St. Patrick's, Rockefeller Plaza, and Radio City Music Hall

This is all still day one... Man, I'm long winded.

After Grand Central Station, we started walking along the streets. We took a few pictures of the streets and came to St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was pretty sweet. I've always wanted to go to Europe because everything there is so old, it has a lot of culture and meaning. It was weird to see this cathedral in the middle of the big city, in all its Gothic splendor. I took a couple pictures of the outside, hoping to be able to put the two together. Here are the first two pictures.

And here is what I did with photoshop. It doesn't look that great, but you get to see how big it is.


Inside was awesome. I really love cathedrals... even though this is the first one I have actually been inside one. I liked the intricacy of the architecture and the design.

It also made me think that more LDS buildings should have stained glass windows. They are so beautiful. I don't even know the stories that were conveyed in the glass, but it was just so awesome to look at.

I'm pretty sure the guy with the green and white robes is St. Patrick, but I don't know much about his miracles, so maybe a few of the windows were about that and his story. I know he was taken captive to Ireland, but then lived there and became a priest. Then he healed all sorts of people and I think is credited for getting rid of snakes in Ireland? Way to go, Pat.

After we had been inside the cathedral for a while, Mass was about to begin, so we decided to leave. Elisa took a photo of the schedule in case we wanted to come back for Mass, but we never went back. It really was too bad.

After that, we did find a great place to sit... I mean... shop. Across the street from the cathedral was an H&M store. The girls went nuts. This is the picture I took from the "man bench" where all the husbands seemed to be sitting.


Yes, I understand that I'm a little obsessed. But here's my only shot of the other side of the building! I really want to go back there...

After shopping was over, we started walking again and came to part of Rockefeller Plaza. We stopped there to sit for a bit and took some pictures.

Here are a few different views from the little alley we stopped at. Not a scary back alley, but a well-lit, open alley with benches etc. The building picture is the view strait up. And I don't even know what is at 75 Rockefeller Plaza, but there's a picture of it. Made me think of the TV show, 30 Rock.

After our little break, we casually walked upon Radio City Music Hall. And we took WAY too many pictures of the sign. And somehow managed to not get one of us all together. But it was still fun. Here are just a couple pictures.

After that, we took one of those bike cabs to Times Square. You know, where the guy rides his bike and you sit in a little seat in the back? Someone comment and tell me what that is actually called... And when I know what it's called, I'll write the next blog post. Just Times Square and the ride back to the hotel, and I'll finish day one!!! Holy crap, this is taking forever...

Finally gonna do it....

This brief interruption to New York is brought to you by the potential loss of $500 or potential gain of $2,000-4,000. Before I explain what I mean, let me set things up.

Here's the thing. I'm a big dude, and I'm pretty out of shape. I'm definitely ok with who I am and I'm a pretty confident guy. Most of you already know this. I've also had spurts of enthusiasm about getting into better shape. I even bought a treadmill a year or two ago. Using it actually using it lasted for... well, not that long.

Well, yesterday, a coworker came to me and told me that a few guys at work were doing a biggest loser contest, but this one was going to be a lot more motivating than the normal, contribute-ten-bucks-and-hope-for-the-best sort of competitions. Participating in this weight loss challenge would cost one hundred dollars a month for five months. And this was not a month by month thing. You're in from day one all the way to the end, or you're not in at all. So really, if you participate, you'd have to have five hundred bucks to hand over at the end if you don't win. But that also means that if you DO win, there's potential to win a TON of money. Eight guys weighed in yesterday and we have until Friday to decide if we're in all the way. Four guys have already signed the paper saying they'll fork over the five hundred if they lose. That makes the pot currently $2,000 bucks.

So here's my dilemma. I think I could totally win this competition. But if I don't, am I going to be ok with handing over five hundred bucks? I've done smaller little things like this before, and I don't care if I lose the ten or twenty dollars. It's not motivating enough to get me to try longer than a day or two. But I will DEFINITELY care if I lose five hundred. So the question is, under what circumstances would I be ok with losing that much money? After much thought and discussion with friends and family, here's the answer: if I actually tried and did everything to win that money over the whole 5 months, lost a bunch of weight, and still didn't win, THEN I'd be ok with it. It would have been the motivation to get me up off my ass and do something to lose weight. But if I sit on my ass the whole time, I'd be pissed at myself. (Sorry to my more sensitive readers... I'm working on the swearing, but I think "ass" rather than "bum" conveys the meaning a little better here.)

