Weather

Coming to NYC, I was expecting a few weather differences. Probably not as hot during the summer, a little more mild and wet during the spring/fall, and colder during the winter.  So far, that’s been fairly accurate, but lately I’ve noticed one huge key difference between OKC weather and NYC weather.

Let’s say you wake up in OKC and the Gary tells you, “Folks, it’s gonna be gorgeous outside today.”  Any Oklahoman will tell you that this translates into 50% chance he’s right, 20% chance tornadoes, 15% chance of rain, 10% chance you can’t risk going outside because the heat will melt you, and 5% chance of snow.  This is proven science.  Here’s what you do when you watch the weather in OK 90% of the time.  Turn it on at 6 in the morning.  Option A) Rick and/or Gary say the words tornado, severe storm, ice, and/or snow.   Make alternative plans because you aren’t going to be watching TV that night regardless of the actual weather.  Option B) They say none of those words and you just pray that your outfit matches the weather at least most of the day.

NYC, on the other hand, is completely different.  Granted, I’ve only been here for 6 months, but this is what I’ve observed.  If you wake up in the morning and you can see some hint of sunshine, it’s going to be a nice day.  Period.  Done.  No 15% chance flood, no 25% blizzard, it’s just going to be a nice day.  ALL DAY.  No 3 PM cold front, no lone cloud dropping rain on a single square mile of the city, none of that.  You see sunshine, it’s Feb. 22, add those together and you get high of 40 ish, gorgeous day.  AND BOOM, you’re right!  On the other hand if you wake up and it’s snowing out your window, it’s going to be snowing ALL DAY.  Raining in the morning?  ALL DAY!  Yesterday I went outside and it was like that nasty misty cold crap.  I was grumbling to myself, man if this was Oklahoma the sun would break this up in about 5 minutes.  Here?  ALL DAY misty crappy.  

Moral of this otherwise pointless story.  If you're coming to NYC anytime soon and you’re wondering about the weather, no need to worry.  Just  check the 5 day, and what you see is what you get.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

In a way, my travel experiences of late are a lot like this movie.  In my 23 Christmases in Oklahoma, not one time did I enjoy a white Christmas.  But of course, when I’m trying to get home from NYC there hits the Oklahoma Blizzard 2009.  1 taxi, 5 airports, 3 airliners, 1 really nice hotel with revolving restaurant, 1 SuperShuttle, and about 100 United/Continental flight delays later I made it home.  All that was missing was the side kick.

On to 2010.  Surely my travel woos are over for like another 10 years right?  Wrong…

Jan. 22 – “I” book a ticket home for Feb. 10-14.  I pick the 10th because I want to minimize the class time I’ll miss.  The whole time I’m thinking to myself, “NYC flight in Feb?  I’ll be fine…”

Feb. 5-6 – A snow storm rolls through the mid Atlantic.  Doing some quick prob and stats in my head I tell myself that there is NO WAY another storm like that is going to hit within the next 4 days?!  Haha, that just doesn’t happen! 

Feb 8 - Of course, that is pre-Global Warming logic.  Global Warming = more snow storms.  Duh Leighton!  I check the weather and it looks like NYC might get some snow on, you guessed it, the 10th!!  I get online and switch my ticket from a 7PM departure to a 5:30AM departure.  Okay, now I should be good to go.

Feb. 9 -

9:00 AM – Holy smokes this is going to be a huge storm…

10-2:00 – Wow snow for 24 hours.  It’s okay, they’ll still be flying at 5:30.

2:40-5:30 – Class

5:50 – I get back to my apartment and figure I should start some laundry since I have zero clean clothes and I need to start packing sometime.

6:10 – Laundry started, let’s check flight status…

6:11 – @#$%@$#%!!  Dialing Continental to try and reschedule!

6:30 - “Sorry sir, all airports from D.C. to Boston are either shutdown or we have no flights available.”

6:31 – Listen lady, if you have to route me through Abu Dhabi to get me home tomorrow, that’s fine I’ll do whatever.

6:32 - “We can’t get you to Oklahoma until Feb. 13 at 10PM.”

6:35 – Pray for forgiveness for swearing so much and that Emily doesn’t throw herself off a cliff when I tell her the bad news.

6:40 – Prayer works, Emily is still breathing, but only in huge gasps of air.

6:45 – 7:00 – I lose my mind and start looking up other ways to get out of NYC tonight. 

7:10 – Hey there is a one-way flight at 9PM on American that will get me to Columbus, OH tonight and home tomorrow.  Why not?

7:15 – Frantically pulling my clothes out of the washing machine…

7:30 – Packed with all the essentials, 1 shirt, 2 boxers, 4 wet socks, and a set of dress clothes all shoved in a bag.

7:33 – I’m SPRINTING down 121 towards Amsterdam to catch a cab.

8:10 – I get to the airport and wait in line to buy my ticket for the 9:00 flight.  Thanks to some Asian lady with about 1 million pounds of luggage and a 5 word English repertoire, it took about 20 minutes to get through the line.

8:45 – Plenty of time to reflect on how crazy my life is and how hungry I am from no dinner before we board the plane.

Feb 10 -

12:45 AM – I’m sitting in the Columbus airport, almost alone with all my we clothes hanging over an empty chair to dry.

1-4:30 – I try to sleep.

4:30 - “A…B…C…D…E…F….G” “1…2….3….4….5….6”  I roll over and two three year old girls are practicing counting and their ABC’s.  A) Who gets to the airport at 4:30?  B) What 3 year old is awake enough at 4:30 to sing?  C) The two of you are lucky you are going to have a chance to see life at 4 years-old.

6:40 – On the plane to Dallas.

