There’s nothing to tell about my flight to Philadelphia, save for a slight delay in leaving Atlanta. It was, as it was supposed to be, uneventful. On that first morning I awoke, showered, and got ready for my day in New York city. I was very excited about it. I was trying to remove any expectation because, admittedly, my only frame of reference for NYC is Hollywood and we all know how distorted those visions can be even if they are ‘based’ on a true story.
For breakfast I had a bowl of Cream of Wheat. This brought back a flood of memories from my childhood when I used to have bowl of it nearly every morning at Mrs. Bolden’s house, my baby sitter and my best friend’s mother. Suddenly, after smelling it and having a couple of spoonfuls of it, I was transported back to her small kitchen, all geared up in my winter gear, boots and all, and ready to go to school.
Soon, Tom and I left for the train station to catch our ride into Manhattan. Well, one thing is for sure, people in New Jersey drive for keeps! It’s not the good old, slow southern way of driving. People here are, shall we say, on a mission and they take no prisoners, Tom included. During the ride to the station, Tom looked over at me and said that I seemed to be used to this type of driving because I wasn’t hanging on for dear life and stomping on the floorboards. Obviously, I was keeping my terror well concealed! 
When we made it to the Amtrak station to catch the train, this was all new to me, Tom told me what to buy, I bought it, and we were on our way. The ride into NYC took 45 minutes, as we didn’t catch the express train; We’d just missed it by about 5 minutes. In the end, it would have saved us only about 15 minutes. No big loss. As we disembarked, I expected to be confronted by a huge mass of humanity, like I see in the movies, but was disappointed(?). There were a lot of people, but not an unreasonable amount. Everyone was moving pretty fast though. You could tell that this was a high-paced environment.
As Tom and I made it to the escalator to exit Penn Station and head up to the street, 8th Avenue and 34th St, we were moseying a bit. That is we were sauntering, meandering, lollygagging, or just plain not walking fast. Suddenly, from behind, a little old lady, about 60 or so, with a large cart of stuff said, mostly to me: Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! I replied: Yes ma’am! and moved quickly out of her way! She promptly mounted the escalator, went up the street, and was gone faster than you can say: Move your a$$, buddy! Dang! I could do nothing but laugh.
Tom simply looked at me and said: Welcome to New York!
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