I went to NYC and I only got mugged twice...

...and each time I got mugged, all the mugger did was force me to take some Mets tickets.

I recently went to New York City for basically 3 days.  I'm 37 and I have never been before.  I think it is the last major American city that I haven't been to yet.  The reason why I wanted to go was because Radiohead was playing at Madison Square Garden.  They are my favorite band and I have never seen them.  Since I knew I had the free time, I went ahead and bought a ticket back in March.   I got everything booked and this was my first view of NYC.

I got checked i to my hotel and relaxed a bit.  I stayed in the Chelsea neighborhood which is a really nice neighborhood.  Traveling exhausts me so I have to have an hour of downtime or so whenever I get somewhere.  In this case, I had 2 hours of downtime which included a nap.  The 1st partial day in NYC was basically me wandering around, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, looking up at the buildings, and pissing people off.  BTW, you can tell the difference between a NYC local and a tourist because the NYC locals are wearing headphones to avoid talking to people.  And when I travel, I tend to wander just because I can find some cool stuff by walking everything with little to no agenda.  I did find some pizza, beer, and Times Square on the first day.  I did do some bar hopping and talking to various people.

People sitting outside in the rain in Times Square.

I didn't know I needed a stuffed, talking poop emoji until I saw this.

Time Square.  It is as crowded as you think it would be and 90% of the people are tourists.

I wonder if this movie is coming out soon or not.

The view of the Empire State Building from my hotel room.

Yep, I had a black and white cookie.  Actually, they aren't anything special.  Just big sugar cookies with black and white icing.

The 2nd day started with an early lunch at 2nd Ave Deli.  They are famous for their pastrami so I had the pastrami sandwich.  I'm not a fan of pastrami.  But the mustards, yes that was intended to be plural, and the cole slaw were fantastic.  Then, the day of walking began.  I walked everywhere.  I walked from 2nd Ave Deli to Grand Central Station to the Chrysler Building to the Rockefeller Center and to the flagship Apple store on 5th Avenue.  It was hot and humid and so many people.  I did get the Lego New York City architecture set though.  BTW, that Lego store has a 20% markup since it is in NYC.  That sucks.

Potato pancake on the left also was awesome.

I like taking pictures of different things.  This is at Grand Central Station, but this is above the signs and you can see it is extremely dirty up there.

30 Rock

Take a guess at which one of these is my favorite.

Resistance is iFutile.

Next up was my first trip on a New York subway.  I ended up taking it from midtown Manhattan to Chelsea Market.  That place was really cool.  IT is an old industrial building with cool architecture that has been converted into a bunch of shops, bars, and eateries.  Next was a wander around the High Line.  Basically, it is an abandoned elevated railway that was converted into a park.  It is really, really well done.  There are a few bars and restaurants so you can stop and have a beer or two while people watching on one side and a view of the water on the other side.  There is also an extremely creepy statue of a life sized man in nothing but his underwear in the middle of it.  Some people would call it art, but I definitely would call it "art".  There were several people trying to figure out whether it was real or not and yes, it is a real statue.  I really like Chelsea and the Meatpacking District.  Both were more laid back, less crowded, and calmer.  If I had to live in NYC, I would probably pick one of these two areas.

Cool lights in Chelsea Market

 A little splash area on the High Line

My turn in the splash area

I told you it was super fucking creepy

Lone saxophonist

The High Line is really well done

Tuesday night was the main reason for my trip to NYC: the Radiohead concert.  I do not recommend walking 9 miles in a day and then standing 4 hours on your feet in the GA section for a concert.  I'm too old for that shit.  I really wish I had a seat, because honestly, I was way too tired to really enjoy the concert.  Radiohead put on a great show and they played a lot of my favorite songs of theirs, but I was simply exhausted.  I wish I could have enjoyed it more.

I don't know why I try to take pictures at concerts

Wednesday was a trip to lower Manhattan.  The first thing of the day was going to One World Trade Center.  It was cool to see the memorial pools and the grounds are really nice.  I spent awhile just walking around and taking pictures.  After that, I went to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.  And that's all I'm going say about that because I can't talk about it.

Look at the little tiny moon

North Pool

The Lower Manhattan tour continued down to Wall Street and the rest of the Financial District.  But that was after a stop for lunch at Pisillo Italian Pananis.  I even stopped for awhile to read a book, 1491 to be exact, in Bowling Green Park.  This was the final realization that there are people everywhere in NYC.

