Greetings!
What is the objective of my newsletter?
Are you ready for another issue of my newsletter? Just a reminder: pretty much everything I share is tied to the three broad subjects in my newsletter statement.
Everything I share will be about my hobbies and vocations: travel, finances, and trackchasing.
Quick Reads.
As always, I will begin each newsletter with a couple of quick reads. These are just small snippets on different things that just popped up, sometimes out of nowhere.
The quick read section will be followed by the main event. I will share my experiences on a trip I’ve just taken, the financial impact of one decision versus another, and what traveling all over the world just to see an auto race looked like. Ready to get started?
Quick Reads.
Life is pretty simple. The more I give, the more I get.
The other night I ate at a Skyline Chili store just north of Cincinnati. I gave the server a $10 tip simply because she was nice. Then this happened.
I was in Dayton, Ohio, for the Dayton Flyers vs. Loyola Chicago Ramblers basketball game. I wanted to buy my game ticket online. I use StubHub and SeatGeek when I buy tickets online. There was only one ticket available on Seat Geek and nothing on StubHub. That was strange. Tickets are always available at these locations.
I figured I would just buy a ticket at the arena ticket window. As I entered the building, I asked where the ticket office was. The woman I asked looked at me as if I had two heads. “Why?” she asked. That seemed like a more than strange question. “I want to buy a ticket?” was my meek reply. “Buy a ticket?” she exclaimed and then pointed me to the ticket office. That was the most unusual conversation.
When I arrived, I was told they were sold out, but one person had turned back two tickets, and the ticket manager gave me one of them….for free. I guess I dodged a bullet. Yes, the more I give, the more I get back. And yes, they gave me a good seat!
Got a couple of minutes?
If you’re looking to waste a few minutes of your personal time, use your favorite AI site like ChatGPT or whatever and ask this question. “Who is the World‘s #1 Trackchaser?”
Engage people. Just keep talking to them.
Tonight, as I returned my rental car in Pittsburgh, the National Car Rental representative asked me if everything had been OK. I told him it was. Then he told me the final price for my rental and asked me if that was the right price. I told him yes, but I wished it were a little lower. Then he said, “But is it the correct price?” I said that it was, I just wished it were a little lower. He smiled at me and said, “You rent a lot of cars from us, so I’ll give you a $50 credit off your bill.” It never hurts to engage the people you’re working with.
The Main Event.
Traveling the world.
I have traveled the world. I think I have been in nearly every major cosmopolitan city in the world, many times.
New York City is my favorite city to visit. Yes, I like Tokyo, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Paris, and London. But New York City is my favorite.
New York City…I speak from experience.
When I share my opinion of New York City, please understand that I speak from experience. I’ve been going to New York City once or twice a year since I was 25, and sometimes more often.
Be careful when people tell you things.
Before I go any further, I have a comment. If you are listening to any media sources that would tell you that New York City is crime-ridden, filled with homeless people, and dirty, I am going to suggest, and please don’t be offended, that you change your media sources. If you’ve actually been to New York City in the past few years, you know none of that is true.
NYC is not perfect.
On the other hand, New York City is crowded with tourists and expensive. How expensive? NYC can melt your best credit cards. How crowded? Very crowded. Most of the tourists I heard speak were visiting from outside the United States.
Christmas in New York…the best.
Carol and I were in Manhattan for five days over Christmas. Coming to New York at Christmas is my favorite time to visit. We’ve been doing that for several Christmases over the past few years.
Not very likely.
I’m not sure it’s possible to become a victim of any serious crime when you are part of a huge crowd of people in New York City. Nobody is going to murder or rape you with hundreds of bystanders within 25 yards!
Dirty? Not even close.
Tokyo is a very clean city. The people are wonderful in Japan. New York City on this trip was as clean as Tokyo. We could probably walk for a few blocks without seeing any trash on the ground.
When you visit New York City, you will see a lot of bagged trash waiting to be picked up. On this trip, those plastic bags of trash looked as if they had been neatly arranged by Santa Claus himself.
Lots of homeless people? Nope.
Homeless people? We walked all over the city. We rode the subway for six days and five nights. I’m going to guess that we saw fewer than 10 homeless people during all of that time, and we were in all parts of New York’s boroughs. If I drove around my hometown of San Clemente, I might see nearly that many people in a couple of days.
