Retirement — I’m almost, but not quite there yet. Eligible, but yet ready.
So, the flyer on the cafeteria wall grabs my attention and embeds itself in the “interested section” of my consciousness. I’m hooked by an idea. “Join your coworkers on a bus trip To go shopping in New York City.”
Hey! We can practice being retired! All the senior centers put together special bus trips! We can pretend that this is one of those
trip! So, off went my $40 check the the gal who is organizing the trip. What the heck; it would cost me more to park in “the City”, although twenty
years ago I thought nothing of driving into Manhattan and trolling for a free space on the street.
When we got to New York, we found ourselves on the edge of “Little Korea”. Though it is comprised of just a few blocks, it does offer our favorite food, so we looked for a good restaurant and dug in.
Unfortunately, the restaurant didn’t get the message about our ‘senior class trip’, and took all but a few dollars of our food allotment; but, it was worth it!
We got to visit Macy’s — something my wife has always wanted to do. We also got to see “Phantom of the Opera” on a couple of discount matinee tickets. After the show, our day was over and we returned to the bus.
Watching the bus driver deal with traffic was enough to convince me that despite the limitations of a scheduled trip like this, I do not want to drive to New York on my own. And, it’s not just a matter of age! I used to drive into the city at least once a month when I was in my twenties. Sure, age affects your ability to do things like that, but traffic seems at least twice as bad as it once was.
I’d consider taking one of the discount scheduled buses to the city. Or, perhaps, drive to one of the close-by cities like Jersey City or Newark and take a train the rest of the way. It would be a little more expensive but I wouldn’t have to deal with either the traffic or the huge parking fees, but we would be on our own schedule and can linger when we want.