A Story to Tell

I got up this morning thinking about what I was doing about this time one week ago. It wasn't exactly what I thought I'd be doing. I know you want to hear all about it, right?

As you know, a group of 3 couples and our kids ventured off to New Jersey to complete a mission project. The whole purpose of the trip was to work for God, but I didn't think God would mind if Pete took me on into New York City for a little play time before we headed back home, would He?

Thursday morning, our group split up...some heading home, others to stop in Tennessee and us to New York. I knew we were chancing it with the weather, but I didn't care. I told Pete even if I had to experience New York in the rain, it would be better than not experiencing it at all. Boy, was I in for a sur-prise.

We were ignorant. And when I say that, I mean Southerners just don't know much about getting around in the North. We drive everywhere we go. We don't have problems finding parking and it's mostly free. What I mean is, it's not a hassle to take my van when I venture out...but our Jersey friends said, it would be wise to leave our vehicle in Philadelphia and take the train into the city. That it would be much less stressful to get around by foot, or subway, or cab. I could handle that. I wasn't getting much exercise anyway. I could use a little walking. I've never ridden on the subway. Something about that sounded kind of city-girlish..unordinary for an Arkansas gal like me. And Little Ann was determined that she would, at some point in the day, whistle and wave for that taxi, just like she'd seen in the movies.

We left our hotel around 9 am, saying our goodbyes to our group and driving in rush hour traffic from New Jersey to Philadelphia. I think what should have taken 30 minutes took us about an hour. Even once we got into Philly, we had no clue where the train station was and drove around another 30 minutes for a place to park. We were suckers, but desperate and so we gave up $20 bucks for a spot that would ensure us the day.

The rain began to fall. It was busy and dreary and I began to question why I wanted so desperately to spend a day so far out of my element, but I did. After mistakenly going down into the subway station thinking that's where we were supposed to be, we were directed 2 blocks down to the train depot. Pete stood in line to purchase round trip tickets to New York only to be asked to hand over $237. He glanced over at me and I gave him this look like "are they nuts?". Get out of that line. We'll do something else.

It was Amtrack. Oops. Once again, wrong line.

By the time we were finally directed to the appropriate line, it was closing in on 11 am. Tickets in this line were for a train that would leave at 11:37 and change over in Trenton, New Jersey, but would get us to the station directly below Madison Square Gardens for only $93 round trip. Sold.

I only wish I would've know it was going to stop every five minutes and take us another 2 hours to get there.

At nearly 2:00, we exited the station and came up out of the ground onto the streets of the city that literally never sleeps.

I was frustrated at the amount of time we had wasted. We were all starving and a little grumpy, but we were in New York. New York people. I was in awe and ready to stomp some ground.

But I think I'll save all that ground stomping, subway riding, cab calling (oh! and believe me it gets better!) for another post. Come back and see me for .....as Paul Harvey says..."the rest of the story".