USA, 2016

I dedicated most of my free time to wakeboarding in 2015. So much, that I decided to stay in Hungary for most of the Summer and visit cable parks within the country. With that in mind, it’s not hard to make 2016 a lot more active in terms of travelling. And the one I document below is what I called an inspirational trip. The one you gift yourself for, before and while doing something extraordinary.

Weird or not – and it is really weird – it all started out with me buying a pump. Whenever you buy stuff like that, you’re normally asked about the future use of the product. Some kind of a sizing needs to take place before placing an order. During that exercise, you would say things like you need x bars, watts, diameters, and so on. But I had some strikingly different plan on my mind.

So I called the phone number for pre-sales assistance and once I’ve been asked for the intended use, I said that I would make the pump do financial accounting. Then imagine someone entirely speechless. So I continued like “… for a beginning…”. I don’t know if you ever experienced any moment when your conversation partner seriously started to believe that you must be really-really freakin’ crazy. Then I mentioned this ambition of mine to about 20 other people. The vast majority of those would have paged a doctor, had they had a device for that. But good ideas begin just like that. So I bought the thing – made just for me and left it on the kitchen floor:

And then I left.

New York, take 2 and action

Well, after my two times here, I can confirm that this city either never sleeps, or we’re in such a sync that our dormant periods just coincide. I can’t think of any hour spent awake when I had no option to do something downtown. Anyway, landing, check-in and the down to Hillstone. There is one thing I try to avoid during such city visits: and that is tourist places. This pub offers just quite a rich experience, yet, does not get way too loud – like some others. Just good for a normal discussion, featuring some crafted beers and single malt whiskeys. If there’s one ‘non-core’ thing that can significantly contribute to a real great experience, that is live music.

Then, of course, there are all kinds of unexpected arrangements that you can come across. Passing by a garage, I saw a pretty large ‘collection’ of performance cars. As it shows, it was the Corsa America Rally – at least the hardware part of it.

One of the funny sides of this trip was entering Grand Central and leaving the city with a train. I needed a return ticket to Yonkers – a place most of the people I met there have never even heard of. Enough being said, it is not a top-of-the-genre residential place. But it’s so cool to check out suburbs.

… always staying alert …

… so much as spotting out special purpose buildings, even from the train.

After a nice round in Yonkers, which by the way, gave me a chance to try Uber for the first time, I returned to Manhattan.

Helmsley building (on my cover photo of this article) looks actually so cool at nigh that I’ll get a painting of that very soon.

Le Cirque

Bloomberg

Ground Central

Brandy Library

Breakfast

Stomptown

The Dakota

Five Napkin

Central Park

Palm Beach

Miami

Then some breaking news:

And then I returned, summarized all this. And to frame this lengthy story, I’m quite sure that my pump is about 2 weeks away from doing financial accounting – and more… 🙂