Phase Three : New York (August 20)

We headed up to NYC early (but not too early) so we could check out midtown a bit and also to meet up with Jay for lunch. We didn't need to be in the Bronx until 7ish, so we weren't in too much of a hurry. We got there in early afternoon (I think) and came through the Lincoln tunnel...

Dank, dark, dirty and DAMN - it smells.

Sometime shortly after we got there, I saw this display in a window (I forget the store(s) but it was several windows long and quite awesome). The Republican National Convention was coming to town not long after we did. My friend Erin really loves this picture. I should have taken multiple shots to get the entire display.

We had some time before we met up with Jay so we tooled around the Rockefeller Center area where the NBC studios are.

And Radio City is right across the street.

After our lunch with Jay (which was beyond phenomenal - McHale's bacon cheeseburger is unbefuckinglievable) we went down to Times Square and I even bought a Snapple off of Rupert at the Hello Deli. If you watch David Letterman, you know what that means. If not, then never mind.

I made sure to take Mike into the Toys R Us at Times Square so he could check out the ferris wheel and the lego sculptures. I just loves 'em. Here's the Empire State Building, complete with Kong.

And Lady Liberty.

The Chrysler Building. These are all completely legos. Pretty cool, eh?

Then we headed up to Yankee Stadium... but we hit a bit of a snag. I was using my Rand McNally USA road map Atlas for directions, which is normally solid, even if it's several years old. Somewhere between Boston and Philly, part of the New York state pages became dislodged from the binding of the atlas. A page fell out. I folded it and stuffed it back into the atlas, or so I thought. Apparently one fell out at my apartment... of course the very one that had the northern part of NYC city details on it. Yep, that would be the Bronx. Where we needed to go. So we didn't know exactly how to get there. I had a faint idea of the general location of the stadium, so we took the bridge we thought was closest (in fact, the map ended at the bridge, as it actually "bridged" one page to the other). We tried to just keep going that direction, and for the most part we did, but we didn't see the stadium. You'd think something like that might stick out. But of course there are plenty of big buildings in New York Fucking City to block the view, and we were sure we were lost. Lots of people everywhere but nodoby you really want to ask. We took a random left turn (I was pretty sure we were east of the stadium) and passed a guy at a parked SUV/wagon who was leaning into the back of the car, and I swear he had a Post Office uniform on. I thought it was a mailman (score!), so I pulled over. It turned out to just be some random guy with dark blue on, but he was nice as can be, in the Bronx! He told us exactly how to get there and it involved a few turns (we weren't far, though) and we probably looked a little confused and he ended up *volunteering* to lead us there in his car and point us towards the last turn before he went on his way. Hells bells yeah! We were all kindsa shaking hands giving thanks and then we followed him... we stopped at a light a few blocks away, and he even GOT OUT of his car, ran back to ours to tell us the last turn or two, and then went back to his and we were on our way. We noticed that his license plate was actually from Rhode Island, which probably explained his courteousness. Hahahaha! So we were right where we needed to be and in plenty of time. The stadium hadn't even opened its doors yet. We were so early, we got a fantastic parking spot right near the exit of the lot we were in.

I took out my video camera (oh yeah, did I mention I was making a mini-movie? It stars Mike, mostly) and was filming the stadium from our parking lot and began walking towards it as I filmed... and then I stepped on this dead pigeon.

Big, fancy marquee. Steinbrenner spares no expense.

Stan is The Man. Right across the street from the stadium. And hey, it's Derek Jeter! And Derek Jeter!

Yankee Legends on the side of a wall adjacent to a super VIP parking lot. Pretty, eh? Kinda cool except for the graffiti-style names. Also right next door.

I love this shot, but it was NOT easy taking this picture. You'd think that it would be readily available for people to see, the big Yankee Stadium sign at the front of the stadium... well "front" is a loose term - I had to cross a street that was cordoned off and stand on a sliver of sidewalk next to a fenced-off block, all the while dodging police. Nobody really enters the stadium from this direction, unless you're getting off a bus - all the parking lots are on the other side. The sign is probably visible from the highway or something. We had to wait quite a while to get in and there ended up being large crowds of people at all entry doors, which confused me. There's no general admission. We found out why later. But the mass of wall-to-wall bodies, plus our funk from traveling all day and it being the middle of August - wow, we stunk.

We got in and went down to the lower level of seats to look around. Our actual seats were way up (the worst of the four). We went down towards home plate and Mike went up to a security guy (who was much younger than us) and told him "you mind if we go down and hang out for a bit?" and the guy, who was standing directly blocking the walkway, simply took a step sideways without saying a word. Heh. Here, the Yankees are taking batting practice - with quite a few Angels watching, incidentally. We sat for a few minutes, while I got nervous (I hate sitting in other people's seats) and then we took a walk around.

I like this one a lot - straight behind home plate with the lovely, simple, big NY logo in the grass. Angels taking batting practice this time.

Close-up of the logo from the same angle.

Yankee Stadium left.

Yankee Stadium right.

This is where our seats actually were - and a shot of the grounds crew prepping the field. It was getting a bit humid and rain was threatening.

Outfield skyline.

This is what the big push of people was about. I knew about this but didn't really know you could see it. It's the Yankee wall of fame thing that is actually called Monument Park, but I didn't know that. It has plaques of all the great Yankees legends who have their numbers retired - Babe Ruth, Micky Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gherig, etc. It opens when the gates open but closes 45 minutes before the first pitch. So if you want to see it, you gotta get there early and get in line... and it's quite a line. We walked around the concourse checking things out and walked past the line and saw signs (not knowing what it was) a couple times before we figured it out. Woops. We could have seen it had we figured it out earlier, but by then we didn't want to wait in the line. Also, while we were in the concourse, Mike stopped at the Designated Driver station to make a pledge to get a free Coke. Neither of us were doing any drinking.

During the game, Yankees in the field. It did rain just a little bit. More annoying than anything.

Derek Jeter up to bat, with his hand in the air like he always does, letting everyone in the world know he's not quite ready to be pitched to just yet. Arrogant bastard. :-)

The game was ok - the Yankees lost and didn't look so hot, so that was great! I don't think they even scored any runs. Ironically I think it was Jon Leiber pitching, who would get traded to the Phillies and become their most solid pitcher the next year. The stadium announcer sounded like he was about 95 years old and he was cracking me up... and then the stadium scoreboard and PA lost power or something and we didn't get any scoreboard updates at all (all the lights went out) or hear another word from the announcer after about the 6th inning. Strange. Nothing else seemed like it was off, none of the lights were out in the buildings nearby. I joked that there was electricity being diverged to the life-support system needed to keep the announcer alive. We took off after the game and got back to our car - but being that we didn't have our map and didn't really know how we got there - we had no idea where the highway was. We followed the traffic out of the lot and just went with the flow, entering the first major road we came to, from the right... and we needed to be in that very right lane of that road to enter I-95 south (which was just mere minutes away) - score! We got back to Philly about 1:30 am.

On to Baltimore...