Back in Town

I arrived back from New York Sunday night and now Saint John feels so small. The drive back went well, completed in about 12 hours. This is more than I can say for the trip down. We were held up for over 3 hours by a crash on I-495, the outer beltway around Boston because some damn fool took out the side of a bridge. Traffic was backed up for ten miles or more while emergency crews cleaned up the scene and a road crew put made repairs to ththe bridge railing. As a result of this, we arrived in Hartford at rush hour and lost another hour or so due to traffic. Luckily we had left Thursday night and started the day in Portland, ME.

Finally at the hotel in Freeport, Long Island (which I highly recommend, by the way), we took the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to Penn Station, under Madison Square Garden. It was already getting dark by this time, by the time we were done for the night it was 2 am and we where beat. We went to the observation deck on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, it would have been nice if someone had told us that you had to go through an especially intrusive security checkpoint first. I was worth that and the $19 buck they charge for admission, I now have 20 or so great night shots of Manhattan, and a cheesy t-shirt as a souvenir. One might even be worthy of an 8x10. We walked up 5th Avenue as far as the Apple Store on 58th, which is underground and has a glass cube with a glass elevator and staircase as an entrance. I drooled over the iPhone, which is still not available (legally) in Canada, and my fiance is now the proud owner of an iPod Touch (16 GB).

We walked all the way back to Penn Station via 6th Ave., passing through Times
Square. After a 20 hour day I now got to sleep for all of 5 hours before the model show the next morning.