Capture Adventure

Vol. 1 Dec 30

Weekly Update

A short train ride and the next thing I knew I was in Grand Central station, at the heart of NYC, a city I had never really considered visiting prior to now.

📍 Key takeaways of the week Discount Broadway tickets are the way to go Manhattan is very walkable

🗺️ Must see & do in Manhattan Rockefeller Center - Xmas tree and skating St. Patrick's Cathedral Attend a live performance Eat fooooood

🏔️ Standout moments of the week Christmas decor around the city was amazing Audience members being the butt of jokes at the comedy show

Washington State to NYC

How I ended up here was planned but when the time came it also felt like an unexpected whirlwind. After spending a year in Washington State I packed up my life and drove across the country to North Dakota. I unloaded my possessions, briefly said hello to my family and friends and almost immediately packed a backpack and boarded a flight to JFK airport in New York City.

This was it though, the starting point of an idea brought up at the beginning of the summer and made official not too long after the Thanksgiving holiday. THE 2024 ADVENTURE. A travel trip to new and familiar destinations. A unique adventure focused on distance hiking and backpacking. With the solidifying of this trip and plane tickets purchased, the idea for the Capture Adventure network was sparked and I have spent the weeks since developing and building it. I am excited to intertwine my passions and profession as this journey unfolds.

In planning the 2024 trip it feels like a culmination of what I set out doing 10 years ago on my first trip abroad tied in with my personal healing journey, all powered by the growth 2023 brought me. Everything that happened over the past few years has been pulled together, breathing energy into this new endeavor, bridging my passions of travel, creativity, digital work, and community. All of which feels so aligned for where I am at in life.

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Meaning that all of this has led me to landing in the JFK airport, where I reunited with my girlfriend Emily and we drove to her home state of Connecticut just before Christmas to visit her family. While there she wanted to show me NYC, so before the holiday we hopped on the train directly to Grand Central station.

We only had a short 24 hours in New York City but we packed in as much as we could, which to say didn't even come close to nearly scratching the surface of all that is possible to see and do in the Big Apple.

Thanks to hotel rewards points we stayed in Midtown Manhattan, just off Central Park, at the famous Carnegie Hotel. This area was the perfect walkable location for someone like me, who knows next to nothing about NYC and the hotel was perfect, it had free wine and snacks in the evening and breakfast in the morning.

We arrived to the city before check-in time so while waiting we wandered down the ritzy street of 5th Avenue, spying all the seasonal Christmas window decor, most notably decorated in Sak's 5th Avenue department store. We stopped by Rockefeller Center's ice skating rink and the famous Christmas tree, grabbed a coffee and visited St. Patrick's Cathedral. Following that we made our way to Times Square, all before check-in time for our hotel.

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Two things Emily wanted me to experience in NYC were a live Broadway show and a live comedy show. So that first night after dinner we hopped onto the subway and made our way to The Stand, one of the top comedy venues in the city, and proceeded to laugh our asses off. I had only been to one other stand-up comedy show before, in Toronto, which was amateur stand-up of local comedy. This show in New York was lined-up with big name industry comics trying out their latest sets.

For the Broadway show we tried our hand at the various ways to snag budget tickets. We wanted a Saturday matinee show, so the night before we signed up to the digital "lottery" for 3 different shows, which is based on luck to get cheap tickets. Unfortunately we did not get selected for those, so Saturday morning we had to hit each box office in person for hopes on discount tickets, called Rush tickets, and if we could not get those we would least be getting tickets without the online platform fee. (If you by in-person the $30 online transaction fee is dropped.)

That morning we were going back and forth between which shows we should see and found decent priced tickets at the box-office for two of them, not the cheap Rush price, but still affordable for us. For some reason though the two we debated on didn't feel right. So instead of picking either one, we decided to pop over to the box office for a 4th choice. I had mentioned to see this show but the online ticket prices were quite high and we lost at the lottery tickets.

That play was Sweeney Todd and since it was an afterthought, we showed up later to the box office than one normally would to get day-of tickets, only about 40 minutes past the box office opening.

We waited in line for about 20 minutes and when it was our turn we had just missed the super cheap in-person Rush tickets, they had some for the 8pm show but not the matinee time. Luckily we still were able to sang discount tickets in the mezzanine area, for way less than the online price showed was available and it was even cheaper than other two shows we were choosing between! This turned out to be the best decision. Josh Groban had just returned to Broadway at the beginning of the year to star in Sweeney Todd and is leaving again the middle of January 2024. Him alongside Annaleigh Ashford, the female lead, were phenomenal.

Having never experience a live acting show of that caliber, I was drawn into everything and on the edge of my seat for the whole performance. Even just hearing the orchestra play so intricate and detailed, on top of the set design and characters and atmosphere of the old theater.

Between the time of us trying to get budget tickets and the show starting we checked out of our hotel, wandered Central Park and around the upper portion of 5th Avenue. Again I was surprised at how easy it was to wander the city streets, all while admiring the sheer scale of the buildings, feeling the energy of the city bustling around me. For this short trip I did not bring my camera with me, I wanted to enjoy my time without the focus to be on taking photos, plus the temperature was cold but not unbearable for December wanderings. The one thing I noticed regarding the weather was with the height of the skyscrapers the sun never truly made it over the top of them to get to you.

Final Thoughts

As quickly as that, once the Broadway show ended we were back at Grand Central station on the train to Connecticut to spend Christmas with Emily's family and pack for the first international destination!

Thanks for reading, see you on the next adventure - Sheridan

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