6/7/15
Denver, USA → New York City, USA

Ashley (Ash) woke up an hour earlier than I did. She was running around like a five-year-old on Christmas morning, throwing last-minute items into her fifty-liter REI backpack. I got out of bed quietly and snuck out of the room to avoid the tornado. When safely out of the flying-clothes zone, I let my morning routine commence: sitting on the toilet while the shower water heated up and reading my Twitter feed to catch up on general news, politics, and sports. The day we’d been planning for for six months—and dreaming about for years—had come; we were headed to the airport to leave our routine lives and travel across Europe and Southeast Asia with nothing but backpacks and each other.

Our wheels were up by 11:00 a.m. We were passengers B5 and B7 in Southwest’s boarding line. (We never did find that mystery B6 person who somehow managed to check in between us online.) After more snacks than we could eat, multiple coffees, and four hours of prep work for our trip, we touched down at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

Feeling adventurous and eager to test out our backpacking legs, we decided to trek the two miles from the airport to the nearest subway and ride the train into Manhattan. We exited the LaGuardia terminal to the smell of money and cigarettes. Welcome to New York.

Google Maps had no walking directions from the airport, but what the hell does Google Maps know? We walked briskly and confidently in the cardinal direction of the subway. Two endless parking garages and a frightening Frogger experience later, our Uber had arrived.

Our Uber dropped us off in the busy neighborhood of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The feeling I get in New York City is unlike how I feel in any other city in the world; it’s almost like I am the star of a movie, and the bustling streets and honking taxis are just the background in my scene. Everyone has his or her own movie in New York City.

Eager for our afternoon caffeine fix, we ventured to the closest Starbucks, a mere fifty yards away. Did you know there are more Starbucks in New York City than pigeons? That is a false statement that I just made up; you shouldn’t believe everything you read.

We ordered extra-large coffees and then walked next door to an overpriced pizzeria to grab massive slices of New York–style pizza.

We took our calories and caffeine to Central Park, where we nestled into the grass to people watch and wait for our friends Orrie and Rebekah to get home from a wedding.

Orrie and Rebekah are college friends from our alma mater, Appalachian State. We had not seen them in a few years, so we were excited to spend a couple days in their company. They are the type of people who improve every part of your life when you are around them. Their positive energy is both uplifting and infectious. They were the perfect people to send us away as we fell into the unknown world of unemployed backpackers.

We arrived at their tiny Manhattan apartment around 11:00 p.m. and caught up with them for a few minutes before they headed to bed.