6:41 - “Ladies and gents, this is the captain speaking.  Due to an UNBELIEVABLY light snow storm this morning we are going to have to go through the de-ice pad.  Should just be an extra 20 minutes.”

6:51 - “Ladies and gents, my mom told me not to lie and I’m not going to start now.  We’re having some problems with the plane pusher backer.  The pin is frozen and we are getting a guy with a blow torch over here so we can get moving.”  Great.  And there are blow torches at the airport?  I can’t have 4 oz. of toothpaste but there are guys walking around on the ground with BLOW TORCHES?!

7:20 – It’s FINALLY our turn to get “de-iced” which amounts to a guy in a lift attached to a truck driving around the plane at .0001 mph to spray us with some stuff. 

7:40 – Liftoff

8:50 – Landing/boarding has begun for my flight to OKC

9:10 – SPRINTING through terminals A and D like a maniac trying to get to my flight.  I think I can see my plane pulling out from the air tran…

9:15 - “Sorry sir, your plane just backed out.  We’ll get you on the 12:25.”

9:30 – I’m in an Irish pub.  Before you rush to judgment, remember that it was 10:30 in NYC…

And from there, pretty much everything went as planned.  All of that for a few days will all the people I love the most.  Well worth it.

They said it best…

So if you don’t know, I love folk/bluegrass.  Love it.  I know that that is like the most hick, country thing in the world to love, but I just can’t help it.  If you want some good music, listen to The Avett Brothers.  Anyway, when I was back in Oklahoma I would tune my dad’s satellite radio to bluegrass and listen to it non-stop (unless of course it was between the hours of 11 to 2 or 4 to 6 when I was listening to two of my other favorite AM/FM radio shows…).  One day I happened to stumble upon a song by the group Balsam  Range called Caney Fork River.  Most of you would probably hate it and even more of you would make fun of me for how hick of a song it is, but I think the first verse does a fairly nice job of summing up my current situation.  Enjoy.

It’s a long long way
from the hills of Carolina
to the arms of my darlin’
in Jackson, Tennessee. 
And it’s a hard hard way
to try and make a living,
but it’s the quickest way to get ahead,
both of us agree.
It’s been 27 weeks,
but it seems more like forever,
still the pay was good
and worth the sacrifice. 
The work is finally over
and I’m getting close to Jackson,
I can’t wait to see her
and I know she’ll be surprised. 

(chorus)
How many times must I cross
that ol’ Caney Fork River
travellin’ through the state of Tennessee. 
How many times must I cross
that ol’ Caney Fork River
'till I know that I am home free.

 

Side Note: In typically country fashion, the second verse is about the guy finding his wife/girlfriend/whatever cheating on him and taking them both out with a shotgun.  Oh well. 

Pick-a-City

Vacation…over.  So the first thing everyone asked me when I was home was, “So, how do you like it up there?”  I mean, it was practically a given.  My answer?  “I like it, it’s different.”  This, of course, is a crappy answer, which just leads to more questions.  And really, all people want to know is “Which city do you like better?”  Be honest, you’re dying to know.  So without actually answering the question, I present to you 10 reasons to LOVE each city.  I thought about doing a hate list, but I’m in a good mood…

OKC
#1	$5.50 movies, $7.00 24-packs.
#2	The sun.  You can see it…
#3	The stars.  You can see them…
#4	Non-public transportation.
#5	Grocery stores with HUMONGEOUS aisles.
#6	Al, Jim, and the Animals.
#7	Sonics, Braum’s, and ice cream on every corner.
#8	Emily Elliott.  If you don’t know her, you’re missing out.
#9	Air conditioning.
#10	Ability to wear sweats out in public and still fit in.

NYC
#1	$1.00 Nuts-4-Nuts, $5.00 gallon of fresh honey.
#2	Central Park.
#3	Broadway shows.
#4	Public transportation.
#5	Farmer’s Markets with hot apple cider.
#6	Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
#7	Zabars, Carnegie, and deli’s on every corner.
#8	Scarlett Johansson on Broadway.
#9	Snow.  The enjoyable kind.
#10	You can pretty much wear anything you want.

The Elusive 6-pack

    I have to say, I've done some pretty awesome stuff in my lifetime. I've seen the Australian Philharmonic perform in the Sydney Opera House, bought silk table runners on the Great Wall, seen Les Miserables in London, and received a full body massage from an ogre next to a gay guy in Budapest. However, one thing has eluded me my whole life….

    A 6-pack. Now, granted, this is primarily due to "lack of effort", but there are obviously other factors. For instance, I'm pudgy. I was born pudgy (10lbs 7oz) and, minus the periods of rapid vertical growth in my life, have always been pudgy. Those are just the facts. However, since my transition to NY I'm proud to say that I've been to the gym almost every day. Still absolutely ZERO sign of a 6-pack, but at least the guys at the gym know my name, right?

    One day at the gym, my life's direction almost took a drastic turn. I was running on the treadmill and from said treadmill you can see some of the undergraduate gym classes going on out on the basketball court. These are always fascinating. First, they stretch these poor kids out who look like they've spent a total of 5 minutes their entire lives lifting heavy objects. Then they line them up and have them go baseline to baseline doing the most ridiculous crap you have ever seen. One of them I think you just hop in the air and twist your arm somehow, which obviously has no purpose at all except to make you tired and make you look like a complete idiot all at the same time. And then it hit me! I should become a gym teacher. I've always loved finding ways to make people look like idiots without them having the slightest clue and this would be like the Mecca. I could come up with all kinds of "exercises" and tell them it's good for the Gluteous Tricepeous and no one would have a clue, they would just show up and do it day after day! Then I started calculating how long it would take me to pay off my debt on a teacher's salary and decided to stick with computers.

    As soon as I get a 6-pack (or heck, even a two pack), I'll post some pictures.