Josh & I visit the American Museum of Natural History

I finally scheduled a day off, and take Joshua to the city.  I had been promising to take him to the city for the entire spring and summer, but the schedules finally worked.  At the moment, I’m leading an audit, but am between the planning and fieldwork phases.  Now seemed like a good time to take a day off, recharge, and have a nice day out with my boy.

After running through various itineraries that became incrementally more complex (and likely less enjoyable for a 4-year old), I chanted the mantra “Less is more.” Why try to fit in observation decks, ferry rides, numerous subway rides all within one trip?  Too much for him. 

I decided on a train ride into the city (his first time on a train), subway uptown (first time on the subway) to the American Museum of Natural History and the Rose Center For Earth and Space for a planetarium show. Lots of new experiences there. My wife would drop us off and pick us up.

I’ll skip the additional bad decisions, delays, and other logistical problems that occurred that morning, and hurry to the important details.  We had 14 mins to make it to the train station and purchase tickets before the 9:04am train arrived. If we missed it, we would have to 30 mins more for a local train — doable, but not the best option when we were so close to making it! With some mad dashing, and bagels and water in hand, we arrived at the train station at 9:03am. I grabbed the bag with our breakfast in my left hand, Josh in my right arm, and ran to the platform.  As we were in line at 9:03am, the train arrived. As I paid for the ticket with a credit card at 9:04am, the last passengers and conductors boarded the train. I carried Josh and breakfast, ran out the door, and made a flying LEAP onto the train as the buzzer buzzed. I landed in the train vestibule, the doors closed, passengers looked at me, and I smiled and sighed with relief.

“Sweet.”

I don’t think my life would be as interesting if it wasn’t for all the bad decisions and melodrama. We ate our breakfast on the train, and I pointed out the various stops and towns we passed.  We arrived at NY Penn a little after 10am, took the #1 train to 79th St, and hoofed it to the museum.

I won’t give a blow-by-blow account of our trip through the museum.  There’s certainly too much to visit in one day. However:

• We did visit the entire lower level
• We explored the entire 1st floor, including the Northwest Native American exhibit, the Hall of Biodiversity, the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, Gems and Minerals, The Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites, The Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, etc.
• We visited the Mammals of North America, and yeah, the entire 1st floor
• We watched the Journey to the Stars planetarium show, a 30-min show on stars narrated by Whoopi Goldberg.
• Joshua wasn’t hungry yet by 1:30pm, so visited the Discovery Room for kids so he could play and learn.

At a little after 2pm, we had lunch at the museum cafeteria.  Worst lunch I’ve had in a long while.  $7 chicken nuggets that tasted like cardboard. $7 chicken wings as dry as can be. $2.80 for a bottle of soda.  Over $20 for a meal that should not have cost me more than $8. Total ripoff.

At the dinosaur exhibits

In the late afternoon, we hit the 4th floor for all the dinosaur exhibits. We had made some progress into the extinct mammal halls, but Josh was too tired to walk anymore.  We wrapped up our tour of the museum around 4:30pm, hit the museum shop, and then went downstairs to catch the C train back down to Penn Station. 

Funny enough, on the ride home, we coincidentally sat in front of one of my coworkers from my previous job. Weird coincidence? You betcha. We chatted on the train ride, and caught up on old times and news until we reached our stop, and departed the train.

Good trip overall, and Josh had a great time. I’m glad I decided not to overload the trip with too much extra. I forget that he’s only 4-years old. Photos are already posted in the September 2009 gallery.

Vijay's birthday dinner

A group of us had plans tonight to meet up at the Macaroni Grill close to the Menlo Park mall in Menlo Park, NJ (or is it Edison NJ?)  My wife also wanted to stop by the shops in Edison beforehand.  To make these great plans happen, I had to get there. Instead of catching the bus home from NYC as usual, I used a one-way bus ticket in the AM, and I took a train from NY Penn Station in the evening to the Metropark station in Edison NJ.

It has certainly been a while since I rode NJ Transit, but it was a pleasant trip down memory lane — all those times years ago of running to Penn station, missing my train by 5 seconds, waiting another hour for the next train.   Today was one of the pleasant trips.  No running, plenty of time, and I rode in one of the new Northeast Corridor double-decker cars.

My wife picked me up at Metropark with kids in town, we hit a shop, then drove to Macaroni Grill, where everyone eventually showed up.  Kids were behaved, only one diaper that required changing, and the food was actually quite good.  I’m not a fan of Macaroni Grill, but they changed the menu, and the quality has improved. I was pleasantly surprised. The appetizers were good, my chicken parmigiana was excellent, and good wine.

It was a win for everyone.

Thursday for lunch, I looked online, and found a promising pizza place with decent reviews on Bleeker St simply named John’s of Bleeker St.  I took a walk for a few blocks, and seemingly hit civilization.  Bleeker St and 7th Ave is where the action was — stores, eateries, etc.  Blame my ignorance.

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to live in one of the NYC boroughs or Manhattan itself.  It was always too expensive for my blood, and trying to find affordable housing near a subway line was seemingly next to impossible.  My friend Doug and I almost did, but we ended up in NJ instead.  Doug later moved to Astoria Queens for a few years, but he was never a fan.

I’ve never been a fan of lower Manhattan with all the quirky streets.  The grid system from 14th Street and northwards works for me.  All the crazy streets below 14th St that twist and turn are too confusing.  I still remember wandering the Village at night a few years ago for 45 minutes, trying to find the Christopher St PATH station before finally giving up. 

There isn’t a lot ot eat down there either, but I’m exploring on my lunch break.  I went to one small deli yesterday, but the sandwich was disgusting.  I tried City Search today, but that website used to be better.  It’s just easier now to just take a walk.  Fresh air, stretch the legs, and some boots-on-the-ground exploring in 60 mins.