Trip 09: Long Island, New York... and travel!

So if you remember right, we flew to Seattle on a crazy long Friday, ran an event on Sunday, and flew out of Seattle on that Sunday on a red-eye flight to New York.  As you can imagine, the three of us were utterly exhausted!  We left Seattle just before midnight on Sunday, and arrived in New York's La Guardia Airport right around 11:30 am on Monday.  Then we took a car to our hotel on Long Island, which meant it was nearly 1:00 pm before we were able to collapse in our hotel rooms!

As you can imagine, I slept as much as possible.  I remember next to nothing about either the flight into Cincinnati or the one from there to New York, and the car ride to the hotel is just a long, hot blur.  There was much collapsing to be had at our hotel!  We woke up that evening to go out to look at our event site for the next day and to have a meeting to prep for the event, which wound up going until 11:30 that night.  Luckily, our wakeup call was at 6 the next morning - if it had been another 3 am wake-up call, I don't think we would have managed it!

The event went very well, but it was really hot again.  I was stupid and didn't drink enough water, and on top of my lack of sleep, this would come back to bite me later!  But we ran a great event, everyone had a good time, and once we packed everything up, it was L, D, and I leaving directly from the event to start the drive to Charlotte, North Carolina.

The only picture I have of Long Island - our hotel's parking lot.  Who would have expected so much green in  Long Island?

We left straight from the event, with the goal to get as far as possible before we ran out of hours for the day (we have to follow the same rules as truckers regarding our hours spent driving in a day or week).  This meant we were headed towards (dun dun dun) New York City.  At rush hour.  With a truck towing a sixteen-foot trailer.

L, being amazing, was driving the truck, and I was along with him as navigator and general extra pair of eyes for getting the truck and trailer through New York City.  At first, it wasn't too bad of a drive - the closer we got to the city, of course, the more traffic, but all in all not too bad.

We started to recognize the skyline as we got closer and closer - L really loves NYC's skyline, but I have to admit, while impressive, I'd rather look at mountains or natural scenery instead.  So we bickered about that for a while as we approached the tunnel into Manhattan...

Then disaster struck.  We were pulled over to be inspected before the tunnel - the inspection was fine and half-expected, so it didn't take us more than five minutes before the security guys let us go.  The problem was, the lane they had us enter for the inspection?  Wound up putting us into the wrong lane to enter the tunnel.  Which wound up putting us into the wrong lane to exit the tunnel.

Which put us in Manhattan.

In the truck and trailer.

In rush hour.

Seriously, it was awful.  I can now say I've driven past Times Square (who knew there's a GameSpot right next to it) and right past the Empire State Building, Parson's School of Design, and who knows how many other famous NYC landmarks.  I can't say I noticed much - I was too busy being terrified.  Seriously, no one knows how to drive in NYC.  And if you think the drivers are bad, the pedestrians are even worse - everyone in the city crosses streets like they're immortal and don't even need to look for cars.

Oh, and did I mention that some streets are autos only, no trailers?  And that you only find this out right before you try to turn into them, rendering most forms of navigation very unreliable?

Eeesh, things I never want to do again - that's definitely on the list.  L was a god of driving to safely navigate us through the city to the Lincoln Tunnel out of that hellhole.  I never thought that I would sing the praises of arriving in New Jersey, but good grief, I was so glad to put NYC behind us!

We drove along the New Jersey Turnpike for about another hour before we had to stop for the night, and I have to say, the roads there were definitely more my style:

After a quick overnight stop, we woke early the next morning to keep driving to Charlotte.  I was majorly impressed with the NJ turnpike - and we even listened to Simon and Garfunkel's "America" while we were on it!

However, just after lunch, the exhaustion and lack of hydration in Long Island caught up with me, and a muscle in my neck spasmed badly enough that we had to pull over and seek medical attention somewhere in Virginia.  Luckily, being my favorite state on the tour, Viriginia's doctors knew what was wrong, gave me some medication for my neck, fixed my electrolytes, and put me on light duty before sending me right back on my way with orders to keep myself hydrated!  D and L were really good to me throughout the whole thing, and when L and I arrived fairly late into Charlotte, the others let us sleep in as much as possible!

-Beth