To New York and Back

Skyline of Hartford. Not exactly relevant in this post, but cool nonetheless. 

So, I was at work on Monday and I get a call from Joel. I thought he was calling to tell me he was going over to practice at the school, or that he needed the key to lock the house, but I got a very unexpected surprise. "Hey, do you want to go to New York tomorrow?"  He had been given some tickets to a concert featuring George Coleman, one of the greatest saxophonist that has ever lived, (says Joel) from one of his former professors that is now teaching at Juilliard. I was stunned for a minute, not sure he was being serious, but then realizing what he was asking me, I jumped at the chance. I went to New York once in high school on an orchestra tour, but as much fun as it was, it's never the same when you have to travel with a huge pack of children all wearing the same t-shirt. Hartford is about two hours from the Big Apple, on a good day with minimal traffic. It's not too far, but far enough that we haven't been, and probably won't go, every weekend. We left around 5:30, and the concert was going to start at 8:00 pm, so we were going to be cutting it close if there was any heavy traffic. Heading out of Hartford there was some traffic, so we knew where ever we ended up parking, we were going to have to hurry to make it there on time. Getting into Manhattan we found a place to park about a 1/4 mile from the Lincoln Center. We were excited, until someone told us that we were parked in an NBC news reporter spot and that we would be towed if we parked there without a permit. Not wanting to risk it, we got back in the car and headed closer to the concert hall. It was about 7:55 and we got directly across the street from Juilliard still looking for a spot when miracle of miracles, a car pulled out leaving an empty parking spot! We parked and walked quickly over to the concert hall. As soon as we walked in and sat down, the lights dimmed and the concert started. Amazing. The concert was great and we both had a lot of fun. It was great being able to go and spend time with Joel doing something that we both enjoy and that he loves so much. It's not going to be very often, but living so close to New York is definitely going to have some perks.