An hour or two after I finished writing the last blog post, we were wheels down in Iceland! Unfortunately, with the time difference, it was 5:00 AM, and most of us had not slept on the plane. Nevertheless, we planned to push through and see what we could see in Reykjavik (and because we couldn’t check into our Airbnb until 3:00 PM).
After exchanging money, buying Siminn SIM cards, and picking up the rental car in Keflavik, we began the drive to Reykjavik. The rental is a small, diesel, manual crossover that “seats” seven people. As we were pulling out of town and Tanner was figuring out all of the controls, he chose this time to tell us that he’s gotten a ticket in every foreign country he’s ever driven in. This came as we were deciding whether it’s acceptable to right turn on red here (it’s not).
We arrived in Reykjavik around 7:00 AM, and, as we discovered, not a whole lot is open at that time in the morning. We drove around for a little while, getting our bearings, then eventually parked and started walking, hoping to find something to eat. We eventually found a cafe that was open for breakfast that also kindly accommodated a thirty minute (power) nap for a few of us.
Harpa Center
The first thing we decided to check out was the Harpa Center, a steel and glass performance hall, downtown near the docks. Adam, who works as an architect, loved this building, and probably would have stayed there all day, if we would have let him!
Katie enjoys watching the ocean
Halgrímskirkja
We wandered through the streets of downtown Reykjavik for a little while, stopping to check out a few of the small shops and museums. We then made our way up to Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in Iceland, located at the center of the city. The sanctuary was a sizable acoustically reflective room, with a large pipe organ. It seemed like an amazing place to sing something like the Doxology, or as Adam suggested, Blest Be the Tie That Binds.
From that church building, we made our way to the church we had actually planned to worship with that morning. Honestly, this was one of the parts of the trip I was most looking forward to, after some of the research I had done beforehand. I started Googling for churches in Reykjavik and found this Gospel Coalition article, as well as an article from Christianity Today on the work this pastor and his congregation are doing in this country. I was excited for us to experience a small part of that, and, hopefully, be of some encouragement to this pastor in his work. I contacted him beforehand to make sure we wouldn’t be a distraction, and he welcomed us to come.
We weren’t two steps into the building when I was greeted loudly by an Icelandic man who thrust a small bag with what looked like dried bread chips in it towards me. Having zero idea of the context, I thought this might possibly be communion bread of some sort, picked a piece, and held onto it. A few minutes later we entered the sanctuary and I saw communion bread and juice set out in the front, so my previous assumption no longer held. Figuring it would be weird for me to stand there holding my piece of bread, I went ahead and popped it into my mouth. An incredibly strong fish oil flavor hit me immediately, and I tried not to grimace as I chewed. At that moment, I was also stuck with an empty water bottle. As politely as possible, I excused myself and ran off to find some liquid.
Tanner, meanwhile, had held onto his piece as well, but made the unfortunate choice to try it during the service. I was listening to the message when all of the sudden he taps me on the shoulder and whispers, “That’s nasty!” quite loudly. I quickly shushed him for fear one of the church members would overhear him. He told me later he had grabbed one of the biggest piece because he was hungry. He struggled through the mouthful he had and then gave the rest to Steven, who, of course, loved it. I’m still trying to figure out if this was a friendly gesture or an attempt to haze the Americans (or, perhaps, both).
The service itself was awesome. Meaningful hymns and solid, Biblical teaching. Most of the songs were in English, and they even had a translator who translated the teaching and speaking portions of the service from Icelandic to English for any English speakers, using a separate transmitter and receiver system.
At the end of the service we got the chance to speak with the pastor and pray for him. If you would, please pray for Gunnar and his work in Iceland, and particularly for two of his young children who are struggling with some pretty severe health problems. We have noticed the country of Iceland is a place that seems altogether hostile to the Gospel (addressed in this video by Gunnar and some of his ministry partners), and Gunnar’s congregation are doing their best to share the hope and joy that can be found only through Jesus with their fellow Icelanders.
Driving in Iceland
Next, we went on (what turned into a lengthy), shopping trip to the local Bonus grocery store to attempt to buy lunch supplies and ingredients for communal meals. Although most people here speak English, it’s still difficult sometimes to find exactly what you need if you can’t read Icelandic. Case in point, “Is this meat actually beef?”
