the burrows are and what people are talking about when they mention them, I had no clue before.

The trip up the ESB made it clear where things were.  After coming down, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do, so decided to head to one of the famous New York pizza places.

While I was walking, I happened across a Nike running store and decided to see if the New York store had any of the vaporfly 4% shoes that a lot of my running friends have been raving about.  They did not have them but when I asked the guy he said that the Brooklyn running company had jut got a shipment of the brand new color release and if I hurried they may still have some.  I called ahead and in fact they did have some and were even available in my size.  I really wanted to try out these shoes but was going to wait until I had a steady income again before taking the plunge, but with Boston upcoming and my chance to snag a pair right there, I decided to take the plunge.  This was $270 I did not add to my trip expense tracker and will let this just come off of the money I wanted to have left when I was done.  Anyways, I now owned a pair of $270 running shoes which is about the amount I spent per week in the previous few weeks.  I was excited to try them out but did not have a run scheduled until I arrived in Boston, so I guess the try out run would have to wait.

After leaving the running store, I was pretty hungry and decided to just go to a satellite location of Joe’s pizza which is one of the places serving up authentic new York style pizza.  There was one down the street so I grabbed a slice and then headed to the subway for my trip home.

The next day I had my itinerary mostly planned out in my head.  I took the subway to the east village and made my way over to Katz’s deli on the recommendation of a co-worker.  When I arrived there was no lineup as I have read can typically happen around lunch time.

I got to the counter to see what was on offer and thought I was reading the menu wrong.  $22 for a pastrami sandwich???  Looking around at the other tables, they all had pretty standard looking sandwiches, so I thought I was seeing things incorrectly.  Turns out, yup, a $22 plane old pastrami sandwich.  Mind you it was a good pastrami sandwich it just wasn’t worth the money.  Oh well, now I can say I had a Katz’s sandwich from New York.

After lunch I decided to explore the east village a bit and made my way over to the Tenement museum to check it out.  Most of the tours were full so I sat down and watched the free movie they had playing which talked about the immigrant and history of that part of town.  I watched for quite some time and learned a lot about the history of immigration in that part of town.  It was cool, too bad I couldn’t get on a tour.

After exploring the east village for a bit, I headed over to the water and decided to take a stroll along the East River.

Around this time I had talked to my mom and about a month ago my mom mentioned that our family dog Duffy was diagnosed with cancer and was given about a month to live.  He seemed to be doing really well and spirits were generally high, but over the past few days he had deteriorated quickly and they didn’t think he was going to make it through the day.  At 14.5 years old, he had a great life and around that time on the river my mom messaged me telling me they had just come back from the vet.  So I sat on the bank of the East River overlooking Brooklyn and had a good cry by myself.

Looked through my google photos of Duffy (It’s facial recognition works on specific dogs, crazy) and generally just had a little bit of reflection time.  I continued my walk south towards the tip of Manhattan.  I caught a far away glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and the continued on to the World trade center monuments.

On the way there I passed by the charging bull of Wall street and was far too lazy to try and jockey for a position to get a photo.  There were so many people and they were all trying to get into position to take a photo.  You can jsut have a photo of the bull with all the people to give you an idea of how crowded it was.

I walked down wall street and saw the New York stock exchange.  I was actually pretty surprised by wall street.  For some reason I imagined something more like Bay street in Toronto but it was more like a closed off coblestone old school narrow street.  Maybe I didn’t get the full glimpse, but the area where the stock exchange was located is like this.

I stopped in to the Federal Hall which is the site where George Washington was sworn in as President of the United states and also was used as New York’s first city hall as well as the first congress building.  However, that building was destroyed in 1812 and the current building was built in 1842 and was the site of the US customs house.  It was cool to see the indent in the floor where the ship captains used to line up to pay their duties and claim there inventory.  It is now run by the national parks service.  I am not sure why i generally glaze over most details and then decided to go into such detail for this building but I guess when I take the time to read the Wikipedia article when writing this blog you get more info.

