New York! New York!

Start spreading the news! Ok, really you don't have to. But I feel obligated to write that line in a blog entry entitled "New York! New York!"

Anyway, I had the task of working in New York for the day yesterday because POTUS went to make an economic speech. Since the economy is issue #1 at my network, I knew we would be fairly busy. The last time I was in the Big Apple, I was also with POTUS but I was in travel pool so I had the poshest accommodations at the Waldorf-Astoria. This time I wasn't in travel pool (although my network was but this time it was one of my colleague's turn) so I was on my own to get to NY (we never take a charter there!)

First let me start off by saying that I am not an experienced traveler by normal standards. I don't fly commercially all that often, as you know. And I definitely am not experienced on the train by any standards (although I have taken it a few times in the past.) Anyway, we determined the best plan for yesterday was to take the 6a train to NYC and work a few hours and then return home on the train later in the afternoon. So it was a VERY early morning to be at the train station by 5:30am. Thankfully, they don't mess around so they leave right at 6:00a so I knew we would be on schedule. We didn't have a lot of extra time built in to get to our final workspace destination, through Secret Service sweeps, etc. so time was of the essence! But we arrived to NYC about 8:50 and we had exactly 50 minutes to make it to the hotel where the speech was and through security. One of my NY colleagues suggested us taking the subway because the roads around the hotel were all shut down because of POTUS. (I'm sure New Yorkers were THRILLED that their morning commute was interfered with!) So my correspondent, one of my camera guys, and two other friends/producers from other networks and I maneuvered our way through the NYC subway system and to the right hotel in the absolute peak of rush hour. We looked like country bumpkins and the local there had every right to make fun of the five of us trying to determine where to go at every step of the way. The subway car (somehow we quickly determined which was the correct car) was absolutely packed (almost as packed as the subway car I was on in Cairo last March with 500 Egyptian women on it!) and I got to see local New Yorkers up close and extremely personal!

We made it on time and through security before POTUS got there and we had a very busy day! I hadn't been that busy with live shots in a long time! Our location for the standups was outside on the street and literally part of my job was to prevent New Yorkers and tourists from running behind the shot and acting stupid! I thought that they would be used to things like TV being done on the streets (the Today show plaza couldn't have been that far away!) but no, they were fascinated and literally all day we had crowds around us while we were doing liveshots! We packed a lot of work and liveshots into a few hours on the street (The only image I can share is from a cell phone which isn't that great and doesn't completely convey the scene but here it is:

It was actually a lovely day (albeit it got rather chilly) and I felt a real sense of accomplishment- maneuvering the city in rush hour traffic, doing a lot of liveshots, surviving (literally) a crazy cab ride (and I mean CRAZY!) back to the train station, and having it end up being a pretty good day! I also confirmed the notion that I was not really made for big city living like NY. DC is just about as big as I can deal with! I couldn't deal with that on a daily basis!!! I've never been more excited to come back to calm DC/Alexandria!

thanks freefoto.com for the pic of the Manhattan skyline!