After our grocery run was complete, we set off to find our Airbnb. Despite some less than stellar navigating on my part, we soon arrived. For this trip, we rented a large, second floor apartment that comfortably sleeps seven and (importantly) has two bathrooms. It’s very homelike and cozy, and it was wonderful to be able to come into a warm, welcoming environment, after travelling for almost two days straight. I stretched out on the large rug in the living room for a little while, perfectly content with life.
This morning, Steven and Tanner set out early in the morning to pick up Mike, who had gotten the bus to Reykjavik after his plane had landed. I didn’t think about it until they left, but they had no GPS, or even a way to communicate with Mike. The end result was, I ended up playing the middleman for communication between Mike and Steven, and acting as command and control for remote navigation. It was quite the process, but they were eventually successful in finding him. Steven credits this mainly to his ability to read paper maps (an underrated skill, apparently).
This morning we began our tour of the Golden Circle, a driving route through southwest Iceland, with quite a few amazing sights along the way. We woke up to find that it had snowed the night before, which could only help make this trip better! We planned to leave at 8:30 AM and left at 10:00 AM.
Golden hour all day long
Our first stop was Thingvellir National Park, where the North American and Eurasian continental plates meet. We got to walk down in-between the rift and see the crystal clear water that flows through the valley before emptying into the adjoining lake. Many people swim or scuba dive in this water (one of the highest visibility dives in the world), but, unfortunately, that was not in the cards for our group today. We did, however, get to see a pair of Mallard ducks, much to Katy’s delight!
Stupid Americans standing on the wrong side of the rope
Mallards!
Silfra
The next destination was the Geysir geothermal fields. There we got to stick our hands in the warm water flowing from one of the hot springs and watch the Strokkur geyser erupt several times!
Strokkur
Notice the rope
As we were exploring the geysers, at some point, Steven, Mike, and Tanner cut across a roped-off section. They made it about halfway across before getting yelled at by an official-looking guide in an orange jacket. Steven said, “As soon as he said something, I turned around because I knew we didn’t have any argument.” Tanner, though, tried to play dumb, “This isn’t the path?” The guide responded with a wide sweeping gesture to the rope in front of him. “Obviously!”
Rando, myself, Adam, Tanner, Laurel, Mike, Katy, and Steven
Third on the list was was Gullfoss, or “Golden Falls.” One of the most biggest, most well-known waterfalls in Iceland, it lived up to its reputation, although we agreed the comparison with Niagara Falls on one of the park signs was laughable. As we were getting ready to leave, what can most accurately be described as a blizzard rolled in (at least, it felt like it). We fought our way back to the car and continued on.
Icelandic Niagara?
Our last scheduled stop of the day was the Kerið volcanic crater. There was a small admission fee for this, and we paid it readily. However, before we got within sight of the crater, we met some of our friends from the flight over and asked them if it was worth it. One of the ladies replied, “Well, I’ve spent $4.00 on worse things in my life.”
That's us on the far side!
Despite that less than raving review, it was a pretty cool sight, although we all decided it would probably be significantly better during the summer, when you should be able to see more detail in the crater and swim in the lake at the bottom.
Mike eats it
All of us except for Tanner (who generously offered to stay and take our picture) decided to walk all the way around the crater. As it turned out, he may have had the better idea, since it ended up being slick going. At one point, Steven and Mike were in front of me. Steven called out that it was slick, and Mike wiped out, sliding the rest of the way down the small outcropping. Having just seen Mike eat it, and figuring I would learn from his mistake, I stepped forward carefully, but confidently... and promptly wiped out.
Lake "frozen solid"
We did walk down to the frozen lake (and, for a few of us, onto it). While there, Tanner struck up a conversation with a few young men from Israel. At the end of their conversation, he offered them his gloves (which I believe in Iceland is equivalent to the shirt off of your back), although they refused. When we got back to the parking lot, Tanner said he was thinking about giving them his Bible. After thinking about it for a few minutes, he did, and, after some urging from Tanner (they initially told him he would be wasting his Bible), they took it. Please pray for our two Israeli friends, that this seed would spring to fruition at some point in time, either directly through the Bible Tanner gave them, or through some other means.
Steven learns his first 100 Icelandic words
We made one final, unplanned stop at a roadside mall-type building on the way home. Inside we found a local library and a bunch of maps, both of which I particularly enjoyed. I really like experiencing things about a culture (the Airbnb apartment, church, library, etc.) that the people here do every day, rather than just see the tourist sites (although those are often good too).
