Feb. 17-19, 2007

This trip has me flying our of Muskegon again on an early morning flight. Yeah... early morning...The sun wasn't even up yet! And off to Milwaukee to sit in the airport for a few hours. After my layover, I get on another plane to take me to New York City. This one is a little larger, a Boeing 717, and my chair fits right to my bulkhead seat. Once again, I love having a small chair. The flight is about 2 hours long, which isn't bad at all, and the fresh made chocolate chip cookies make it even better. Then I begin my trek through LaGuardia Airport. I am smart though, I din't check any bags so I didn't have to wait in line at the baggage conveyor belt of death.

A friend of mine picked me up at the airport and brought me to the hotel. This time I stayed at this uber-modern hotel in the "Lower East Side" called Hotel on Rivington. Aptly named for the fact that it is on Rivington Street. The concierge opens the door for me and follows me to the elevator. He tells me that I must go to the 2nd floor to check in and as he gets the elevator for me he calls up to the front desk on his handy-dandy walky-talky and tells and says to them, "I have a VIP guest coming up, he's in a wheelchair." I am not sure if that is code to tell them to treat me well or if it is meant to say, "Don't spit in that cop's burger". At any rate, I get to the second floor and check in goes fine. They give me the keys to my room and I head up. All the way up to the 14th floor where the halls are painted a cool flat black all over with huge, shiny red Hibiscus flowers painted along the walls. I finally find my suite and roll in to see 2 separate rooms divided by a killer bathroom. One side is a small bedroom and the other is a living room area with couches and all the fixin's, even a foot stool that looks like a poodle. I make my way down the short, narrow hallway to the bedroom. Now the bedroom was either tiny or the bed was just that massive because I had to hop onto the top platform of the head board and proceed to do a kamikaze roll onto the bed, laughing the entire time. I had asked for a handicap accessible room, but I think the person on the other end of the phone just didn't quite understand. No biggie, I will educate them...

The Hotel on Rivington is in a very good location as it is close to all sorts of food and shopping. The famous Katz Deli is 2 blocks away and the Coyote Ugly Saloon is jsut a short walk, not to mention many, many other spots of interest.

Back to Coyote Ugly where the girls all remembered me, of course... Sam, Kim, and Amber treated me so well with the addition of Christina (a.k.a. X-Tina). We were all "branded" that night with a "washable" red marker that didn't come completely off for days and after a good amount of scrubbing. Nice one! Good times were had by all. And this time there was Guinness on tap, so I was very excited. Everyone knows I like me some Guinness. Ha Ha Ha

By day it was shopping at Barney's and the Sony Style Store. Barney's was quite accessible with a lot of work finding the right paths and elevators and figuring out the combination to the magical floor numbers. The Sony Style Store was tough to even open the doors and not one of the employees who saw me struggling offered a hand of any sort. Even clapping at my valiant effort to make it inside would have been nice. Not to mention the whole store was very crowded and cluttered. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

For dinner one night we had to hit the ever famous Katz Deli again, and yet again. The food there is amazing and just the atmosphere of the place is so much fun and typical old school New York City. Claimed as the oldest deli in the whole city at right around 80 years old. I would recommend that place to anyone. The even have quite a wide selection of food to fit just about any craving.

Once again, I head back to the lovely state of Michigan for who knows how long... Until next time...