Clues, Detours and Road Blocks

In honor of the Amazing Race beginning another season on Sunday, I will share my own personal amazing race from this past weekend.  TJ and I have been Amazing Race fans since the very first season in 2001 and even applied once....a very long time ago....to be on the show.  Now, you too, know one of my deepest secrets.  I have no idea why our very amateur video covering "the top 10 reasons we would be great on TAR" did not even get us an interview.  Ever since the show started, whenever I find myself in a bit of a travel challenge, I channel my inner AR contestant and power through the challenge.  There was that one time soon after 9/11 when I was in the Atlanta airport "the day the idiot ran back through security" and the airport was evacuated.  I ended up sleeping on the floor of the airport all night so I did not have to go back through the 3 hour security line in order to catch my flight in the wee hours of the next morning.  It was just easier to sleep on the floor than to go through that disaster again in a few hours.  Thankfully I had a coat for a blanket, a backpack for a pillow and newspaper for insulation.  Cozy!  I'm sure I would have won that leg of The Amazing Race!

TJ and I headed to NYC on Wednesday last week.  We were meeting our LG on Wednesday for dinner.  I was very excited about seeing her so imagine my surprise and disappointment when I arrived at the airport only to be told our flight was cancelled.  Not delayed....cancelled!  All of the options they gave us put us in NYC around 11 p.m. or midnight.  Too late for dinner with our LG.  As much as I wanted to, I did not cry in the airport.  I shifted into "momma bear needs to see her cub" mode.  TJ even suggested going home and flying out the next day.  No way, I was on a mission!  We chose the option that routed us through Chicago.  With a more than 3.5 hour layover I thought maybe, just maybe, we could get out earlier and  see our LG.  We landed in Chicago, exited our plane and I started looking.  Our original fight was going to Newark.  Right next to our arrival gate was a flight going to Laguardia in an hour.  I didn't really care which airport I flew into, I just needed to get to NYC.  I asked if there were seats available and there were.  We were put on the standby list which got us on the plane and into the city before 8 p.m.!!!  We managed to have dinner with our girl and there was peace and happiness once again!  Won another leg of TAR!

Rockefeller Center was jammed!  

The next leg of our race was to find TJ's grandmother's grave.  It is in Queens.  Easy.  Take a 40 minute subway ride to the second to last stop on the line.  Then catch a cab to the cemetery a mile and a half away, no problem.  Well maybe one problem.  When you get off at the second to last stop in Queens there are no cabs, we were not in Kansas anymore.  If I had known this I would not have worn my stylish riding boots.  Yeah...walking 3-4 miles in stylish riding boots is not that much fun.  I see comfortable walking shoes in my future!  Another complication was that the cemetery was huge!  It was also covered in snow.  We had a section number and plot number.  The section was easy to find but the plots numbers were under 2 feet of snow.  The nice cemetery worker helped us find the grave site and we tromped through the deep snow to find a historic landmark.

Great Grandfather, Great Grandmother, Grandfather and Grandmother

The rest of the trip involved melting snow, eating, drinking, and Carol King. NYC got a ton of snow this winter.  When it warmed up the snow went from white to black and melted quickly.  Underneath it all is a lot of ugly!

A lot of ugly snow.....

and a lot of just plain ugly.....

 We went on a quest for Broadway tickets and managed half price tickets to see "Beautiful, The Carol King Story".  All of us, "being of a certain age", really loved the music.  The play was beautiful...it made me feel like a natural woman and then we went up on the roof and felt the earth move under our feet!

Stay tuned as TAR goes to Steamboat Spring this weekend.  I hope I don't have to do a half pipe or a ski jump!