I Heart NY, Part 1

I have a brother, AJ, who plays high school baseball and is an outstanding third baseman. As anyone who knows baseball will tell you, once you hit a certain age and show a fair amount of talent, you'll want to transition into playing on a travel team (we call it “travel ball”), which caters to a more upper echelon type of player. Travel ball is pretty intense and can get a little cutthroat at times, but the level of competition affords the players valuable game time experience and prepares them for the challenge of playing at the high school (and, hopefully, college) level, which is definitely a good thing. And, as the name suggests, you get to travel, and travel you do, mostly in the summer time, which means that the destination of many a family vacation is determined by the baseball gods. Nine times out of ten, you end up in some bizarre, BFE-type locale (Joplin, MO, anyone? My brother’s Joplin assessment: “Fireworks, sex shops, and boredom.” So sorry, Joplin.). But then there are those glorious moments when travel ball takes you somewhere fantastic, and a few weeks ago, we were finally dealt a winning hand when AJ’s team qualified to play in the Don Mattingly World Series, a prestigious tournament set to take place over seven days in…Flemington, New Jersey!

I know what you’re thinking: Flemington, New Jersey? Really? Sounds…awesome. To that end, I would say that your sarcasm was not only well placed but also very warranted. It’s completely correct to assume that no one would find the prospect of spending a week in Flemington thrilling. The thought that I would be forced to spend my vacation there was horrifying, especially since there are only two things worth noting about Flemington: 1) The Lindbergh trial was held there, oh, I don’t know, a million and a half years ago, which also happens to be about the time it stopped being interesting, and 2) There’s a bunch of pharmaceutical research facilities in the general vicinity (which is not at all riveting, but would explain the multitude of two-headed dear prancing along in that neck o’ the woods). I was all set to bring the serious hate to the Flem, until a little pre-trip research revealed that, miracle of miracles, Flemington was only an hour outside of Manhattan! What once sounded like yet another shaft out of a summer vacation at the hands of Mother Baseball instantly became our ticket to finally (FINALLY!) getting to explore NYC. Needless to say, I was very excited. It was like Harry Potter levels of excitement - times a thousand. Plus five. Squared.

Once New York came into the picture, the prospect of having to tough out a few days in Flemington seemed far less odious. My brother and his teammates were told they’d be flying separately from their families and that once they got there, they’d be staying with host families, which was the second piece of good news: Without having to cart him around to the gym and the batting cages and meetings all day long, our time was more our own than it had been on any baseball-related trip ever. With that in mind, we started planning our great New York adventure. The trouble with that, however, was that none of us really knew anything about New York City. Where do we want to stay? What do we want to do? How do we exist in Manhattan without looking like total rubes? Those are all legitimate questions. Because you don't mess around in New York. Or so we'd heard.

I wasn't overly stressed about the lack of info, though. Rolling out with a few maps and a suitcase full of light layers rarely freaks me out. That kind of vagabond vacationing just so happens to be my family's signature travel style, and I've been flying by the seat of my pants in new places for years as a result. Plus, I like to think that I'm a fairly openminded, adaptable gal, both of which are favorable attributes when exploring an unknown city. I was still slightly troubled by the last minute nature of the trip, though. Since we were all hesitant to sign on the dotted line when we thought the tournament would tie us down in Flemington, it was pretty late in the game when we started getting the essentials in place. I think we ended up booking our flight two days before we had to leave, and our hotel wasn't locked down till around eleven o’clock the night before we left. I don't like to be rushed, and you really can't be more rushed than that. I was still excited though. I mean, it’s New York City. It's the capital of the world. Fuhgeddaboutit.

We flew out of LAX on a Saturday morning. The first leg of the trip, from LAX to Las Vegas (where we’d pick up our connecting flight to JFK), was lovely. I had my traditional airplane beverage, ginger ale, and a purse full of tabloids – all was right in my world. Our connection was smooth, not too much of a layover. Well, enough of a layover for my mom to convince me to play $5 in an airport slot machine, which I promptly lost (Can someone tell me what’s fun about slot machines? I don't get it. Forgive me for being so limited.). Anyway, I would say the first half of the flight to New York was fine. They played “Shrek the Third.” There was minimal turbulence. I had another ginger ale and ate some pretzels. Life was good.

That's when things started to get hairy. Inexplicably, I began to feel…woozy, I guess is the right word. I got that cold, tight, fizzy feeling between my stomach and my throat. I started taking short, shallow breaths. I got sweaty and became unnaturally pale. I’d never felt like that, to that extreme, on a flight before, and that’s why it never occurred to me to take a Dramamine. Which obviously I should have. Because obviously, in my old age, I’ve become pretty weak in the motion sickness department. What made it even worse was the thought that my trip to New York was starting out so unfavorably. I get a little dramatic sometimes, especially when I’m feeling gross and panicked, and in my motion sickness-addled brain, it felt like horrid overshadowing of things to come. It didn’t help that once we landed, we taxied around the tarmac for what seemed like an eternity when what I wanted most in the world was to get as far away from the plane as possible. I was so out of it by the time we deboarded, got our luggage, and made our way to the taxi line that I couldn’t have cared less that we were in New York. I was miserable, and all I wanted to do was get to the hotel, take a shower and go to sleep.

But then, in the cab on the I-495, I saw it: The Manhattan skyline. It was peaceful and beautiful, and, in direct opposition to everything I'd ever heard about NYC, quiet. Not to cheese you out too much, but it really felt like the city was taking a breath with me, helping me calm down so I could drink it all in, and I instantly felt better about things. I always thought people were romanticizing when they waxed poetic on how "magical" New York is. But even then, even from the inside of a cab on the outskirts of the city, I started to understand what they were talking about. And I was ready to let myself be bewitched.

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Tuesday, September 4th - I Heart NY, Part Two . Have a good weekend.