I thought it best to clear up any misconceptions about NYC. Of course, there are some people who want those misguided stereotypes to be true. They’ve probably repeated those untruths many times, without ever being in NYC in years…or maybe ever.
NYC, touring, and the cost of the trip.
I’m not only going to tell you about the tourist things that we did, but I’m going to tell you how we paid for them and how much we paid because…yes, this is a financial newsletter as much as it is a tourist newsletter. Are you ready?
Airfare.
We bought two round-trip airline tickets using Alaska Airlines. As you know, we have a lot of credit cards, 27 right now. The cumulative credit limit on those cards now exceeds $505,000.
We have the Alaska Airlines credit card. This card gives us something close to a buy-one-get-one-free offer every year. If we pay for one ticket, we get a second ticket for just $99 plus taxes, for a total of $121. This credit card promotion probably saves us $400 on airfare.
Airport parking.
When I park my car in the airport garage, I pay about $5 a day. Last year, my car was probably at that parking garage for all or parts of 250 days. That is not an exaggeration. That amount of parking at an airport garage is probably worth discussing over an entire newsletter. Anybody who does that has issues! But that is not why we are here today. Parking at LAX probably averages close to $20/day and maybe more. We save a lot of money, paying only $85/month for over 250 parking days.
Our New York City hotel.
We stayed at the Time Hotel, a Hyatt property in New York City. This hotel is located at 7th Avenue and 49th St., just a block away from New York’s famous Times Square.
Hotels in NYC are extremely expensive. The Time is a little bit older, but still in good shape. We simply could not beat the hotel’s location.
Frequent travel = outstanding travel perks.
I have the top-level Globalist status in the Hyatt frequent stay program. I used that to my advantage on this trip. You only need to earn 60 hotel-night credits to become a Globalist. I say “only” because sixty is a low number for me, but a high number for most people. Sixty “night-credits” is probably 45-50 actual nights of being in the hotel.
For our five-night stay, I could pay $1,670 or redeem 145,000 Hyatt points. I think most people would say if you have the points, use them and save the better part of $2,000. I don’t always see things that way.
How much is a travel point really worth?
I always liked calculating the value of the points and miles I am using. To do that with this hotel stay, I would simply divide $1,670 by 145,000 points.
If I had paid with points, I would have received 1.15 cents per point. That’s not very good. I’m averaging more than 2.9 cents per point over my last 338 nights of Hyatt stay. If I can’t get at least two cents per point in value, I will always pay cash.
So many ways to earn points.
The price for five nights was $1,670 or $334 per night. However, if I used cash for the stay, I would earn even more Hyatt points for future use. When I calculated the value of the points I was earning on this stay, it lowered our nightly price from $334 to $283. You should know that I have done this so much that I can “run the numbers” in my head on deals like this in a matter of seconds.
The guaranteed suite upgrade.
Then I used what is called in Hyatt lingo a “guaranteed suite upgrade.” What a perk! This allowed Carol and me to have a hotel suite for the entire five nights of our stay. For me, the majority of my stays with Hyatt are in suite rooms. I like having a lot of space.
More good stuff?
You gotta have breakfast, right? If you have a good breakfast, you might not need lunch.
On top of getting a suite, they also gave us a complimentary breakfast every morning in the hotel restaurant. The breakfast menu showed that the prices would be right around $100 for the two of us if we had to pay. With Hyatt and being a Globalist, breakfast was free, saving us $500 (100 x 5).
Really? No checkout until 4 p.m.
Finally, on the last day of our trip, our flight wasn’t leaving until 7:30 p.m. No one wants to check out at 11 o’clock in the morning when they have a flight at 7:30 p.m. My Globalist status gives us a guaranteed 4 p.m. check-out, which was perfect for our flight time.
The bottom line on the hotel was that we paid $283 a night, got a $100 daily breakfast credit, plus a full suite with multiple TVs, two good-sized rooms, and a late checkout. Those accommodations would cost others 2-3 times that amount. This was an especially good value during Christmas in New York, one of the most popular times of year for visitors.
With all of this, we hadn’t even left the house to begin the trip!
