Date: 04-05 April

Karin (Stephens’s wife) and her daughter Sara dropped us off at the New Yorker hotel. The traffic was frantic and I was happy that I didn’t have to drive on the first day. I was impressed how Karin managed the car around the busses and trucks. It reminded me a bit of the traffic in Delhi.

When we arrived in the Hotel, our friends from Germany, Gabi and Mathias were already there. We had a short walk in the neighbourhood and had a burger in one of the small shops. The surroundings looked like stage being prepared. I guess watching American movies does /that/ to you 🙂.
The view from our window is quite nice.

The next day we had a invitation to visit the New Yorker Stock exchange. Gabi did her magic and organized it. She originaly tried it from Berlin, but all she got was ‘No visitors after 911’. Then one night she watched TV and saw Manuel Koch reporting on the current stock exchange movements. She emailed Manuel and he was nice enough to organise a tour for us. We were really impressed. Having said that, we had to follow a dress code. This meant buying a new shirt, tie and trousers for me, since we forgot to pack them. Sigrid found a shop called ‘Century 21’ which opened early enough for us and it was described as the insider tip for value for money clothing. So I got my Christmas presents earlyJ.

After the stock exchange we hopped onto the free Staten Island Ferry which was passing the Statue Of Liberty. The Statue is currently under renovation so we couldn’t get onto it, so passing with the ferry was the closest that we got to go.

In the evening we paid Times Square a visit. On the way to the square we discovered an M&M store, it was really fun to stroll through. We were amazed what M&M merchandise are available, from soft toys, to fridge magnets, T-Shirts ……

I know the blog updates are a bit slow at the moment, but it is hard work to spend the whole day strolling through New York. In the evening we can’t write the blog.. no we have to sit in a pub and review the day over a beer or two.

Hopefully the updates will be quicker as soon we pick up the bikes ~ which should be the 10th of April 😀

In the previous blog I forgot to add some of the pictures from our flight. Flight map, Wombat and the Diddles in Dubai Airport, here they are.

We arrived in New York and went through immigration without any problems; even though we only had a one way ticket.

Stephen – Val’s Cousin – picked us up from the airport and brought us to his house, where we celebrated our arrival with some cold beer.

Spring just started here and the weather was perfect. After 42 hours of traveling, 31 hours of flights, 3 breakfasts, 3 dinners and multiple other small feasts, our body clock was out of whack, and everything felt a bit like a dream. Slowly reality settled in “We are in New York“, after 3 years of planning our journey has started.

Leaving on a jet plane

On Sunday morning we rode back to Adelaide, and got lucky again with the weather. I got used to Simons bike and I started to enjoy riding a cruiser (don’t tell Simon!) [edit: too late, he’s editing your blog]
We took our travel laptop with us to the AGM and we noticed that there were still some files and tools missing. So as soon we arrived at home, I started to move the desktop and monitors out of the shed back into Ft. Knox. For some reason Sigrid wasn’t happy ……

And our new SD Video camera was there, I ordered it on the weekend before we left to the AGM, and was hoping that it would arrive before Monday morning. Luckily it arrived on Friday, and we could take it along!

In the evening we met with the family and went out for dinner. Sigrid enjoyed holding Silas for a while; I gave her most of my holding time share J

Back from dinner, we started to pack the last bag with riding gear and my suit. Gabi, our friend from Berlin, will meet us in New York and we’ll spend Easter together. She organized a possible visit at the New York stock exchange, so we had to bring some semi-formal outfit. Apparently motorbike boots and bike jackets don’t cut it. We were thinking of renting the formal clothes for a day in New York, since we wouldn’t have the space in the our motorbike luggage for the formal wear. Gabi came up with a better solution, she would take the formal wear back to Berlin and we pick it up in June next year and take it home from there. So we repacked everything until 3AM. When we moved the last parts into the sched we discovered 2 soft toys that we brought from Berlin, a male and female Diddle. We thought they should us accompany during our travel. Brian and Val had a similar idea; Val organized a wombat to travel with them

Next morning as we were getting ready to go to the airport, I got a surprise when I tried to finalize some account setup with our banks. I know, that /probably/ should have been done earlier – but …….. We needed to call the banks to solve the problem, which gave us just enough time get to the airport, check the luggage in and then jump onto the plane. Our whole family brought us to the airport – I guess they just wanted to make sure that we were really leaving J.

The flight went without problems, Adelaide – Melbourne – Singapore – Dubai- New York. We couldn’t use the spot to update our blog, since the layover was too short to leave the airport and get outside – which would have been needed for acquiring the GPS position. Placing the spot on a window wasn’t enough, so our map will only show Adelaide and then New York. Short note about Emirates Airline: the seating, entertainment and food was excellent, so we hardly noticed the 28 hours sitting in airplanes.