Bowl Trip, Day Two

I'm continuing the recap of my first KSU bowl trip, to NYC to see the Pinstripe Bowl.

Wednesday brought our first full day in New York. We donned our purple sweatshirts, shoes (yes—my wife has purple shoes) coats and beanie caps and went for a quick breakfast. Then we hit the subway toward Lower Manhattan. We wanted to see Ground Zero and, as we are both proud and practicing Episcopalians, also Trinity, Wall Street church.

Our first stop was the church. It got its charter from King William III in 1697. It's on some of the most expensive real estate in the country, located on the intersection of Wall St. and Broadway, and people like Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton are buried in the churchyard. The present building dates to 1846. We did a quick tour of the church, realizing that we'd come back for the 12:30 Eucharist.

So we headed off to Ground Zero and the World Trade Center site. This is hallowed ground-- I understand that. But if you didn't know where you were, you'd have a hard time realizing what happened there. We didn't have much time to look around, but it was a construction zone, and it seemed to fit. There was a visitor center, but our impression had been formed, so we moved on.

St. Paul's Chapel was our next stop. This was very powerful experience for me. George Washington worshiped in this building, which is not attached physically to Trinity, but most definitely is a part of it. St. Paul's was where 9/11 responders themselves got the care they needed. There were displays of pictures, letters, firefighter and police patches, mementoes and what not. And Ronan Tynan singing God Bless America. It all combined for a very moving experience. I understand that any church in that situation would have helped in much the same way, and that simple geography was likely the biggest reason, but I was proud that my church that stepped forward and played such a huge role in comforting others during this time.

So with that, we headed back to Trinity for the 12:30 service.

I find the Episcopal liturgy to be very soothing and very meditative. The same words I have recited in church as long as I have been alive. These same words in this sanctuary, from the mouth of The Rev. Mark Bozutti-Jones, who is black and 6'3" 260 with a voice to match, reached me at the very center of my being. Throw in his sermon on the Holy Innocents and include Holy Communion, and I crossed off a bucket list item. Truly a special time for me.

We then headed back to Midtown, got a quick bite to eat and headed off to the K-State pep rally. Since Ann and I left Manhattan for Tuscaloosa, the only way I got my KSU music fix was by watching the same band pregame clip on YouTube. Listening to the band play Wildcat Victory, Wabash Cannonball and others in this hotel ballroom for the first time in two years made me very happy. The cheer-babes and Classy Cats did their thing as well. After listening to several people, it was time to see the team. Unfortunate thing is, they got stuck in traffic and wound up walking the last few blocks to greet their public. They couldn’t stay long, seeing as how they still had game prep to work on. So the pep rally lasted a little over an hour.

We then retreated to the Sheraton Towers, the team hotel, for a few eight-dollar adult beverages and planned our next move, which was to find one of the KSU-friendly restaurants the alumni association publicized. It was a bit of a circuitous route, which took us past Rockefeller Center and the famous Christmas tree as well as Radio City Music Hall and Sak’s Fifth Avenue.

Massive throngs of people were out and about, since the cold had eased a bit, making walks a little more fun.

After a short time spent searching, we found The Australian on West 38th street. We were here as the last stop of the night, and to get off our feet for a spell. Interesting thing to me was that people with actual Aussie accents waited on us. I’m used to going to Old Chicago and being waited on by a gal from Overland Park.

Anyhow, we enjoyed a huge appetizer combo of wings, sausage rolls and pork pies. Yummy. But the kicker was dessert, Lamington Trifle. They brought a wedge of cake that was roughly the size of a two-story office building, and two forks. Now Lamington has chocolate and coconut frosting, two of my favorite things on earth. This was yet another out-of-body experience. Absolutely delicious. Beer, great food and football at this stop.

The only down side was having to leave.

We had to hit the subway home back to our hotel in Chelsea, stopping, of course to take a picture of the Empire State Building, which was lit in purple and orange, for the two teams playing in the game the next day.

Bowl Trip, Day One

I'm trying to get everything written down while all this is still pretty fresh.

Tuesday, December 28th started at 3:30 AM, in order to catch a 6 AM flight out of Birmingham. I was a little bleary-eyed, but I wolfed down a slice of cold pizza and hopped in the shower and drove us to the airport. Pretty surprising to see it so lively at such an early hour.

Our flight to Charlotte departed on time, a first good sign, since they'd seen six or so inches of snow in the last 36 hours or so. Then we started getting a little jumpy, as we waited for the LaGuardia leg of the trip to begin. But there were no worries. Takeoff and landing were both punctual. A car service took us to our hotel in the Chelsea section of Manhattan in about 45 minutes. Snow removal did not start well in NYC, so it was a little slow. But not as slow as the alumni bus, which we hear took nearly two hours.

Once we unloaded and got fed, we headed north toward Times Square, site of a 3 PM news conference. It was a little crisp outside and we were just trying to thaw out and figure out what was going on, but next thing we know, KSU Athletic Director John Currie introduced himself and visited with us for a spell. He even brought our mascot Willie Wildcat over for a photo op, and mentioned my wife as part of his comments, noting her 14-year bowl streak (she's never missed a K-State bowl game) and that she's a double graduate. We both were pretty well charged as we went back out into the evening. Ann has friends who were negatively affected by Mr. Currie's decisions, but he couldn't have been nicer to us and went out of his way to be friendly. We were very impressed by him.

This was my first walking experience in New York, and the shell-shock wore off quickly. Perhaps NY gets a bad rap, perhaps I watch too much TV. Because there were legions of people out and about, but I was never scared to walk down the street.

Our next step was to find food. Remember it had snowed nearly two feet two days prior, and by now we'd been up about 16 hours on little sleep. So we navigated more than we walked, due to snow and the throngs of people who were out. Ann successfully navigated the subway system to the Union Square stop, which was an absolute swamp of ice and snow, and right when we were about to punt and just find food and go home, we found Gramercy Tavern, which is what we were after. I'm continually amazed at Ann's sense of direction, which was spot on.

So we grabbed a beer and started waiting for a table. 45 minutes later, we sat down and ate some awesome food. I had some pork shoulder, which was terrific. It truly was a great experience. The beer was also very good. This event may have gone on further, if we were closer to base camp and not so tired.

So with our bellies full, we got ourselves home close to 11 PM and looked out our window at the Empire State Building and went to bed.

What a day. And there was plenty more where that came from.