Now it was time to head to the Los Angeles International Airport to begin the trip. Everything I just recounted was done before the trip officially began. When Carol and I travel together, I drop her at the terminal with whatever bags we have to check. She checks the bags while I return the car to the airport garage and walk a mile or more back to the terminal. We don’t check bags very often. When we do it, it’s usually only one smaller bag. Of course, flying on Alaska Airlines, there was no charge for bags (with the Alaska Airlines credit card), plus we were upgraded to premium seating. Our first stop, after clearing security with our TSA Pre-Check memberships, was the Alaska Airlines club.
Airport lounges…worth it.
We have credit cards that give us membership in both the Alaska Airlines Club and the American Airlines Admirals Club, as well as all Priority Pass airline clubs worldwide.
The “pancake machine!”
Alaska Airlines is famous for having a “pancake printer.” With this machine, you press a button and out comes two perfectly formed pancakes. I’m surprised that no other airline clubs that I know of have these pancake machines.
Specialty cocktails at eight in the morning?
Yes! With Carol’s Atmos Rewards Visa Summit card (they declined me!), she gets two drinks per quarter from the supreme cocktail menu. These were both beautiful and tasty, even if it was only 8 o’clock in the morning. We both agreed that it had to be 5 o’clock somewhere.
Newark? Not great.
We were flying into the Newark, New Jersey airport, EWR. I have to tell you that Newark is not my favorite airport. The terminal Alaska Airlines uses isn’t my favorite.
EWR is only 12 miles from Manhattan. It’s one of the three New York City-area airports, along with JFK and LaGuardia.
How to get from EWR to the city?
There were a few transportation options for us to use to get into Manhattan. We could take a taxi, a train, a bus, or a rideshare. I would almost never take a taxi. A rideshare in the United States would mean an Uber or Lyft.
The price for a Lyft ride to our hotel in the city was about $75. That’s sort of expensive. With traffic, the ride took us well over an hour, so I guess the price wasn’t too bad for that long. We use a credit card that gives us $10 off a Lyft ride every month. Every little bit counts, right? Not really, but when you grew up poor, a ten-dollar savings still seems like a good idea.
We were treated well everywhere we went.
When we checked into the Time Hotel, the staff couldn’t do enough for us as a Globalist. I find that experience virtually everywhere I travel with Hyatt.
The suite.
The living room portion of our hotel suite was large. New York City hotels are notorious for being super small. We had a lot of room for the two of us. Our hotel was right next to a couple of the most popular theaters in New York City. Most of the Broadway theaters were within two or three blocks of the hotel.
Money burning a hole in your pocket? Go to dinner in NYC!
We arrived in the city just in time for dinner. Restaurants here are plentiful, unique, and expensive. Since I get a 4% rebate on every restaurant I visit when using my AMEX Gold card, we used it every time we dined.
New York City restaurants are often busy, unique, and delicious. On this night, our Italian eatery was bustling, and the waiter, from Italy, was a fountain of knowledge. This was the perfect place for the first night of the trip. Was it expensive? You had to ask? Compared to what? The experience was perfect.
Apple Wallet.
I have about 15 of our 27 cards linked to my Apple Wallet on my iPhone. I just tap and pay everywhere we go. As a matter of fact, after being in the city for 6 days, we never spent a single penny of cash! That means 100% of our spending went on a credit card. I try to spend EVERYTHING on a credit card in our daily lives. Why not? Every penny spent earns something when put on a card.
The happiest people on earth?
We got a good recommendation on an Italian restaurant just a block from the hotel. Some people think of New Yorkers as gruff and grumpy. Carol and I both marveled at all the service personnel and other local residents we encountered. They were as nice as you could possibly expect.
Rome2Rio…a hidden gem.
I use the Rome2Rio app. It’s great for giving me all the transportation options available to get me from point A to point B, along with approximate prices. If you haven’t tried that, I highly recommend it. It’s super easy to use and gives me all of the options available to consider. Rome2Rio is available worldwide.
Skating into breakfast just in time.
Breakfast was served at the hotel until 10:30 a.m. The New York time zone (Eastern Time Zone) is three hours ahead of Los Angeles (Pacific Time Zone). When it’s 10 a.m. in New York, it’s 7 a.m. in SoCal. I am not an early riser. That being the case, we marched into the breakfast restaurant at 10 a.m. each day, just beating the deadline. Breakfast was excellent.
