Tuesday, June 12, 2007

30 Hours at Large in NYC

It is not too soon to start planning your travel to away games in the 2007-08 season. (Ever wonder why other people get those nice window or aisle seats near the front of the plane while you are in the middle at the back? They booked their flight six months before you did, that's why.) The 2007-08 schedule is out. It's still a bit tentative (lots of "TBS" scattered around) but you can get a birds-eye view of the whole season on the new calendar page. For details on the away games, go to the travel page. The first away weekend is November 9-11, an east coast jaunt with a lot of possibilities. The Cardinal plays Friday night at Yale, where the coach is Chris Gobrecht and the assistant coach is Milena Flores! (Do you think Chris would feel warmly nostalgic if a bunch of red-shirted fans started chanting "sit down Chris" in her home gym? Perhaps not...) Then the travelling fan has all of Saturday and much of Sunday free to sample New York city before heading to a Sunday night game at last season's national runner-up Rutgers, in New Jersey. What could you with 30+ hours free in Manhattan? The itinerary we're working on looks like this:
  • Fly in to NY Friday (avoiding JFK if possible)
  • Bus or airport express to Grand Central or Penn station
  • Train to New Haven, CT
  • Check into hotel near campus; see game; sleep
  • Train back to Manhattan, check into modest uptown hotel
  • NYC ad-lib Sat/Sat night/Sunday
  • Train to Newark
  • Check into hotel near Rutgers campus, see game, sleep
  • Monday morning train back to NYC, bus to airport, fly home
That's the version for people who have to work and can only finagle two vacation days to make a 4-day weekend of it. Us retired folks might go earlier and/or stay a bit longer. If you have any ideas on how to improve that itinerary, please add a comment to this post to share them!