I continued on to the world trade center memorials and looking around where the buildings came down, I tried to imagine was it was like on that day.  Buildings on fire, and then eventually a full collapse.  There were so many people around and other buildings etc, it is kind of surreal that such a thing happened.

I continued onto the oculus which is a really cool space.

That night was game 1 of the Boston Toronto playoff game and so I had found a bar back in the east side of town that advertised itself as a hockey bar and so figured they would be playing the playoffs but first I had a bit of time to kill.  I found a place nearby the hockey bar that had pinball, so I was going to head there but then my SF roommate Sara, told me to go visit her old coffee shop hangouts in SOHO.  I hadn’t walked through SOHO yet so figured it was a pretty good idea and Sara said that Steven was her favorite human being ever, so I guess I better meet him.  I hoofed it over to SOHO and immediately knew I was in the neighborhood when the shops started becoming much more boutiquey and high end brands.

The cars driving the streets also changed to much more expensive versions and the street itself changed to cobblestone.  I found the coffee shop and Steven was nice enough to comp my beverage and then we went outside to chat for a while.  He greeted each and every person that came into the shop and was indeed the nicest guy.

There was a really good looking girl in there who was ordering a grilled cheese sandwich.  Apparently she comes in for only the grilled cheese.  When she left, she said goodbye and then got into a chauffeured black escalade.  He told me that he had seen her come in a few times and one day he was down the street and in one of the shop windows there she was on a giant sign at the front of Victoria Secret.  That’s pretty much the closest I came to a celebrity siting in New York was this Victoria secret model who was incredibly attractive and very nice.  I had to make it across town to the hockey bar so I thanks Steven for the drink and headed back to the east village to Kelly’s Pub.

The game was on and they had the bar sound piped in for the leafs game despite other games being on, which was great.  Soon after sitting down three more leafs fans joined my corner and we had ourselves a little watching party.  The game did not go as planned but it was still fun to watch it with other leafs fans.  It was a little awkward because at that point I was not drinking and so I ordered a coke which was free refills, so I took up a bar seat for about 3 hours without ordering anything but a coke.  I could tell that this was the type of place that did not really want to cook food if it could help it, but would do it if it was ordered.  So I paid for my keep with some chicken fingers and fries.  The healthiest snack to prepare for a marathon!  After the game was done (The leafs lost) I jumped on the subway and headed back up to the place I was staying.  On the way to the subway, I decided to play around with some long exposure  photography which worked out ok.  This shot in an unedited attempt.

The next day was my last day in New York as I was taking the mega bus to Boston to meet up with my family!!!  I decided to do a bit more wandering despite having my bag with me, but it wasn’t so bad.  I started off the days wandering by taking the train downtown to the B&H superstore near Madison Square Gardens.

I bought a large majority of the electronics I brought on this trip from this store because it does not have any businesses in California and does not have to charge tax outright.  Yes I did claim this on my taxes IRS, yes I certainly did…………  The store is huge and they have this really cool conveyor belt system which brings the more expensive purchases directly to the cash register for you.  I wandered around there for way too long but eventually ended up buying a few things I needed during this opportunity to buy genuine products for reasonable prices.  I picked up a new gopro mount, some headphones and a hard drive as I realized that my SSD on my laptop would probably be full by the time I was finished with Japan.  (Side note, I currently have 2 weeks left in Japan and am sitting at 32GB free on my laptop)  It’s always good to have a tertiary backup of things since everything automatically backs up to Google photos).  Anyways, I really enjoyed B&H and will continue to shop their online into the future.  I walked around MSG

and the Pen station post office, then headed to the highline, which is an elevated train tracks that they have converted into a park.

It was right next to the bus stop so it was a convenient place to visit.  I also realized that I had not yet had any street meat and so I also set out to find some of that.  To my disdain the hot dog was boiled not grilled which is really a no go for me.  I love Toronto Sausage street meat the best and I haven’t had anything better that competes as of yet.

After enjoying my lunch, I headed to the bus and was on my way to BOSTON!!!!