Tanner and Mike, meanwhile, went into Bonus again to pick up some extra paper towels. When we met them on the way out, Tanner said, “They thought Mike and I were from Iceland, seriously! The cashier started going off in Icelandic! I had to tell him we were Americans, and he apologized and switched to English.” Mike said, “When he started in in Icelandic, I just stood there nodding. I was going to go with it. Then he switched to English, like, immediately. It was crazy!”
A map including all of our stops for the day
Despite another blinding snowstorm as we crossed the mountain pass back to Reykjavik, we made it safely back to our Airbnb for the night. After a day full of incredible experiences, we ate dinner (pancakes and eggs) and went on to bed (or stayed up for several more hours writing a blog post, as the case may be). Excited to see what tomorrow holds!
Well, as the saying goes, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is, the statement Steven makes in today’s video holds true. “No one’s dead yet.” The bad news is, we did have to (temporarily) leave a man behind. More on that in a little bit.
Today was mainly a travel day. We met at the local Park and Ride around 9:30 AM to consolidate vehicles and luggage. Most of us decided to just take a personal item (17 x 13 x 10 inches) and split the cost of a single large bag, mainly for liquids, food, and extra shoes. This worked out pretty well, but we knew we were pushing the 44 pound bag weight limit.
The other decision we had to make was how many vehicles to take (accounting for the cost of fuel and parking for each). Steven was driving, but doesn’t plan to return from NoVA at the same time as the rest of us, so, although we could easily fit everyone into two vehicles on the way up, the question became how tightly we wanted to squeeze in on the way back. My Jeep can carry seven (with a pretty uncomfortable third row), and we eventually settled on squeezing someone into one of those seats in the back with the luggage on the way home.
We made it about a quarter of a mile out of the parking lot before stopping at Hardee’s (bathroom and breakfast), and then we were on our way (for real).
The trip to the airport (BWI) was fairly uneventful, filled with some napping by the self loading ballast (passengers), and occasional radio chatter to keep things interesting. Steven told jokes such as, “What do you call a pastor who runs a marathon? A reveRUNd.” Our pastor, Jeff, would be so proud. After that joke, I told Steven, “You’re fired. Give the radio to Katy.”
We made a pit stop for lunch at a Chick-fil-A in Winchester and gas at Sheetz and arrived in the parking lot at the airport around 4:30 PM.
The moment of truth came when we had to drop off our single checked bag. I set it on the scale and the agent told me, “Your bag is one kg over the limit.” We moved out of the way of everyone else and cracked it open to see what we could shift around. As it turned out, we moved a few things to the carry on/personal items and I swapped out my trail runners for the boots that I had packed in the bag. That was enough to drop us 1.4 kgs below the limit.
Security screening was uneventful, despite a grumpy TSA agent. From there, we made our way to the gate and everyone split off in different directions to grab food or a forgotten item.
I was pretty relieved at this point. We had made it to the airport with plenty of time, handled the overweight bag issue quickly, and everyone had made it through security without incident. We were home free! Or so I thought.
About thirty minutes before takeoff, one of the gate agents made the following announcement. “Passengers, please check your boarding pass to make sure the name on your ticket matches the name on your passport exactly, including your middle name. This is an international flight, and if the names do not match, you won’t be able to fly today. We’re about to close the flight, and, after that time, no changes can be made.”
I immediately checked mine, although I was almost positive it was correct (it was). The few people from our group that were still at the gate checked theirs as well. No issues. The other half of our group, however, was elsewhere, and most of them had left their phones with me, charging. As people began to filter back in, I passed the message along and received affirmatives. Then Tanner said, “I think Mike said his name was different on his ticket.”
As soon as I heard this, I went to the gate agent and told her we had a possible mismatch. She asked if he had checked in already, and when I said that he had, she said, “I probably would have caught any difference when he checked in, but let’s double check.”
When Mike return, we looked at his ticket and passport together. Mike’s actual name, as you’ve probably guessed by now, is Michael. Mike on the ticket, Michael in the passport. My heart dropped.
We went to see the agent, and she just shook her head and told us that the flight was closed at that point, and that they could no longer make any changes. Our only option, she told us, was to call customer service, in the off chance they might be able to change the name on the ticket before we took off, but she wasn’t hopeful that would happen.