Then I, and sometimes Carol, went for a walk around our hotel for several blocks after breakfast. Each morning when there was a break in the action, I walked by myself through several of the residential areas of Manhattan around Ninth and 50th and beyond. The weather was in the 30s, and walking wasn’t too bad. It was fun to stop in some of the tourist stores. New York seems to have the cheapest postcards on the planet. In some places, you could buy 10 of them for a dollar.
There were several street vendors with all their goods spread out on sheets on the sidewalk. You’ve probably seen that before. They offer super exclusive bag brands like Gucci and others. Of course, I know that none of this stuff is authentic. But if you buy one of those bags, the girls at the canasta club are never going to really know the difference.
People everywhere.
The city was crowded. I don’t know how it could be any more crowded. People moved along well, but as you can see from this photo, New York City was busy. If I hear one person thinking, “They might pick my pocket,” I’m just going to scream. I never think that way. I’m pretty old…but I’ve never been pickpocketed.
Yes, I eat donuts.
A Krispy Kreme outlet was close to where we were staying, right in Times Square. It was early in the morning. We bought six donuts for $18. Yes, New York is expensive.
At home, every day, I can use my “Too Good To Go” app to buy a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts for $7.33. An offer similar to that is available at the Times Square Krispy Kreme location as well, but only after 11 o’clock at night. I have reached a point in life where I can pay $18 for six donuts even if I don’t like too.
I want to have something to do every day.
One of my other hobbies is trying to see college basketball played at as many different arenas as I can. On this evening, the Harvard Crimson were playing the St. John’s Red Storm in college basketball at the Carnesecca Arena.
Wouldn’t you know it? I have a credit card, the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, that gives me a $150 credit every six months when I buy tickets to sporting events or concerts from StubHub. I have found that SeatGeek typically offers better prices than StubHub, but not as good as getting $150 in free StubHub credit.
During one of my walks, I strolled past a Brazilian steakhouse. It was large and upscale. I stopped in. I made a quick reservation for our Christmas Day dinner. I knew this would be a nice surprise for Carol.
How do you buy your Christmas tree?
As I walked along, I also saw unsold Christmas trees. It was only a couple of days before Christmas at this point. Seeing how they “do Christmas” in a big city, with Christmas trees stacked along a paved street, was unusual.
I know that everybody handles their Christmas tree purchase differently. Some go into the forest with their kids to get their tree. Others go down to that vacant gas station lot for their tree. Carol and I? We have an artificial tree. I got tired of stepping on pine needles because I am always barefoot. Plus, after a few years, that fake tree pays for itself.
Of course, we ride the subway.
When Carol and I are in New York City or any other big city with a subway system, we always use it. I am into technology as much as, or more than, anyone I know my age. With my Apple iPhone, I can simply tap the phone on the subway entry reader and walk right through the turnstiles. Carol doesn’t have that set up, but she can use one of her tap-to-pay credit cards to do the same thing.
By the way, the paper subway tickets that have been used on New York City subways for decades are now being discontinued, effective December 31, 2025.
Just like in Tokyo, on the train, everyone in New York City is looking at their phone. That has got to be a good thing for chiropractors in the future.
We were using the subway to get ourselves up to St. John’s University. The school is located in Jamaica/Queens, one of the five New York City boroughs. I made a mistake, and we got off the subway a little too soon. Despite that error, we simply took an Uber from there to the arena.
St, John’s University basketball.
St. John’s plays about half of their basketball games in Madison Square Garden. For their lesser opponents, they play on campus at the Carnesecca Arena. The arena is named after Louis Carnesecca, one of their legendary coaches.
We had seats in the third row. Watching a big game from the third row is more than exciting. St. John’s defeated Harvard in the big game.
Steak and eggs, baby.
The next day, we started with breakfast, which we did every day we were in New York City. There were about 10 items on the breakfast menu. The steak and eggs option went for $41. Juice and coffee put the price over $50. Not only did we not have to pay the breakfast bill, but Hyatt also includes the gratuity in the price.
Oftentimes, after breakfast, I would go for my daily walk, which always exceeded 4 miles. There aren’t many gas stations in Manhattan, but I noticed that regular was $4.99 a gallon and premium was $5.99 a gallon. We were in Texas recently, and gas there hovered in the low two-dollar range.
Travel creates friends.