St. Paul's Chapel

The line to get a picture taken with the Wall Street Bull's balls

My picture with the Wall Street Bull's balls

3 birds of Bowling Green Park

More wandering led me to Hook & Ladder Company 8.  This is the FDNY fire house of Ghostbusters fame.  Unfortunately, it was being renovated at the moment.

On the sidewalk outside of H&L 8.

Wednesday night was dinner somewhere but I also went up to the top of the Empire State Building.  In NYC, there are 3 main observation decks: One World Trade Center, Empire State Building, and Top of the Rock.  They each have their pros and cons and I decided to do the ESB because I could see it from my hotel room, King Kong, and it was the most central of the three.  The line to get to the top wasn't that bad.  I think it took about 45 minutes which isn't bad for a major NYC tourist attraction.  However, the top was very, very crowded since it was sunset.  I can't really imagine any more people up there, but I'm sure there have been many more.  The views were fantastic though.

The interior was very cool art deco

Facing east

Facing northeast

Facing north.  That tall, skinny building is 432 Park Avenue and I think it is hideous.

Facing west

Facing south

The last day in NYC was the a run around Central Park.  I wanted to do at least 2 runs, but that didn't happen because of needing to recover in the mornings from the night before.  Man, I can see why Central Park is the crown jewel of Manhattan.  It is huge and gorgeous.  Lots of wandering trails and paths everywhere.  You could spend a week exploring all of Central Park, but most of the more famous scenery is on the south end of the park.  I ended up running about 4 miles, but it was a slow 4 miles because of the humidity and me gawking at everything.

With just a taste of New York in 3 days, I enjoyed it a lot.  I'll be back for sure.

Midwest Road Trip

My adventures took me to Illinois & Wisconsin in early July.  My great aunt's 90th birthday party was the weekend of July 4th and that was the impetus for the trip.  I ended up leaving Denver on the morning of July 2nd and drove straight through to Illinois is a single day.  Luckily, I have an iron bladder and it was by myself so it took about 13 hours to drive the 850 miles there.  The drive was fairly boring for the most part.  A lot of flat land between Denver and Illinois.  There were a few nice places, but for the most part, not much to say about the drive.  I did get caught up on a lot of podcasts though.  My favorites are Stuff You Should Know, Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project, and Cool Tools.

Pretty much the entire time in western Illinois was spent with family.  There were a lot of people I haven't seen in decades.  Of course, they recognized me, but I didn't remember meeting them when I was 5.  It was good to catch up though.  The cool thing was that the childhood home of my grandpa and great aunt was just down the street.  The current owners had offered to take a look at the house.  The house had changed a lot since the 1940s, but it was cool to see the room that my grandpa and great aunt slept in as a kid, and the stories that came with it.

In true farm fashion, there were cows in the barn.  And it smelled like a farm, too.  Two of the cows were friendly but 1 was very standoffish.  The cows even had an air conditioned stall to help their coats get thicker.

The barn had 2 stories.  The bottom floor was normal farm stuff.  On the top floor was the hay loft but it was a basketball court.  This was really cool to see.  Also, we found a portrait that my grandpa had made of my great aunt when he was about 6 years old.  She commonly goes by DP and this is my grandpa's rendition of her.

Barn basketball court

After seeing this group of family, I ended up driving to the middle of Wisconsin to see my aunt and uncle.  Along the way, I had to stop at New Glarus Brewing and sample some of their fine beers.

New Glarus Brewing on a nice Wisconsin afternoon

Once I got to my aunt and uncle's place.  They had a new addition to the family.  The day prior, they had picked up a Great Dane mix from a rescue.  Over the course of 2 days there, he really opened up and got a lot more comfortable around everyone.  Also, while in Wisconsin, you have to do two things: beer and boating.  Lots of beer was consumed and we even went out on the lake.  This was the first time that I got to drive a boat and it was fun.  After the boating, we got back to the family's place and drank more beer.  At some point, it was decided to go pick some raspberries and eat them with ice cream.  We ended up getting over a pint of raspberries and they were delicious with some vanilla ice cream.  I really need to get a raspberry patch in my yard.

