Derek, a good friend of Judy’s from college, was getting married and we were invited. Since the wedding was in New York, we decided to take the opportunity to check out New York City as well as to visit New Jersey. By coincidence, both Judy and I grew up in New Jersey so we thought it would be a lot of fun to visit our childhood homes.

We had planned on taking the red-eye flight to Newark, NJ (it’s cheaper to fly there than to NY) on Thursday night. Judy had planned the whole trip (it was, after all, her friend that was getting married) and bought the airline tickets. Our flight was supposedly at 10:50 PM so we left plenty of time to arrive at the airport. We finally got to the airport at around 10 PM. That would give us plenty of time to spare, except for the small overlooked fact that our flight was not at 10:50, but at 10:15! We frantically looked for someone to help us to see if we could still make the flight. When we finally found someone, she told us that we were too late! We had missed our flight!

Fortunately, the lady at the counter was really nice. After talking with her manager, she booked us for a flight the next morning at no additional charge even though we had non-refundable tickets. So we headed back home, got a good night’s rest and then headed back for the airport the next morning. We got to New York and grabbed a late but yummy Italian dinner at a restaurant near our hotel, checked in to the hotel, and went to sleep.

The next morning, we decided to check out The City. We strolled through Times Square and looked at all the extravagant advertisements, checked out the Adidas store where they had cool models of “the world’s first intelligent shoe”, a $250 shoe that has a microchip that adjusts the shoes cushioning based on the terrain you’re running on, rode the subway, met Judy’s cousin Christine for lunch at an organic vegan restaurant, tried to get tickets for the Blue Man show that night but all the good seats were already sold, and then checked out the 911 site.

The next day, we cruised over the Central Park where we had to wade through a big AIDS rally. We didn’t expect to find any bouldering in Central Park, but we actually found somed pretty fun-looking boulders. Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for Derek’s wedding. The wedding was really nice and gave us a chance to catch up with a bunch of Judy’s college cohorts.

Monday was the last day of the trip and it was the one I was most looking forward to. I was really excited at the prospect of seeing the houses that I grew up in. Our first stop was 52 Randolph Ave, Randolph, NJ 07869 where I lived from 1st to 4th grade. The house looked very different from what I remembered, mainly because it had since been painted a totally different color. When we lived there, the house was painted a dark brown and now it was a really light blue.

It’s really interesting how a child’s perception of something can differ so drastically from an adult’s perception of the same thing. I recall the back yard of this house to be really big. There were some woods just beyond our back yard and I remember a pretty long trail that went uphill through the woods for a good distance. At the top of the trail, my memory was that there was a huge grassy field. That was my memory. The reality? Our back yard was a lot smaller than I remember and the trail through the woods was no more than 100 feet. The huge grassy field? Well, it was grassy and it was a field, but huge it certainly wasn’t.

Our next stop was 59 McNab Ave, Cedar Knolls, NJ 07927 where I lived from 5th to 8th grade. Being a bit older, my memory of this place was pretty close to my perception of it today. It was really nostalgic seeing the house and the surrounding neighborhood.

Next, it was Judy’s turn. Judy lived in three different places in New Jersey and we drove by all of them. Judy had mentioned that she was quite the daredevil as a kid. She recounted when she would speed down a really steep hill on her bike and then make a really sharp turn around a blind corner. We both had a good laugh when we saw this hill - it was barely an incline! And she also remember sledding down a big hill next to her house in the winter. Well, we saw that “big hill”. It was not very steep and all of 25 feet long.

All in all, it was a really fun and nostalgic trip for the both of us. Check out the pics.

Posted by Roger at 9:55 pm.