More of Jeff's thoughts on NY

Generally New Yorkers seem to be very friendly. They always say "Excuse me" or "Sorry". A lady tripped on the sidewalk and no less than 5 people rushed to see that she was okay. But if one yells at a New Yorker, they always yell back. Even on the subway when everyone is jammed together like sardines, people will say "excuse me".

The signage on the Subway could be improved. Some subway lines are very clear, but others can be confusing.

Middle school kids in Central park were betting on a Math problem and ended up calling the teacher on the phone to settle the bet. I know the correct answer, but just listened to the fun argument. Sorry that the 3 girls were worng and the guy had the right answer.

Surprising how few street performers there are. Almost none on the street and a few in the subway hallways.

New York is also pretty clean and graffiti free.

The trash system is odd. Just in front of our hotel there were 40 trash bags piled up for 4 days before getting picked up.

If you go to Ellis Island, go early. We waited for 2 hours in line. We weren't moving at all, but just 5 minutes after we decided NOT to leave the line started moving forward and we gone on the ferry soon afterward.

Ellis Island was a interesting and emotional experience. There is a wall with 500,000 names on it. It was quite impressive, then I realized that 24 times that many people came through Ellis Island.

Security screeners at the Statue of Liberty don't have a sense of humor.

It was interesting at Ellis island to read about some of the attitude towards immigrants. Some very similar things that we see today, like immigrants taking American jobs, not learning English or not assimilating.

Even though we all have seen the Statue of Liberty many times, seeing her in person is worth it.

On the ferry ride there was a whole class of kids eating blue Statue of Liberty suckers. All their tongues, lips were really really blue. That was funny, but it was also funny that they were dipping the sticky suckers into popcorn and eating the popcorn off the suckers. I love to watch kids interacting.

Seeing ground zero of the World Trade Center was so emotional. I looked out at an empty block of land, then suddenly the whole emotion of that day overcame me.

I have now found geocaches in New York and New Jersey.

I got to go Orienteering in New Jersey today.

If you want to see the ethnic mix of NY, don't go to the United Nations, go to the OTB parlor (off track horse betting). I went and heard so many different languages yelling for their horse to come in.

Funny listening to Yankees yelling at Red Socks fans. Getting off the subway a Boston guy and girl with Boston hats walking. A Yankee fan shouts "Ahhh, look at the cute Red and Blue hats, ahhh, you must be in love"

At the Yankke game I met the lady that brought back Cracker Jacks to Yankee stadium. In 2004, the Yankees stopped selling Cracker Jacks. She has newspaper friends and started a newspaper campain that really took off. For a month all the NY papers were talking about the missing snack. Afterall, it is in the song, how can you not have it. Reportedly, George Steinbrenner was told "The fans aren't happy" and he brought it back.

New Yorkers accents are more pronounced when shouting and when shouting at a ball game they have a really strong accent.

The Yankee fans eat a lot. I asked people around me how the food lines were and from pregame to the 7th inning the line was 40 people deep. Not to mention the amount of beer that was consumed.

We went to a park in Brooklyn and watched a class of way way out of control kids. It was quite a sight as 5 or so of the kids were hiding behind statues. Mary Ann and I kept pointing to the hiding kids, so the teachers would know where their missing kids were.

The jaywalking procedure is really weird here. Basically you just cross the street whenever you feel like it. You don't worry too much if cars are coming. If one person jaywalks, stopping cars then everyone does the same causing cars to be often stuck in crosswalks. I really can't figure out the mindset of people causing such traffic problems.