Bryan Tagge's Day 1 Summary

Day one….

 

Now begins the epic adventure!

 

Wonderful meeting and food at the NSL Stake Center.   Overly impressed again at the quality of boys and families in our troop!

 

Thrilled that so much has been done and so much effort has been put into this adventure. 

 

I feel that we are totally prepared and completely ready.   2+ years of preparation has come to an end. 

 

Now the anxiety that all the plans and itineraries follow as outlined. 

 

Arriving at the airport we find that our plane is delayed 1.5-2 hours.   Ouch.

 

We wait long at the terminal for our plane to arrive. 

 

We FINALLY board the plane at about1:30 am.  Red eye really meant red-eye. 

 

Arrive 2 hours later than expected in NYC. 

 

We meet our travel agent at the airport and he directs us to our bus.   

 

Our bus driver,  Gil,   gives us a run down on his life.   Lives in Philadelphia  has two kids, divorced.  Has been bus driving for many years. 

 

We went directly to breakfast at Mc Donald's.  

 

We had an appt.  to tour the NBC studio for 20 at 10:00 and 29 at 10:15.  Instead they booked 20 for today July 8 and 20 for May 8.  They had filled the 10:15 time slot up completely.    Our day just got suddenly complicated and turned upside down. 

 

Our Travel Agent was able to change our afternoon tour of Top of the Rock observatory (top of the roof).  To the morning.   Lets go now!

 

 

Amazing views at the Top of the Rock.  Definitely a better view of Central park than the Empire State!

 

Great pics at the top. 

 

Loved the motion light detector room at the Top of the Rock.

 

Had lunch at Cucina….cafe type at the Rockefeller Center.   Very healthy and very good food. 

 

After lunch went to Natural history museum and Central Park. 

 

Went to the Natural History Museum across the street from Central Park. 

 

Boys now extremely tired but amazed actually how positive their attitudes are.  They are trying their very best to be positive.  After taking the red eye, and all the walking around.   We are all literally exhausted to the extreme.   Amazing they are all still so pleasant. 

 

Met Gil our bus driver who took us back to the Rockefeller Center for the NBC tour. 

 

Saw the set of Saturday Night Live and Today show.  Very interesting.   Amazing to be right there after having seen many NBC shows during my lifetime. 

 

Our bus driver was supposed to pick us up at 7pm and take us to dinner somewhere. 

 

Exhausted, we waited 45 minutes and he never showed.  He had gotten in a small accident that ripped off his mirror.  Not surprised at how the day was going schedule wise.   Not only extremely tired, now the boys are hungry and needed to eat.  So I frantically googled restaurants in search of sustenance. 

 

I was wanting NY pizza but we ended up at a very small, cramped pizza place (I think its called Ninos) several blocks away from where we were.   Was fun walking the streets of NY.  

 

Pizza was ITALIAN style….exactly how it is in Italy.  Was soo good.  The owner cut us a deal and did a great job of satisfying the boys "starvation". 

 

All the pizzas were Margharita style.   Boys loved them. 

 

Finally hooked up with Butch our new bus driver.   Drive back to the hotel reminiscing on the days acrtivities.   Even though we have only been here a day,  it feels as we have done enough to have pbeen here several days. 

 

At the hotel we had a short devotional on the purpose of a missionary.  Discussed PMG and had family prayer.  

 

One day down.   An interesting day to say the least.   We were able to accomplish and see much.  Modification of schedule and rolling with changes was the key to today.  Dealing with fatigue and maintaining positive attitude was featured.   We are working the boys hard.   Trying my very best to “fill their buckets”   trying to give them spiritual and mental bulding blocks to have a positive effect on them.