A couple of months ago, we went on a National Geographic cruise to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. That was a fun trip.
One of the true highlights for us was meeting Gale, Marsha, and Dennis. They live in New Jersey. We hit it off on the cruise and agreed to meet up later in New York City for dinner.
On the trip today to meet our friends, the destination was the famous uptown restaurant Carmine’s. If you remember the Johnny Carson show, Carmine’s was mentioned all the time. Gale made a reservation for us at Carmine’s.
China passport photos? Really?
On our way to the restaurant, we stopped at a Duane Reade drugstore. Duane Reade is the market leader in NYC and is owned by Walgreens.
We wanted to get some passport photos for a trip to China. We’ll need those later this year. This stop was basically a cluster. The Duane Reade people were well-meaning, but not terribly efficient and knowledgeable. Oh well.
Permanent smiles.
Dinner with our friends was one of the highlights of the trip. They are a lively and fun bunch. It was Dennis‘s birthday, and we celebrated. Our reservation was for 5 p.m. We were still talking and laughing at 9 p.m. when our server came up and said, in a nice way, “We’re gonna need this table.” We understood. We bid our friends goodbye, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. We can’t wait until the next time when our paths cross with these special friends.
I don’t know this for sure. But if our New Jersey friends are like our other friends, they probably headed home shaking their heads and saying, “Poor Carol!”
We hopped on the train, and by train I mean subway, and headed back to our hotel for the night. Once again, I got us off at the wrong stop, which meant a 20-block walk from 70th St. to 50th St. It was nighttime. Despite being away from the crowds at Times Square, we felt perfectly safe during our walk.
Starbucks…not my thing.
As a matter of fact, we stopped at Starbucks. What’s remarkable about that? I have only stopped into a Starbucks three times in my life. I have never had a cup of coffee in a Starbucks. No, I don’t like coffee, but if Carol needs one, I’ll stop in, buy a coffee here, and return it to the hotel room before she wakes up.
Merry Christmas.
Today was Christmas Day. We opened our hotel door. We noticed that Hyatt had put a little chocolate gift on the doorknob. Carol really liked the steak and eggs and chose that on most days. I moved around a little bit and went with the pancakes.
Church.
Carol wanted to attend the Christmas services at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. So did a couple of other thousand people. We joined in, and the environment was beautiful.
We did run into a couple of young Ukrainian girls waiting to enter the church. They were in New York on a visa because of the war that Ukraine is enduring with Russia. They had been in the city for more than three years and traveled to quite a few spots around the country. We suspected that they might be from a wealthy family in Ukraine, able to cover the living expenses of New York City for so long.
Christmas dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse.
After church, we lounged around until it was time for our 5 p.m. reservation at the Plataforma Brazilian Steakhouse (4.5-Google reviews) just down the street from the hotel.
I don’t know if you’ve ever eaten at a Brazilian steakhouse, but the waiters come around with a series of different meats. They offer filet mignon, sausage, chicken, lamb, and other kinds of meat. If you want a sample of what they are offering, you just tell them, and they cut it in front of you from a large skewer of meat. Extras include caramelized bananas, crispy polenta, mashed potatoes, and more.
My new favorite drinks are various forms of margaritas. Since I was walking and not driving, I had a couple. It was a delightful dinner. We took our time. Then I looked at the check and was reminded one more time that New York City is a very expensive place. Not a worry. I practice Die with Zero. I’d rather leave the money in a steakhouse than in my Vanguard account. I feel that way about most expenses.
Happy birthday, Carol.
They even gave Carol a happy birthday dessert with a sparkler. When it was served, I acted like a very thoughtful husband who had given her birthday some thought. In reality, I had forgotten I asked the restaurant to do this!
You can’t miss this.
After dinner, we walked over to the famous Rockefeller Center. We always do this at Christmas. We saw the skaters on the ice rink and the huge New York City Christmas tree. Once again, it was crowded. We’ve done this many times, and it is always crowded, but I don’t remember it being any more crowded than it was on this trip.
The nighttime views of the churches and the pedicabs transporting their lucky tourists past Radio City Music Hall and other iconic spots made the cooler temperatures worth it.
Our plan was to visit Central Park today. I do that at least once a year. But we are just too tired out to make that happen today.
New York is for Broadway.
