#13 - take Ricky to NYC (day 5)

DAY 5 - FRIDAY, MAY 18TH

Friday began slowly and painfully.  Somehow we made it off the bus and managed to stagger all the way to the metro terminal opening before collapsing on the floor.  No, seriously.  I didn't get any pictures of it, but there were people sleeping up against the walls/pillars waiting for buses and trains, and since it was 5:30 and Ricky looked like a character from The Walking Dead, we staked a claim on one of the huge pillars and took a nap.  Ricky's nap was deliberate--I had every intention of staying awake, but I eventually dozed off and was woken up by a concerned man who pointed out that my iPod had fallen on the floor and might get stolen.  Whoever said New Yorkers aren't considerate was lying.

Around 6:30, after Ricky had sufficiently power napped on the floor of a bus terminal (we're super classy, guys), we took the metro to 5th Ave. for early-morning mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral.  But first, Starbucks:

It was freezing, and hot chocolate is amazing.

After mass, we still had about an hour to kill before anything opened--I wanted to go to the manuscript library at Columbia University, and we didn't want to do anything "big" before that, so we walked back down the street to the public library and passed these lovely places on the way:

"Hey, Liz Lemon!"

Even the library was still closed, so we sat at one of the tables out front and mooched the free wi-fi until the Barnes and Noble down the street opened and we could migrate there.  One really pretty copy of Peter Pan later, we were off to Columbia!

I collect editions of Peter Pan.  True story.  

After a couple of subway transfers, some confused walking (we weren't quite sure what building it was), and awkwardly skirting around the people setting up for Commencement, we made it to the Butler Library.  I really wasn't sure if they were going to let me in--some manuscript libraries require documentation that you're actually working on something important, and I sure wasn't--but it was as simple as checking in with the security office and getting a temporary library card for the day.  

Once inside, I played one of those fun games of "Act like you know what you're doing so they don't kick you out for being a buffoon" for about three seconds, until I realized this wasn't something you can really bluff your way through.  After I explained to the archive librarian that yes, I am a English graduate student with zero experience in manuscript research, she sat me down at one of the computers and explained what to do.

"You'll just search the index here," she explained like I was five, "and write what you want on this form. And then I'll bring it to you in the reading room."

"Wait, so...anything?" My eyes glazed over as the computer screen filled with medieval manuscript offerings.

"Uh, yes. Anything on the screen." This poor woman was obviously used to dealing with people much more competent than I was. Bless her.

Since I had nothing in particular in mind (I did fudge a little with the other librarian--I told her I was writing a paper on vellum imperfections, and she helped me figure out where to look for manuscript flaws in the database), I picked the two coolest things I could find: a page from a 1425 Chaucer manuscript, and bound New Testament manuscript from 1450.  After I put in my request, I left Ricky behind and migrated to the temperature-controlled reading room, filled with studious Columbia students who have probably never looked dumb in front of a research librarian in their entire lives.  I assumed they would also be giving me gloves, because it would be crazy to let people just touch 500-year-old documents, right?  Apparently not, because before I knew it, I was touching and breathing and nearly drooling over some seriously delicate documents.

1450 New Testament manuscript

Try your hand at some Middle English! Hint: the characters that look like "7"s are "and," and some of the characters that look like lowercase "p"s (characters called "thorns" carried over from Old English) actually represent "th." (Ex: "pe" is "the.") 

When they brought me the foam stand and rope weights, I had NO IDEA what to do with them, but I was too embarrassed to say so.  Instead, I used the front-facing camera on my iPod to look over my shoulder at what other people in the room were doing with them.  Is that the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard, or what?  Ironically, academia is usually the one situation where I feel like asking questions diminishes my street cred (...so to speak).

Hair follicles in the vellum (upper right)

Sometimes if the skin of the animal had a mole or something similar, it would fall off during treatment and leave a hole or some weird scarring. (I fibbed about writing the paper, but I had actually been studying manuscript imperfections in my Old English class--never mind that this is actually Middle English.)

1425 Canterbury Tales fragment--I don't remember what tale this is from?

See the unfinished illumination?  So cool!

The back of the page was filled with all these scribbles, and I assumed someone must've defaced it...until I read the manuscript notes in the folder.  Apparently scribes would "test" the quills this way, similarly to how people now will scribble on a scrap sheet of paper to test a pen.  How crazy is that?

This one was a lot harder for me to read because of lighter ink and a lot of blotting/smudging.

After taking a lot of notes and pictures (...as you can tell...), we dashed off to Carnegie Hall to get tickets for their 2:30 tour. 

Ricky says to ignore his hair in this picture.

Once we got our tickets, we walked a block or two down the streets to a bistro for lunch, paid way too much for a not-so-good salad, and then hung out in the Carnegie Hall lobby until the tour started. It was led by a very sweet old lady who apparently spends most of her time volunteering at the Hall; she was very knowledgeable, but super impatient!  Haha.  We didn't spend a lot of time loitering.

