Drive for the Cure Baseball Trip: NYC Part 2 Day One Recap

July 11

Beantown was phenomenal, truly our favorite city on the tour so far. However, it was time to head back to the city that never sleeps… good ole New York. We arrived in the Big Apple in the evening and were welcomed by our buddy Stephen who we went to school with. He was nice to allow us to crash in his awesome hotel room (I’ll get to that in a second). However, our first priority was to find parking in the city. For those of you have tried to drive a car in New York, you know what I’m talking about. And if you haven’t, well, you’re lucky. Anyways, we found a parking garage a few blocks from Union Square for only a cool $50/night (this proved to be a decent deal in NY).

After that, we walked on down to Stephen’s hotel that his job is putting him up in. It was the “W”. Yeah, that W. As we walked in, I immediately felt underdressed; my shorts and Aggie hat were not the appropriate attire, but YOLO. In the lobby there were lots of people enjoying drinks and conversations on couches that were probably more expensive than all of the furniture in my bedroom. We headed up to the elevator with Stephen as our escort and walked into the room. Also, this hotel is so nice that you have to have a room key card to ride the elevator. Tight. We got into the hotel room and it was sweet. Huge king sized bed, spacious floors, and a flat screen (this proved to be much better than our accommodations for the next night).

After we got settled in, we went on down to this organic hippy burger place that Stephen was a fan of, and our buddy Cody met us there as well. I was skeptical at first, but I have learned to not judge a restaurant by its name, or the type of people inside, or the weird things the waitresses were wearing… etc. This place was freaking awesome. We got a couple of pitchers of beer and each ordered a monster burger and shared fries. The coolest part about this restaurant was that you could order exotic meats for your burger, like buffalo or elk. Personally, I had the buffalo burger, which was a great idea. After we had our fill of burgers, fries, and beers, we began to head back to Stephen’s hotel. One thing about New York is that you have to walk. A lot. Which is good, because we had just stuffed our face and needed some time to move around.

As we were walking back to Union Square, Stephen was asking us what our plans were for the rest of the trip. Even though we had all been to the Big Apple before, we still wanted to go see Times Square and hangout in that part of uptown. So, instead of going the next day, Stephen suggested we went that night. We hailed a cab like champs and told the driver 42^nd and Broadway. Now, as I’ve said, we had all seen Times Square at night before, but at least for me it still blew me away. You could see the bright lights and hear the crowd from blocks away… and this was a Wednesday night at like midnight, but people were out in throngs. It is a mind-blowing sight. I’ve never been to Vegas, but I imagine TS is something like the Vegas strip, lighting up the night sky for miles and miles. We were captivated by the hundreds of humongous TV screens, thousands of people, and eventually the biggest Toys R Us we had ever seen. We thought, “what better way for a night cap than to go explore a 5 story Toys R Us?”… and that eventually turned into “better yet, let’s ride the Ferris wheel inside of this building.” That’s right. Four bros, ages 22-24 rode a Nickelodeon-themed cart on a Ferris wheel inside of Toys R Us in the middle of Times Square at midnight on a Wednesday. Needless to say, this was an exhilarating experience. We powered through all the strange looks and fought off the feeling of being creepy as we enjoyed the ride of our lives. This was definitely the best $5 we had spent on the trip thus far. Yall can judge all you want, but don’t knock it til you’ve tried it! A key note to this story is the fact that we definitely broke the weight limit on the cart, which was a mere 700lbs. I guess they don’t normally see four grown men ride in these things together very often. The good news was, save for a few sketchy moments where we were swinging around and heard some creaks and squeaks, we were all right. After the ride, we stepped through the uncomfortable air of awkward looks and whispers, but we owned it. Then, we explored the store a little more and relived the memories of some great toys we had growing up. I don’t know why in Home Alone 2 they used Duncan’s Toy Chest for the fun toy store scene because this place was so much better.

We then headed out back to the hotel and got some shuteye. When I say “we” got some shut-eye, I really meant that Josh and Stephen, who slept in the comfy king sized bed, got some shut-eye, while Nathan and I slept on the floor by the foot of the bed and tried fall asleep. And when I say “we” tried to fall asleep on the floor, I mean that Nathan fell asleep and hoarded the covers like an African farmer does with his crops when the rain doesn’t come. But, all in all, we had a good night.