I'm going to do this. My biggest problem is the long term motivation. I'll be honest, most things that require self-motivation, a lot of physical work, and no charity organization are hard for me. So I am going to tell everyone I know that I am doing this, and I expect you all to check in on me and motivate me to keep at it. I won't mind an intermittent text here and there, bringing it up in conversation, or motivating me to NOT go out to eat, or to make good choices when I do. I'll probably blog about this once or twice a month, too. And I'm going to join Weight Watchers by the end of this week. I lost a bunch of weight when I did Weight Watchers at Work, so if I can do it again, it will also help motivate me.

And that's that. I commenced this little journey into weight loss with indulging in a chocolate fountain at my sister-in-law's place (I can NEVER do that again. So don't invite me.), and a 15 minute jog on my very neglected treadmill this morning. I'm blogging about this now, early in the morning, so my friends and family will all know what I'm up to. Thanks for your support guys! I think this is really going to get me motivated... I just need to stay motivated for five months. :-)

Grand Central Station

After our nap, we didn't have a set plan of what to do, so I suggested going to Grand Central Station, since we had to take the subway anyway. From there, we could wander the streets of Manhattan and see the sites.

Grand Central Station is pretty cool. It was talked up a lot to me by a coworker, so It wasn't as awesome as I had hoped. I wonder if we actually got to see everything there that there is to see. My coworker told me that there was an archway that if you stand at opposite ends of it, facing the wall, you can talk into the wall and hear each other as if you are standing right next to each other. Well, we didn't find that archway... oh well.

The ceiling of the main hall of grand Central has all sorts of constellations on it.


And the giant windows have some really cool chandeliers hanging next to them. In the middle of the day, it's really bright in there. I imagine it looks really cool at night, too.


We also took pictures with the big clock that is in the middle of the main hall. It's a cool looking clock, but again, my expectations were that it was unearthly huge and extravagant. It is big, but not quite as impressive as I hoped.



But don't get me wrong, I was really loving it there and totally excited to be in NYC! Here's a shot of us all together.


We didn't stay there long, but while we were there, we saw this monk, apparently waiting for someone to come pick him up. It kind of spoke to me (a little) of what NYC was going to be like. All sorts of things I've never seen before, seemingly out of place, but part of the melting pot of cultures that exist in New York. Maybe it was a little disrespectful to take his picture without him knowing, but he was such an anomaly--and I'd never seen an actual monk in robes and all--that we couldn't pass it up. Tiffany and Elissa pretended to pose while Katey and I took a picture of him. Katey's picture is better. And here it is.


The most impressive thing to me was when we stepped out of Grand Central. We stepped out, looking down Daved Ben-Gurion Place. This is what I think of when I think of NYC.

Skyscrapers as far as you can see down both sides of the road, traffic backed up, mostly consisting of taxi cabs, and loads of pedestrians. It was really neat. We hadn't been in the middle of so many buildings yet, so this was really cool to me.

The NYC subway

I wish that we had a subway here. In figuring out the money spent on car payment, insurance, and gas, you could spend up to about $5oo or more. A monthly pass for the subway--that's unlimited use of trains and buses--is only $88. And that will get you anywhere. Yeah. I hate gasoline.

So once we got off the plane, we found our way using the air train to the actual subway and bought weekly tickets. We went EVERYWHERE using the subway.





At first it was a little weird, but Katey got it down. I thought I might want to figure it out, but she was doing so well at it, I couldn't butt in! Plus, every time we all stopped and gathered together looking at a map, I decided to just step back and watch people to make sure no one was eyeballing backpacks or purses. No one tried to mug us, so I think it worked out.

We even took the subway to our hotel. We totally looked like tourists with our bags and backpacks, but who cares. It felt even more touristy when we were taking pictures of each other on the train!

One downside to taking the subway to the hotel was that we had to walk about a half a mile from the train stop to the hotel. (The hotel said it was about .8 miles, but there's no way it was almost a mile...) Anyway, so we again looked like raging tourists as we walked our luggage down the street.

In one of those pictures, you can see the McDonald's just up ahead. Because everyone was crazy hungry, we decided to stop there for some breakfast.

This is the only picture we got in McDonald's. This is Elissa getting napkins.

I consented, but with the stipulation that we NEVER stop at McDonald's or any other chain again for food. I didn't want to spend money eating at places that are just around the corner in Salt Lake! We didn't follow that stipulation to a T exactly, but we did a good job, I think. (The only other time we stopped in a McDonald's was in China Town, and that was basically to check our wares and rest for a bit.)

