NY cont'd... Is it the person or location?

Okay so you've all been anxiously awaiting to hear about my trip to NY. Just calm down! This girl is busy and I can't really expect the government to pay me to blog so I have to do it in my spare time, what is that, when I'm not working. I'm going to blog a few different times about my trip being that we packed so many different things into a little over 48 hours....

The trip started off at Dupont Circle where I waited to catch the bus up to the City that NEVER sleeps! I was way excited to get away for the weekend and to see Carrie and Carrie (McKee and Nygard) as well as an old college aquaintance (now friend), Katie. Yes, you just read that correctly. It was Katie, Carrie, Carrie and Katie. But let me tell my first adventure before I even stepped foot on the bus to head north. I was handing my ticket to the trip coordinator in order to get on the bus and all of the sudden I was doing a 360 and almost fell over. I look up to see what gust of wind could've been so strong to spin "Joe" (my backpack received a name b/c it was so heavy it was almost like carrying someone on my back) and me completely around and stumbling back a few steps before being able to catch my balance. But I see no hurricane, tropical storm, tornado or even a slight breeze. But what I do see is some woman storming off shaking her head. I can only imagine what was going through this 5'5'' woman's mind as she pushed me, and Joe, out of her way. What would give such a small woman (I'm using the term woman loosely by the way) the idea that she was justified? I'm gonna have to go with the fact that I must have looked like her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend that he just went back to b/c of her anger issues. That's the only thing I could come up with. It's either that or she was apparently having a really bad day and the two steps it would've taken her to walk around Joe and I just caused her way to much effort. The thing is, I DIDN'T EVEN SEE HER COMING.... I didn't even get a chance to get out of her way. There was no "excuse me miss" or "can I get by" or heck, even a "move!" would've been better than being made a tackling dummy. After I realized what had happened AND that she wasn't sorry, I thought to myself "I thought New Yorkers were supposed to be the rude ones. If it gets worse than that, I think I may just take the Metro back to Vienna."

Thankfully, it didn't get any worse. In fact, it got better. Being the tourists that we were, it was quite an adventure to get uptown, to downtown over to the Eastside and Westside. But the Carries were very good for the most part in figuring out what train we needed to take and how to get around... and when all else failed, we'd ask somebody. To our surprise, New Yorkers are very nice. The seem to be very proud to be from NY and were more than willing to help you take delight in their amazing city. I suppose that everyone in NY isn't like that, but as far as I'm concerned New Yorkers are A-OK in my book. Even a couple drag queens helped me find my way back to the Upper Westside after a long day of walking around in Chinatown. I got the full New York experience! I wonder if people were nice to us b/c we always had our map out and it was painfully obvious we were trying to make our way in this big city of theirs!! Either way, I don't care. They were helpful and nice and not once did I feel nervous when we weren't sure of our direction. Thank you New York, we enjoyed you and your residents!

More to come.... :)