NEW YORK, Feb. 22, 2005 — We get up but not too early. We are leaving but our plan is in the late afternoon. I pack some of our stuff. We go to Rue 57 again. I have coffee and an omelet and read the paper. We go back to the hotel and I pack up everything and we check out and leave our luggage with the bell man.

There is a Radio and Television museum on 52nd Street and we have been there before. We go and use the library to watch some Ernie Kovacs, a reel of TV advertising and some shows from our childhood.

We wander back to the hotel area, buying a couple of bananas from a street vendor. We find a little place right next to the back entrance of the hotel then...a sandwich, soup, pastry place with good coffee and all kinds of drinks. We sit there a while having coffee and sharing a muffin. See this is the type of tiny hidden place near one's hotel that one needs to find...and not the last hours they are there.

We go next door and lounge near the back entrance after getting our luggage out of storage. Turns out we shouldn't have directed the car service to this entrance (which has a drive) because 58th Street is a mess of backed up traffic from a blinking light where pedestrians constantly cross (especially with all the traffic to the park and around the plaza). Still, our driver is there at 3:30, the time we gave, which is really early, and we do get off the block in a minute or two. Traffic isn't bad. We check our bags at the curb but have to go inside to get boarding cards because we got upgrades again. For some reason they give us two boarding cards which makes us think they may switch equipment when we get to Houston.

We go through security. We have some water, wander around, see someone we know from Austin. (This is not surprising since the plane or at least the flight eventually goes there.) Eventually we are boarded. But it turns out the plane is broken. We sit on the plane a good while and they try to fix it. The pilot comes on and talks about getting a replacement. Finally we deplane and walk across to another gate where passengers are exiting a recently landed aircraft. I've been thinking 'this can't work out well.' But we board, getting our exact same seats only FFP and I get his seat mate to switch since we didn't get together again. Finally after the luggage and catering gets transferred and we wait some more to take off we are away. It's closer to nine than six when I'd expected we'd get away. I've been swallowing my decongestants and now I sleep although I wake up to have a drink and to sip a bit of FFP's water or Diet Coke here and there. I try to finish my book. Keep falling asleep. In Houston a lot of people get off and we soldier on. They usually don't encourage deplaning but this time they don't allow it. We wouldn't have budged anyway. It's close to one o'clock tomorrow when we are headed to the house after getting our car at FasPark.

It's always good to get home. I try to unpack a few things but it expands to most things and we stay up a while.