Mike started dialing and I started to work through contingency plans in my head. My first thought was that I would stay behind with Mike until we could get it all sorted out, and send the rest of the group on to Iceland. None of our reservations were tied solely to my name, so the group wouldn’t have issue continuing on without me. My main line of reasoning there was that Mike didn’t have a vehicle, although there was also a part of me that felt some responsibility not to leave a group member behind.
As Tanner and I discussed, he pointed out that, since there was no issue with my ticket, WOW wouldn’t do anything for me if I decided to stay, so I would essentially be buying a second ticket.
That reasoning, combined with the fact that, in reality, I wouldn’t be much help stateside, helped me resolve to continue on. I handed my Jeep key to Mike, still hoping that wouldn’t be the outcome.
We waited until the last minute, but the plane was almost done boarding and we had to go. We stalled for a little bit longer, then sadly waved goodbye to Mike. Our whole group was pretty despondent (although the sight of the purple airplane cheered us up a little).
Despite that setback, we have been in communication with Mike since then, and it looks like he will be joining us early Monday morning! He has a place to stay tonight, and will fly out of BWI at the same time tomorrow. Please pray for a smooth flight and no further issues for him. We’re bummed he won’t be with us the first day, but look forward to him joining us!
I’m writing this post as we hurtle through the air at 500 MPH over Greenland, heading towards Kevflavik, Iceland. We should be touching down around 5:30 AM local time. Our plans for tomorrow (today?) include exploring Reykjavík and attending a service at Loftstofan Church! More updates to come!
When I first saw this video from Smarter Every Day and realized the plane of totality for this eclipse would pass within four or so hours of our area, I started planning. I mentioned it to my friend Tanner and he was enthusiastic about making a day trip out of it. We started asking around and ended up with a group of seven people who wanted to go eclipse chasing!
Goggle up! Science is about to happen.
We weren't exactly sure where along the path of totality would give us the best experience. Sites anywhere from Kentucky to South Carolina were possible viewing locations, but we decided to choose our destination the night before based on the weather forecast. As it turned out, we ended up road tripping to Spring City, Tennessee (population 1,988), about a four and a half hour drive away. This town is on the western shore of Watts Bar Lake, and, from their website, it looked like they were prepared for eclipse visitors!
4:30 AM comes early
We met at the local Park and Ride around 4:30 AM on Monday morning, hoping to beat day-of inbound traffic to the totality plane. We piled into my Jeep and Tanner's Ram pickup and hit the interstate.
I wasn't sure how insane the totality plane would be, so I tried to make sure we were as prepared as possible. We filled both our vehicles all the way up with fuel roughly an hour outside of the plane, and everyone packed their lunch (as we figured local restaurants would be overwhelmed). I had a small Gatorade-style cooler full of ice water and had packed a watermelon as well. From what I had read, there was a possibility that cell networks in that area would be overloaded, even though Verizon and other carriers were bringing in portable towers to try to handle the capacity, so we brought along two-way radios to communicate between the vehicles. I even packed some toilet paper as a precaution. One can never be too prepared (false, but mostly accurate).
Roadside parking
On the way down, we encountered very little traffic, except during rush hour around Knoxville, Tennessee, and arrived in Spring City about 10:00 AM. When we reached the town limits, we discovered that quite a few other people had decided that this was a prime location along the plane of totality as well! There were people parked anywhere you could fit a vehicle. It was obvious that this was the biggest event this small town had seen in a very long time, and probably will see for a while. People were selling parking spots in their yards, and I saw a sign pointing the direction to a local church, advertising free parking and breakfast pancakes!
Sure, we'll ride your bus!
We managed to find a few parking spots in the lot of the local Piggly Wiggly, although we had to pull through some grass to get to them. We piled out, sunscreened up, and set out to find out where people were gathering. As we started walking down the road, a school bus pulled up next to us, the door opened, and the driver asked, "Are you all going to the park?!" We looked at each other, paused for a few seconds, and then I said, "I guess so!" We hopped aboard and she pulled away.
The eclipse chasers: myself, Joel, John, Tanner, Haley, Krista, and Jeff
At this point, Tanner said to me, "You know. We just got on a bus in a random town, driving by someone we know nothing about, going we don't know where." I'll admit I was a little nervous as the bus began to head out of town, but the driver eventually looped around to follow what was obviously "the route." As we began talking to her we found out that Spring City had closed schools for the day and were running the buses through town, acting as free shuttles, picking people up from wherever they had parked, and bringing them to the local park where the celebration was in full swing!