The next day, following breakfast, we took in a matinee performance of the Broadway play “Death Becomes Her.”
This was a very entertaining musical comedy. We had good seats in the balcony. Normally, I would never accept a seat in the balcony, but at this theater, the balcony overlooks the mezzanine and extends very far out, close to the stage.
TKTS? Not this trip.
We almost always buy our theater tickets at the “TKTS“ location, right in the middle of Times Square. For this trip, we bought tickets to a couple of Broadway plays at a ticket store right across the street from TKTS. On this trip, it made a lot of sense because we could buy tickets to both of our plays a couple of days in advance and get good seats.
Broadway plays in New York City are expensive. We never buy tickets in advance because we never know what we’ll want to do or what the availability will be. Broadway play tickets in New York City during Christmas time are in high demand. If you want a really good seat, and by that I mean, probably in the first 15 rows of the mezzanine center section, you’re going to pay a couple of hundred dollars per ticket. Remember, you can’t take it with you.
Almost everything is expensive in New York City. But as mentioned, you can still buy 10 postcards for a dollar and a slice of pizza for $.99.
Restaurants galore.
We were looking for a nice place for dinner after the play. We started walking to see what we might find. Soon our walk took us all the way down to the Hudson Yards shopping mall. This is a very upscale shopping mall. We couldn’t find anything in the mall, and it was too crowded to walk around much, so we kept walking.
Soon, we found a Mexican restaurant. The weather was starting to sleet, ice, and snow, so we hopped in there. We had one of the best meals that we can recall having in a long time.
A random stop and we hit the jackpot.
They offered tortilla soup, pouring the liquid over the tortilla chips right at the table. Our soup was followed by their taco special and then a dessert order of Mexican flan with cream. The flan was dense, sweet, and tasty. It was possibly the best flan I’ve ever had, and I eat at a lot of Mexican restaurants.
Screenshot
We were in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City. It was 26°, and sleet was just beginning and was forecasted for the next hour. That made our decision for us. We grabbed a rideshare back to the hotel.
The next morning, we woke up to a light coating of snow. Carol and I both grew up in Illinois, so we are very familiar with the white stuff. But now that we’ve lived in Southern California so long, I wouldn’t want to come to New York City at Christmas time and not have a little bit of snow.
Are you a good speller?
Our second Broadway play of the trip would be titled “Spelling Bee.” It was being performed off-Broadway. An off-Broadway playhouse is considering having a seating capacity of 100-499. A Broadway theater has a capacity of 500+, while an off-off-Broadway theater has a capacity of 99 seats or fewer. Did you know that before you dropped by today?
Today we had center orchestra seats. A lot of times, off-Broadway productions are a little bit less expensive. Nevertheless, we paid about $150 per ticket for Spelling Bee. We had good seats.
Last day, time to get going.
Today was going to be our last day in New York City. We saw the 2 p.m. showing of Spelling Bee, which ended at 3:50 p.m. It was a five-minute walk to the hotel. We already had all of our travel gear lined up and ready to go.
With our guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout, I ordered a rideshare to get us back to the Newark airport with plenty of time to make our evening flight. Without too much traffic, the ride wasn’t any longer than 30 minutes.
We had completed another successful trip to New York City. We always see multiple Broadway plays. We went to a St. John’s game. We ate some fantastic food. We went to church, Rockefeller Center, and to Krispy Kreme!
We were pretty much treated to first-class treatment with everything that we did. We spent some money. Spending money is OK. I worked hard to get it. It doesn’t do me a heck of a lot of good sitting in an investment account. It does us more good to spend it on things we enjoy.
Most importantly, we spent time with good friends, and that is what the holidays are all about.
Because I’ve been to New York City more than 100 times, I am not intimidated by the crowds. I am not intimidated by the reputation that is almost always falsely given about New York City.
Will we go back to New York City next Christmas? I sure hope so.
My dual explanation.
I hope you enjoyed my “dual explanation” of the fun things we did in New York City and the financing that made them possible.
Long distance train travel. Really?
The next time I get back to you, I’ll probably be telling you about the train trip I just completed from Los Angeles to Chicago. Have you ever been on a long-distance train ride? This trip involved a couple of overnights and once again lots of great experiences.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, delayed by a few weeks because I was just too darn busy to share it any quicker than I did.
From New York City.
Randy and Carol.