He finally was named Bowser

So delicious

Next up was a drive to Chicago to visit 2 of my cousins.  The first order of business was a Cubs game.  I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I grew up in a family of Cubs fans and I had never been.  Well, that changed and since this is very likely my only time at Wrigley Field, I sprung for some nice seats.  There was a 90 minute rain delay and then the game went to extra innings.  At that point, it was approaching 11pm and I was exhausted, so my cousin and I left early.  Unfortunately, the Cubs lost 4-3 to the Braves.

Friday was a trip to the Museum of Science & Industry.  They have an exhibit currently called Brick By Brick which is a bunch of Lego models put together by a master builder.  I'm a huge adult fan of Lego so this was a must see.  In addition to the Lego exhibit, they had a German U-boat from WWII on display.  It was quite impressive taking a tour of it.  It was extremely cramped and the conditions that those sailors lived in was not pleasant.  A couple of other cool things was a Tesla coil and a model train set of Chicago.  I highly recommend the MSI if you are every in Chicago.

Model train set of Chicago

Lego Golden Gate Bridge

Lego International Space Station (aka Izzy according to Seveneves)

Lego Egyptian pyramds

German words are funny

U-boat

Tesla coil

Astrocow!

Weird bicycle called a Bicymple.

Friday consisted of dinner with my cousins at The Purple Pig which is my favorite restaurant in Chicago.  I've randomly met strangers that have mentioned Purple Pig before.  The food is incredible.  It was the first time that I ever had oysters and first time I ever had bone marrow.  Both were good.  Saturday consisted of meeting up with a couple of friends for a street festival.  The one thing I really liked about my 2nd trip to Chicago is seeing the neighborhoods.  There are a lot of great neighborhoods around the city that have restaurants, bars, parks, and shopping centers.  It creates a nice community feel and you don't have to travel far to enjoy things.  I was told that there are lots of street festivals during the summer and my cousin said that there is at least 1 street festival within walking distance of his place during June, July, and August.  After that, I met with my friend Shannon whom had tickets to the Sting+Peter Gabriel concert.  The show was great because Sting and Peter Gabriel were on stage together for about 2 and a half hours.  Sting would play a song, Peter Gabriel would play a song, and then they would collaborate.  There was no opening act and it was truly a joint show between them.  Some of the best parts were when Sting would play a PG song and then Gabriel would sing a Sting song.  They had a total of 14 people on stage and the show was excellent.  On the way out, we saw a literal clown car, too.

Shannon and I

Sunday was a more relaxed day with hanging out on my cousin's sailboat.  We took it out on Lake Michigan for a quick ride.  I can see how sailboats are nice because it was a nice, relaxing ride on the waters.  A brewery trip on the ride home and then grilling up brauts and sausages at my cousin's place capped the weekend.

I left Chicago early on Monday and drove to Omaha, Nebraska.  I had the time and I would likely never go to Omaha again so why not spend a day there?  Downtown Omaha is kind of nice.  There are old buildings with cobblestone streets with bars, restaurants, and shops.  On Tuesday, it was a trip to the Omaha Zoo.  This zoo and the San Diego Zoo go back and forth between being ranked the #1 zoo in the US.  It was a good zoo.  Some of the habits were very small though which is a bit depressing.  For example, the bear habits were really small in my opinion and they had the polar bear in the 90* heat of Nebraska.  The sea lion habit was small as well.  Some of the habits were great though.  I would recommend the zoo.  Before getting back on the road, I had lunch at Orsi's Italian Bakery & Pizzeria.  That is highly recommended for some authentic neighborhood Italian pizza.

Flamingos!

Lemur

Monitor lizard, I think

Construction worker in his natural habitat

Meercat

Peacock, aka the popcorn disposal serviceman

Tarantula, haha, made you look

Fish at Gene Leahy Mall in downtown Omaha

The greatest thing to see while walking around in the heat.  I'm not going to admit how long I stood there.

The trip from Omaha to home was unexciting with more podcasts.  I now know that once you are 80 miles from Denver, you can see the mountains again.  Oh, the drive from Chicago to Omaha was a disaster because I couldn't time my bathroom breaks with gas stops and food.  I think I took 7 stops in that 8 hour drive.  On the 8 hour drive from Omaha to Denver, it was perfectly timed with getting food and going to the bathroom only when I stopped for gas.

Well, that was my 11 day road trip to Illinois and Wisconsin.