Watts Bar Lake
As the day went on, it was obvious that the town had done their best to prepare for a huge influx of people, but had little bearing on how many would actually show up. Near the park, there was a line of 40 or so porta-potties, which was definitely overkill for the number of people there, but it meant no waiting for us!
We then began looking to stake out a spot to watch the eclipse, which would begin in a couple of hours. We found a trail that traced the shoreline of the lake and walked half a mile or so before finding a boat ramp and parking area that was partially shaded, yet had a good view of the lake and sun. We decided this would be our spot.
Joel finds this spot to be acceptable
Lunch
After hanging out for a little bit (and talking to a guy who had flown in from Texas), we took another bus ride back to our vehicles to have lunch and grab all of our gear. We broke out our packed lunches community style in the shade of a nearby building, as the anticipation started to build. Despite what we knew about how accurately NASA can calculate eclipses, we started discussing how crazy it would be if this one just didn't happen. We (along with quite a few other people) had made some pretty crazy decisions about how we would spend our day (or weekend, as was the case for some people), based only on things we had read or other people had told us, versus being able to do the celestial mechanics calculations ourselves. It was amazing to think about how many people along the path of totality had put their total, implicit trust in something they couldn't see (yet).
Prepping for shadows bands
After lunch, we grabbed our filtered glasses, cameras, tripods, pinhole projectors, and various other assorted equipment and headed back to the spot we had staked out earlier. Our friend Anthony, who had stayed the night with another friend nearby, met us back at the boat ramp. He brought a couple more cameras and a white sheet to try to capture the shadow band phenomena (thin, wavy shadows that occur just before and after the total eclipse). As we were setting up, a lady nearby commented, "You guys look like a bunch of engineers getting ready to do some science!" Somebody in our group responded, "Well, you're not very far off!" Out of our group of eight, five of us do some kind of engineering.
Science! (And Jeff's baller shirt)
Haley tries the pinhole projector
During the eclipse we had several phones running the Solar Eclipse Timer app, which counted down to and called out the four "contact times," C1, C2, C3, and C4, as they arrived. These times and the duration between them are location dependent, so this is a great use of smartphone technology, integrating GPS positioning. At C1, the moon's disk makes first contact with the sun's. At C2 the total solar eclipse begins, and it ends a couple minutes later at C3. At C4, the moon's disk has completely cleared the face of the sun again. C1 to C2 and C3 to C4 both took about an hour and a half. C2 to C3, however (the important part), lasted only only two minutes and twenty-nine seconds for us. This was only ten seconds shorter than the longest possible observed duration in the United States, though, so I'll take it. That was still the shortest two and a half minutes of my life! It felt like ten seconds.
The group. (Sorry, John and Jeff!)
Crescent shadow
As the moon began to make its way across the face of the sun, we began to notice a few different things. First was the heat. It had been pretty hot all day, and we could tell that the temperature was beginning to drop (although it was still pretty warm). It also began to get gradually darker. Not dramatically, but enough to be noticeable. However, my favorite thing about the partial eclipse phase was the shadows that were being cast. Since the light coming from the sun was now in the shape of a crescent, this changed the shadows as well! John's pinhole projectors made it very easy to see this, but you could also create the same shadow yourself, using your hand. In the shade under the trees, it was even more dramatic, as the light filtered through the leaves, casting hundreds of "crescent sun" shadows!
Huh?
I will take a moment here to say that although the partial eclipse was cool, that last 1%, as we approached C2 made all the difference in the world. A lot of people were happy to see a 75% or even 95% eclipse, but, afterwards, didn't understand all of the hype associated with the total eclipse. Having seen both, I can say I understand that sentiment, but disagree. While the partial eclipse was cool, it probably wouldn't have been much to write home about. The total eclipse, however, was insane.
Around C2, everything started happening at once. The sky was rapidly getting dark, and we started seeing shadow bands on Anthony's sheet (not a guaranteed event, so it was awesome that we got to see it). As the last bit of the moon slid in front of the sun, we saw the "diamond ring" and "bailey's beads."
And then it was dark.
360 degree colored sunset.
In the middle of the afternoon.
