One Day He Dreamed of A Ship in the World

Hello friend of mine.

So... it's February and I still haven't told you about the events of January. New things keep stacking up - I suppose it makes for an interesting life. I always seem to get behind. Forgive me for that. I do have something rather exciting to share with you, however: my impromptu trip to New York City (part 1)!

My good friend Jewel (I talked about her in an old blog entry) decided to text me mid January out of the blue.

"Looking for someone to go to New York with me overnight next week, interested?"

That fateful text.

"I'm very interested," I responded enthusiastically. Now we just had to plan around my preset work schedule.

Come to find out, Sting had written a musical (I know, right?) called The Last Ship. I knew next to nothing about it, but Jewel loved the idea of seeing it on Broadway. She'd seen a clip of it on The Today Show To give some perspective: I've always been a theater person. I've done many productions in school and out, doing everything from acting to technical work to directing. My dream career used to be working on the Broadway stage. That passion runs deep to me.

Funny thing, though - I've never been to NYC, not to mention Broadway. When this chance appeared, I jumped on it. We looked into flight and as it turns out flying can be expensive booking three days before you leave. No go on that front. How about a drive? We'd worked out that we could leave on a Saturday night and come back by Monday morning - when I had to work at 7 AM. Could we manage the drive in that slot of time? It was a 10 hour drive nonstop.

For some unknown reason we decided to make the trip. We started to make secondary plans - should we leave earlier Saturday? Who would get the rental car? Matinee on Sunday? How is the weather looking?

Meanwhile I'd made plans to play board games with a friend of mine early Saturday morning. I did some quick mental math. 7 AM Saturday to 11 Monday night = very tiring weekend.

Was this a good idea? Was this the most reckless thing I'd ever done? Yes. I'll never forget it.