New York City

September 3, 2006-Homecoming

Happy Labor Day weekend to you all. Yeah! We’re in NYC! It was only a 5-½ hour flight but it was good to be on terra firma again. We had to get to the airport three hours ahead of flight time since we were flying to the U.S. There were all sorts of announcements about extra security for flights to the States. We expected to go through airport security then a separate check for liquids, gels, etc for U.S. bound passengers. Nothing! We did the regular check with shoes on and that was it. No one opened a thing to check for the “new contraband.” Maybe it will be different flying within the States from NYC to Akron.

The best part of the flight other than landing safely was that we flew over Greenland. It definitely was not green. The sky was cloud-free and even from 35,000 feet we could see the mountains and glaciers below clear as a bell. I even picked out a bright blue river with floating chunks of ice. They looked like dollops of marshmallows in a sea of Jell-O.

Our group of eight flew together and we’re all spending the night at the Hilton Garden Hotel near JFK. We had a snack and said our good-byes. Two couples fly to California tomorrow and one couple heads for Boston. We head for the Washington-Jefferson Hotel in Manhattan. My cousins will pick us up for lunch and take us to Chinatown. I told them we’d eat anything but fish.

This hotel won me over right away. They had a platter of warm chocolate chip cookies at the check-in desk. When we got to our room I found what looked like miniature towels in the bathroom. Then I remembered. They’re washcloths. We haven’t seen one in three weeks.

Now that we’re in the U.S. I can dare to tell you about my tooth issue. I had a check-up at the dentist before we left and there was a tooth that was bothering me. She smoothed out the bite and told me to call if it was hitting wrong. It started acting up in New York before we left for Scandinavia. By the time I got to Copenhagen it was unbearable. I spoke to Yves who asked if I could hold out until Oslo. There was a dentist he knew in the hotel there. I thought I could bear it for a few days but there was no way I would make it for three weeks. I started taking ibuprofen for the inflammation and hoped the pain was from grinding at night and not a dying nerve. I consciously started using my tongue as a bite guard between my teeth when I slept. It worked. I still need to see the dentist when I get home but the pain was from grinding. The ibuprofen did the trick. Yes, I have tried bite guards before with no success. This might motivate me to try again.

I don’t know what time it is for us. Our bodies think it is 2 AM. The clock here says 10:30 PM. We’re going to sleep.

Toby