Sunset
Fireworks started shooting up from the baseball field adjacent to our viewing position (I told you this town was prepared) and everyone cheered as we entered totality. We heard all of the people gathered in the park on the opposite shore yell as well. We could see stars and planets in the sky, next to the sun. We stared, tried to take pictures, and laughed with joy. It was crazy.
Awe
Think about this for a minute. The moon and the sun are at perfect proportional distances from earth so that they appear, from our perspective on the surface, to be almost the exact same size in the sky, although the sun is roughly 400 times larger than the moon. This size alignment, along with their regular orbits in space, allows the moon to just barely totally eclipse the sun every so often, and creates this incredible phenomenon. It's almost like it was perfectly designed like this by Someone for our enjoyment.
Hiking out
By the time we got back to the parking lot, Spring City was pretty much gridlocked. People had arrived in waves over the previous few days, but as soon as C3 had passed, they were all trying to leave at the same time. If we waited in line to get out of the parking lot we were in, it was going to be a good while before we even got onto the main road. However, behind the parking lot was a back road that I was pretty sure would get us past the traffic and out of town, based on the bus rides we had taken earlier. The only problem was, it was over a sidewalk and through some grass. I tapped on Tanner's window (in his big Dodge truck) and said, "I'm going over the curb." He took a long look around and then said, "I'll follow you!"
Power Rangers
We were one of the first few people out of town and didn't hit any real traffic until we got to the interstate. At that point, we decided to take a detour around Knoxville (during what would have been rush hour as well), and stop at Chick-fil-a in Oak Ridge, Tennessee for dinner. Unfortunately, it was also Power Ranger night at this Chick-fil-a, so we joined the entire elementary school population of Oak Ridge for dinner, with a line wrapped out the door for a picture with the Power Rangers.
In contrast to our trip down, the trip back home took us roughly eight hours. The traffic on the interstate was insane, with solid lines of cars in both lanes for as far as the eye could see. The southbound lane, on the other hand, was completely deserted, in comparison. Every so often, traffic would slow to a crawl and then stop completely, for no reason in particular. This occurred even hundreds of miles away from the totality plane. However, whenever this happened, inevitably one of us (me a lot of time) would giggle a little bit, and then say, "Worth it!"
This summer, my friend Jeff was working an internship in New York City and I went up for a visit. I had never been to New York before, but decided to make a weekend trip out of it. I researched flying or taking a train, but ended up just driving the ten hours into the city, leaving work early on Friday afternoon and arriving late that evening.
Jeff and I doing culture
I arrived at the 92nd Street Y on the upper east side where Jeff was staying after only a few surprises (did you know there's a $15 toll to cross the bridge to Manhattan island? E-ZPass only!). I picked Jeff up from a hackathon his company was doing and we stashed my Jeep in a nearby parking garage. It was incredible how many vehicles they had packed in there. From there we made our way back to the 92nd Y, which has an interesting history. Most people (at least from where I'm from in Virginia) think of the Y as a gym. This Y has a gym, but it also has a well-known performance venue, and dormitory style housing. Many Y's used to be like this, but only a few of them are left.
Jeff asked me what I wanted to do the following day, and, although I didn't have a strict agenda, there were several things that I was interested in seeing/doing. Jeff told me, "The good thing about New York, you'll never run out of things to see. Just step out of your building and start walking!"
And walk we did.
We started the day with a bagel at Jeff's favorite local bagel shop, Corrada Bread and Pastry. From there we took the subway down to the financial district and took a walk down Wall Street (after a quick dip into Pret for Jeff to get some tea).
The New York Stock Exchange
This was the first of several discoveries in the same vein. I was surprised at how small Wall Street is. A lot of these landmarks in New York I had read about in books and heard about on the news growing up, and, somehow, in my mind, they had taken on larger than life qualities. Wall Street was my first dose of reality. A few buildings clustered around a central square, rather than a long street filled with financial buildings that I had expected.
We headed towards the Staten Island Ferry, passing the famous Raging Bull statue on the way. I decided not to stand in line just to take my touristy picture this time (the Four Corners incident being fresh in my memory).
The view from the ferry
Rather than actually do the Liberty Island tour (which seemed like it would take up a good portion of the day) we did the drive by (or the boat by, as the case may be) of the Statue of Liberty via the Staten Island Ferry. I enjoyed the ferry ride out through the harbor, but, again, I was surprised by how short the Statue itself was. Not quite the towering monument I had imagined it to be, but it was still cool to see it in person.
