As measured by any reasonable person’s standards, last night was a late night. However, it’s not considered late if you live in New York City. Sarah and I decided to forgo another weekend up north in the woods in favor of adventuring in the hyper-urban “island” of Manhattan. We hopped on a bus after work which ended up being 1.5 hours late due to a late departure from Boston combined with lousy weather and trafic. So we got in at 11:30pm and met up with a buddy of mine in Hell’s Kitchen. Hungry and well-rested from sleeping on the bus ride to NYC we went out to get some food and local microbrews. Food turned into beers which then turned into us getting back to his apartment around 4:00am. This meant that in order to get my requisite 8 hours of sleep, I’d have to sleep until 12:00pm. This turned out to actually be impossible. I woke up at 10:00 for several reasons; I was hungry, thirsty, it was bright in the room and the street noise from the window next to me was too loud to ignore. I decided it would be fine to get 6 hours of sleep as long as I committed to taking a two hour nap later in the day before going out again that night.
I managed to take that nap after exploring midtown via a jog with Sarah down the HighLine (an old, elevated railroad turned into a park) and through the Chelsea Piers Sports Complex as well as walking through Bryant Park, Rockafeller Center, and Grand Central. All these places Sarah had never seen before so my buddy and I decided to take her around and give her a taste of Midtown. Having already been to Time Square and the World Trade Center we decided to avoid them both and focus on getting a decent introduction to Midtown without trying to do too much in one day.
The NYC Highline, an image I pulled from Google.
During the six hours of sleep I had, I slept like a rock and didn’t dream until probably the two minutes before I woke up. I dreamt that I was leading a group of people from my work up Mount Washington. My employer had set up an Outing Club and was looking for trip leaders. Having spent so much time in the White Mountains over the past 5 or so years, I volunteered to take a group up. It was a great time, no one got hurt, and they were all thankful that I took time out of my “schedule” to take them hiking. I found it funny in my dream that my group felt I was going out of my way to take them outside when in my mind this was exactly what I would be doing otherwise only now I get to share it with other people, which was more of a blessing than me going out of my way.
I got my 8 hours of sleep despite it being in two different chunks but I’m happy with that, there’s no way I could have slept until noon and done it all in one shot. The other alternative would have been to just go to bed earlier, something that I found near impossible being absorbed into the excitement and energy in the NYC nightlife.