Once we got to the hotel, we found out that we had gotten there very early for check-in. I think we were there at like 9:00 a.m. and check-in was at 3:00 p.m. We asked if we could leave our luggage there, and they said they'd let us leave it stacked up in the lobby, but that they weren't responsible for it. We were ok with that, but everyone was so tired! Elissa and Tiff were already lounging on the couch, then I asked if they had wireless internet I could use, and pulled out the lappy. I think that sorta freaked the lady out, so she started checking and our room was empty, so we got to check in early! There was a little hiccup with the two reservations we made; one was thanks to Mary Knapper with a HUGE discount. I told her the wrong check-out date, so we had another reservation for the same room for one day and one night. The woman at the county was a little confused, but figured it out and we went to our room and took a nap! It was actually really nice.

Once we were rested, we decided to take on New York City and started by going to Grand Central Station. But I'll write about that in the next post. ;-)

NYC - Round 1

I'm planning on doing a post per activity on my trip, in the order that they happened. This post will just be the airport and plane ride. I may not get to anything else tonight or tomorrow (since it's Friday... and we ALL know I live for the weekend, right?), but I thought I'd better start before I forgot things that happened. So here goes!

Each of us arrived separately at the airport (thanks for the ride, Matt). I got there first (surprise, surprise... I HATE being late for stuff. And so does Matt) so called Katey to see how close they were. It was then that I realized I forgot my temple recommend, and Matt had just left. I called him to find out if he could bring it back, but we decided that it would be easier for him to mail it to the hotel where we were staying. So I just waited for everyone else to show up so we could all check in together.

Katey and I just before we checked our bags. I found out on this trip that my left eye is a little squintier than my right. Great, one more thing to be self conscious about.

Once everyone arrived at the airport, it turned out I wasn't the only one who forgot stuff. Elissa needed to get some cash.

Here's Elissa, now with her loads of $$$ for the trip.

At check in, Katey was a little worried that her checked bag would be over 50 pounds, which then caused a little competition to see who had the lightest luggage. I think my baggage was the lightest at 42 pounds. And that was with hard luggage! But then, I'm a guy; so really, it's easy to pack light.

After checking in, we found our terminal had been changed. We walked to the new terminal and waited to board the plane.

Katey and Elissa waiting to board. Elissa had her Blackberry, which allowed her to update her Facebook status every hour or so. She also added a bunch of photos from her phone.

Here's me checking stuff in my carry-on. Get used to seeing me in this pose. This is my little black map book (thanks Mary!). Sadly, we didn't use it at all. Katey had done quite a bit of work on figuring out the subway and everywhere we went. And all with a library book. Who knew libraries were good for more than plagiarizing encyclopedias and other reference materials for 9th grade research papers?

For those that don't know, we took the red-eye flight. It left at 12:30 (or as I like to call it, midnight-thirty). And while it probably wasn't so funny to her, Tiffany actually had quite the red eyes on the red-eye. Check it out.

Tiff's red eyes on the red-eye.

After taking way too many pictures of Tiff's crazy eyeballs, we were lucky enough to be the last section allowed on the plane. Also lucky for us, we were all either on the exit row or the row in front of the exit row. On Delta, that means the seats don't recline.

Here I am, ready for a cruddy night's sleep on the exit row.

Elissa and Katey. Katey was exceptionally excited to be on a plane again. I think for the second time ever. (Right, Kate?)

So, because my seat couldn't recline, sleeping on the plane was a little odd... With no reclining to keep my head fixed to my head rest, my head sorta swung around and I almost head butted the lady next to me. Could have been worse... the plane could have crashed, right? But it didn't and we made it! It was interesting once we got to JFK. We got some help to figure out the subway system, and got to our hotel. But that's the next post. :-)

A few NYC highlights

Ok, I think I'm going to document all of the NYC trip later, but here's a few highlights. Today we went to church in Manhattan,

Check this church out. it's five stories high.

then went to Central Park. Here's a few pictures.

This is me in Central Park, just layin' on the grass. It was really nice.

This is what I was looking at.

I took another self-portrait in the park....

And Elissa took a picture of me, taking a picture of me.

While we were walking tonight, I saw the Chrysler Building and took a semi-fuzzy picture.

We saw the Bethedsda Fountain in the park.

And rented a row boat!!!

Tiff and Katey sang "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." It was pretty sweet, as you can see.

But what made me the maddest was this picture. I just wanted a picture of the "Fifth Ave" street sign, but as you can see in the background, there is the Garrett's Popcorn shop!!!

And we didn't even see it and didn't stop!!! I was so mad at myself for not seeing it. I've even been looking for it. I guess my comparison will have to wait for the next time we're on Fifth Avenue, which shouldn't be too long.