Found it!
National September 11 Memorial
Next, we walked up through Battery Park on the tip of Manhattan Island and then walked north to the 9/11 Memorial. I had watched a documentary on the design and completion of this memorial several years prior, and it was interesting to see it finished. Almost sixteen years later, if it weren't for the memorial, it would be hard to tell that something so terrible had happened there.
Next, it was time for some lunch. We made our way to Chelsea Market and had lunch at the Creamline - a "farm to table" burger joint. I was already pretty hot by this point, so I may be exaggerating slightly when I say that the peanut butter milkshake I had there was incredible, but it was definitely delicious.
Waiting for our milkshakes
From there, we walked the High Line, an elevated walking path on the west side of Manhattan, converted from a freight rail line into a linear park. It was cool to be above street level, get a different view of New York, and not have to worry about traffic.
View from the bridge
The next stop was "The Intrepid," an aircraft carrier that has been transformed into an air, space, and marine museum. This is where Jeff's company began to throw their weight around. We walked up through the "members only" line (past all of the waiting peasants), Jeff flashed his badge, and both of us were admitted for free!
The ship was pretty cool. Among many other things, they have an SR-71 Blackbird, a submarine (which we went inside of), and the Space Shuttle Enterprise, which I had previously seen at the Udvar-Hazy Center (later replaced by Space Shuttle Discovery). However, my favorite part may have been a couple of LEGO models of the ship and a LEGO mosaic.
Found the nerd corner
We then walked up the street to Times Square, which was... an experience. I've done it once, now I never have to do it again. Too many people in one place. Also, too many weird people in one place. Oh, and add the Times Square Ball (that they "drop" on New Year's Eve) to the list of things that were smaller than I thought they would be.
Hello, Mr. Llama
After Times Square, we made a stop for rolled ice cream and then visited The Strand book shop, known for its "18 miles of books." Jeff quickly made his way to his favorite section (see below), and I found a llama that was nearly identical to the one that sits in my living room (long story)!
We've seen the light
We jumped on the subway again and got off at Grand Central Station, where Jeff followed me, unsurprised, into the Apple Store. I remember watching a video on the opening of this particular store, and now I finally got to see it in person! Ha-ha. I'm slowly collecting pictures of myself at various Apple stores around the country. That's basically the only reason I travel.
Next, we went to visit the building Jeff worked in. He wasn't sure if all of the visit request hoops would be cleared cleanly, but when we got there, the nice security guards took my picture and gave me a temporary badge, no problem!
Crocodile, also known as a "gator"
The final big attraction of the day was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We only had an hour and a half or so before they closed, but we figured we'd make the most of it. I'm sure we saw hundreds of masterpieces in the space of 45 minutes. We spent a significant portion of our time in the medieval armor and weapons section (because when you're both guys who grew up on Lewis and Tolkien, that's what you do). We also quite enjoyed the Egyptian temple that was picked up and shipped to New York. My favorite piece, however, was probably "Crocodile."
Relocated temple
After they kicked us out of the museum, we visited the casual obelisk erected behind the museum on the edge of Central Park. At this point, I was pretty much beat, but Jeff still had plenty of energy and suggested we take a stroll around the reservoir in Central Park (because what's another couple of miles of walking). I figured if Jeff was up for it, I could be too!
Central Park skyline
For dinner we made a stop at Two Boots Pizza, Upper East Side. Again, I was pretty hungry, and the pizza was delicious. After we finished our dinner, we made one last stop at the headquarters for the company Jeff was interning with (weird elevators) and then called it a night.
Altogether, we walked roughly 24 miles total (+/- a mile or two, based on discrepancies between Jeff's Fitbit and my iPhone) that day. Just walking to the shower at the end of the day made my feet hurt.
The next morning, Jeff and I grabbed breakfast at a diner called 3 Decker (A+ waffle, by the way) and then made our way to the church he attended while in New York, Apostles Uptown East. They had a Behringer X32 as well (as does Northstar, the church I run sound for), so I spent a few minutes talking shop with their sound tech.
After that, Jeff and I retrieved my Jeep from the parking garage (no easy feat), and I started my journey back home. The weekend consisted of over 1,000 miles of driving, numerous subway rides, in addition to all of the walking, but it was great!
