New York City State of Mind - Part One

Five years ago.  I looked like a tall 14 year-old.

Eileen and I just celebrated our five-year anniversary this past October.  At first glance, five years doesn’t sound like a long time.  To Eileen and I, these past five years have gone by so quickly that it even sounds a little funny to tell people that we’ve been married that long.  I sometimes catch myself counting back on my fingers when people ask “how long have you been married?” but that is most likely due to the lack of mathematics taught to me in 7^th grade than anything else (1). No matter how fast it seems to go, five years is a long time.  Think of the maturity difference between a freshman on his first day of high school compared to that same person on his first day as a sophomore in college.  Well, some would actually argue that his maturity drops a few levels during that time span.  Dammit, I’m really bad at analogies – but you know what I’m trying to say.  Five years was a big deal for me.  As I’ve said in other posts before, Eileen is the funniest person in the world and every day with her is a new adventure that I absolutely love to be a part of.  She will also love that I’m taking this space to talk about her – she’s the best.

Since Eileen loves surprises, I decided to get her plane tickets, dinner reservations, and tickets to see The Lion King on Broadway on October 18^th, the night of our anniversary.  Since New York is one of our favorite cities to visit and Eileen was clamoring to see The Lion King, I thought it would be the perfect surprise.  I happened to tell her at 2:00am on a random Saturday night in May when I was very drunk and half asleep.  I’ll never be mistaken for Noah from The Notebook, but it was perfect nonetheless.  I really am a bumbling fool when it comes to the romance department.  Example: when I was packing my bag for our latest New York trip, I realized that I forgot to buy Eileen an anniversary card.  We had a 6am flight, so there was no time to get a card from this point on.  I was card-less.  The only hope I had was that Eileen also forgot to buy a card.  Light bulb!  Eileen’s Aunt had just sent us an anniversary card in the mail that very day.  So, in the event that Eileen bought me a card, at least I would have this in my back pocket.  Cross off Aunt Kathy’s name and replace with mine, and I was good to go.  That’s a far cry from restoring an old plantation home to it’s former glory just to impress the girl you fell in love with 14 years earlier.  Yes, I am fluent in The Notebook.

As we were driving to the airport the next morning, Eileen casually threw out the comment, “I bet you didn’t remember to get me a card.”  Shit.  I reassured her that I did indeed have a card for her, she just didn’t need to know at that moment that it also happened to be the same one she received in the mail the day before with one small edit.  We flew out of Akron-Canton, so the flight and check-in was incredibly easy.  I suppose that a 6am fight helps. 

Since we couldn’t check into our hotel early in the morning, our itinerary for the morning included grabbing a quick coffee and then taking a bike ride through Central Park.  We stayed at a Marriott in Midtown East, which was perfect walking distance to 5^th Avenue shopping and Central Park.  After grabbing a Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks, we headed over to Central Park.  It was a spectacularly sunny day and a beautiful ride through the Park, especially with the autumn foliage.  It was such a special ride, that I almost forgot I was pedaling a 1993 cruising bike with broken gears and a rattling back wheel.  I am such a Trip Advisor snob when traveling; I am surprised that I didn’t look up bike rental reviews.  Eileen and I found the first bike rental “company” that we could find.  I use that term loosely, as I believe we rented them from the Somali cast of Captain Phillips.  It’s not a good sign when somebody has to walk a block to an alley just to grab your transportation for the day. 

So Eileen and I clanked our way through the park, stopping for a few obligatory photos at some of the popular spots.  We stopped by the reservoir and several other areas that I’m sure plenty of Meg Ryan movies were filmed.  We ended the ride by touring Strawberry Fields outside The Dakota.  There were some second-rate musicians playing renditions of John Lennon songs on cheap acoustic guitars.  It was so cliché that I couldn’t overcome the music being played; it ruined my time at this spot.  We took our photo on the mosaic, navigated through the hippies, and then biked back to the area in front of The Plaza Hotel to return our bikes, a two-hour ride in total.  We went back to our room to rest up and get ready to go out for the remainder of the day.

When we returned to the hotel, we both needed to charge our phones.  I had put Eileen’s charger in my bag, so when she went to grab it, she saw her Aunt’s card.  Well there goes that plan.  Her suspicion that I forgot to buy a card was indeed true.  I didn’t even get to cross out her Aunt’s name yet.  I assured her that I would go to Duane Reade to get her a card, but she said that wouldn’t be necessary and that surprising her with the trip was more than enough.  Then, in only the funny little way that she could say it, she laughed while saying, “You’re really going to be mad at me! Not only did I buy you an anniversary card, I also got you a Sweetest Day card.”  Shit.  I'm down two cards to zero.  Not the way I envisioned our romantic anniversary weekend to start…

Stay tuned for part 2 of this post. 

1) Instead of math, we played basketball in a gym for an hour every day.  True story (one that deserves it’s own blog post someday).