turkey talk

Rachel and I are in NYC for Thanksgiving, basking in the chill of true Fall weather. Being the massive travel holiday of choice, we had to earn our trip here.

Our stopover in Houston went from a 30-minute pit stop to a 2-hour marathon. La Guardia issued a travel restriction that kept us on the runway just long enough for a guy in row 12 to have a panic attack. We returned to the terminal to boot his jumpy ass off the plane, and then waited for American to dig Mr. Jitter's baggage out from under the plane. This whole production caused us to miss our next departure window, setting us back another 90 minutes.

While there's probably some highly critical national security rule that prohibits the shipping of unattended bags, anyone who loses their nerve after the doors close should be separated from their bags just on principle. Even better, let's kick the guy off and then split up his luggage like pirated booty.

We finally made it into New York, and have been enjoying the holiday atmosphere ever since. The annual Thanksgiving feast in Brooklyn went off as expected, with temptations from cold cuts, sausage, lasagne and stuffed artichokes preceding the traditional fare. Max and Courtney joined us, and we strolled down to the Brooklyn Promenade to witness the famous Manhattan skyline. Our enjoyment lasted approximately 32.4 seconds, or the amount of time we could survive in freezing temperatures with frigid 40 mile-per-hour gusts.

While the REAL patriots were propping up the economy on Black Friday, the wife and I made like a couple of draft dodgers and visited the MOMA and strolled through Central Park. Art and natural beauty were admittedly meager substitutes for long lines and fanatical consumerism, but it was just enough to assuage my guilt.

Another pleasure of NYC is eating at fine neighborhood restaurants. Gennaro's served reasonably-priced, high quality Italian food that crops up all over New York but is all but impossible to find in Austin. Tonight's meal at Indus Valley was almost comparable to the incomparable Clay Pit, which is good enough for me.

Tomorrow it's back home to the dog and warm temperatures. I'm glad we got a taste of winter, but I'll need a warm weekend to run off the excesses of New York.