We weren't allowed to take any pictures in the hall itself, but it was beautiful!  I went in 2008 with Huey and Rachel to see Mahler's 8th Symphony, and the hall was completely packed with people--it was weird to see it so empty this time.  The view from stage level was incredible.  While we were standing by the stage, our tour guide had us sing "Happy Birthday" to someone in our group who had a birthday coming up, and then she laughed and said, "Now you can say you sang in Carnegie Hall!"  It was adorable.

After Carnegie, we had a couple hours to kill before the Yankees game, so we checked back into our hostel and crashed in our new room.  Ricky decided his feeling of two-day-old travel grossness outweighed his exhaustion, so he showered while I, recognizing the more important things in life, slept.

Once we were appropriately decked out in our Yankees gear, it was off to the Bronx and the new Yankees Stadium!  It was MASSIVE.

In order to avoid any checked baggage, Ricky didn't bring a razor on the trip.  Hence, the scruffiness.

 Yankees tickets are dang expensive, so we had tickets in the nosebleed section.

But, before we made our way up to the fourth level, we stopped by batting practice to see if the Reds were going to throw any balls up into the stands.  (They didn't, but I don't blame them--Yankees fans in NYC are a rabid bunch, and they were yelling some nasty things.)

(Not Ricky's hand)

Uniformed.  Also, I'd like to point out that we were two of maybe a dozen people I saw in the entire stadium wearing sunglasses.  Everyone else was shielding their eyes with their hands.  These people are obviously not from Florida.

Even with the help of escalators, I think it took us about 15 minutes to make it up to the top level.  I was getting dizzy from being up so high.

We were about four rows ahead of the very last row in the stadium.

Here's where the plot thickens.  We were sitting in our seats, minding our own business and chowing down on some stadium food, when a badge-wearing younger dude sat down in the row in front of us.  At about 10 minutes to game time, he turned around and explained that at every home game, there's a "seat lottery," where he picks two seats at random from the higher levels and offers their occupants new tickets to seats at ground level.

"These tickets are supposed to go to whoever is sitting in these seats," he gestured to the seats directly in front of us, "but they're not here, so I'll tell you what: if these people aren't here in five minutes, these tickets are yours."

My handful of popcorn stopped halfway to my mouth. "Wait, are you serious?" I squinted at his badge to make sure he was actually a stadium employee.

"Absolutely."

"Is is bad to hope that these people get in like, a minor car accident?  Like maybe a fender bender?" I said to Ricky.

Ricky looked at me like I was insane. "Yes."  (Even though ten bucks says he was thinking it before I was.)

After an intense five minutes of waiting, the tickets were ours!

Michael (I think that was his name) prepped us on the way down to our new seats: you can have snacks delivered to your seats, act excited when they show you on the Jumbotron, let me know if you're ever in town again so I can hook you up (no, seriously), etc.

Our new view!  Is this real life?

Our ground-level seats were about $100 more expensive (each!) than the tickets we walked into the stadium with.  For someone who hadn't won anything like this since she found a Tamagatchi in her cereal box in the fifth grade, this was a pretty big deal.

Long story short, the Yankees beat the Reds 4-0.  It was awesome!  And freezing cold.  I had like two cups of hot chocolate.  (Remember when I made fun of New Yorkers for not bringing sunglasses!  Joke's on you, coatless Florida girl.)

I was terrified of the post-game subway madness, but I have to give major props here to the NYC Transit Authority--they were ON IT.  We walked across the street into the subway station, and were immediately herded onto a waiting train by TA employees. 

 On the trip back to the hostel, it started sinking in that this was our last night in NYC, which made us way sad!  We felt like we did everything that we wanted to do, but we still weren't ready to leave, especially since leaving meant going back to work/internships.

The next morning, we took our sweet time waking up and getting ready, because I planned ahead for our exhaustion and bought tickets for an afternoon flight.

A last picture in front of our awesome hostel!

I didn't realize how tired I looked. Yikes.  I'm only showing you this picture because...

...I changed into a different shirt!  On the subway platform!  It was way hotter than I expected, and my long sleeves were suffocating, so I used all my change-clothes-in-the-car-on-the-way-to-seminary skills to make this happen.  I must've been really exhausted, because I'm looking back thinking that was a pretty strange thing to do, even if there were only three other people on the platform.

We had seven-day subway passes, but had only used them for six, so we gave them to the uncomfortably pushy people who wait at the entrance to the airport shuttle to accost people rolling suitcases.  It's not like I needed mine anymore, but dang!  Learn some shame, people!  Stop being so greedy.  (These people were not poorly dressed, and were openly hostile to the people who refused them.  But I think that's just my selfish part talking.)

The AirTrain! The most expensively mandatory way to get to the airport, ever.

And we're off!

Thus ends our NYC adventures!  It was just as much fun as I hoped it would be, and Ricky had a great time on his first Big Apple excursion.  I would love to live in the city for a year or two, but not forever--it's nice to have a car and a dishwasher and personal space.  The near-tropical climate in Florida doesn't hurt, either. :)