I'm in NYC!!

Howdy folks! I'm writing my first blog post about my NYC trip from my hotel. I slept a little better on the plane than everyone else, so they are taking a nap and I'm checking email and writing this blog! I've only got a couple of pictures on here, so this will be relatively short, and it's missing pictures from the plane ride. But here's a few pictures anyway to let you know we made it alive.

This is Katey and I in SLC airport.

This is Elissa and I in the air train at the JFK airport.

This is Katey and Tiff on the subway on the way to our hotel.

This is me again, also on the subway.

We had to take a couple connecting trains and then walked about a mile to the hotel. It wasn't too bad, but we totally looked like tourists. We actually stopped at a McDonald's in Queens because everyone was STARVING. It really helped us make it all the way to the hotel!

Once we got here, they told us check-in time was at 3 p.m., so we could leave our bags if we wanted and come back to check in later. We thought about it, and everyone just wanted to sit. So we sat down, Tiff and Katey looked like they were going to nap right there, and I whipped out my laptop. The lady at the counter must have thought we were nuts and wanted us to leave, so she checked our rooms and sure enough, they were ready for us. There was a little confusion initially at check-in, but we got it solved and we're good to go!

We haven't done anything in NYC yet (and I informed the group that we ARE NOT to eat at McDonald's ever again on this trip), but I'm excited! I'll keep posting when I have time and if I'm not too tired. I might try a little post every night, because I snore and I will probably want to give everyone else a little time to fall asleep before I start snoring! Anyway, here we are in NYC!!! It doesn't seem like that far away, but I can't wait to see a few sites!

Wii you like to play?

Is that what those Japanese guys say in the commercials? That's what it sounds like to me.

So a while ago I said I was going to post videos of people playing Wii. Here's a few. I had a little get together--and true to form, the neighbors upstairs came down eventually to ask us to keep it down. But we had a good time anyway. Here's a few people playing tennis.

I love watching people play for the first time. Did you see how hard Justin swung at that thing?! Awesome. Here's another one.

In this one, Tiffany pegs Katey in the arm, then Justin acts the age old question, "Is there anything I can do to move my guy?" The answer? Nope, sorry pal. All ya gotta do is swing.

And here's one more.

This is Katey and Tiffany duking it out in boxing. Watching people play for the first time is awesome, but watching girls box for the first time (or even the tenth) is just funny. No offense friends. It is what it is.

So wanna see how good you are the first time? Just let me know! Wii can play any time. ;-)

St. Georges's Crack (or St. George Part 2)

So when did people start to call a visible butt crack "butt cleavage"? I mean, it's not nearly as enticing as normal cleavage, and calling it that sorta glorifies it inappropriately. Probably more accurate than praising the glory of bums is that it's just sarcasm at work making fun of it while trying to sound more fresh and cool. But butt cleavage is not what this post is about... not remotely. But now you'll think of bums every time you read "The Crack" in this post. Part of me thinks I should apologize for that, but part of me thinks it's kinda funny. And without even further rambling, I give you the actual blog post...

While in St. George, everyone got the opportunity to see what Christy affectionately calls "The Crack." It's a tiny little fissure in the earth in the barren, red rock wilderness of St. George. It's really interesting. And you've got to be skinny to get through it. So, needless to say, I didn't really attempt it, but I got some pictures.

This one is just at the beginning of The Crack. It gets a little less roomy beyond this point.

This one is in the same place, but looking out instead of in.

This is where it gets really tight. I got up to just a bit beyond Krista (the girl in the khaki pants and navy shirt) and had to stop. In fact, if you click on the picture, you can probably see my legs beyond her and to the right.

Here's a shot of the Skinny folk that actually got through.

And here's a shot looking from the top of The Crack down into the people below.

And that's basically it. Danny and I didn't really fit, so we found a different way up to the top.

See? This spot is not nearly as bad. Just a couple parts where I had to really use my non-existent upper body strength. That made me a little tired, then subsequently sore.

But in Danny's defense, he's really not a big guy. This crack was only for the uber skinny. Danny tried to get through twice, but to no avail. Our little jaunt up to the top was more fun anyway.

I realize I could have just added this to the last post, but that one was very, VERY long and by the time I got all those videos uploaded, I was DONE writing about this trip. Consequently, I haven not included pictures or description about going to Iggy's Bar and Grill for lunch just before going to the crack, but really, all we did was eat lunch. Nothing quite as exciting as The Crack. Hope you've enjoyed all the pictures!