Back to the City.

I am disheartened to report that I have spent my spring break in the most uninteresting of manners--by clocking in far too many hours at work. Though I only had two free days to spend as I please for the entire week, I will be privileged to skip out on class and work completely this week as I venture to New York City once again, this time for the College Media Advisers National Convention.



As the webmistress for & a DJ at NKU's student radio station, WRFNRadio.com, I have the privilege to hop aboard a train (!!!!!!!!!) next Wednesday to spend the next few days in Manhattan at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown on Madison Avenue (my first trip to NYC where I'm staying in a real hotel instead of a hostel). Sadly, our Production Supervisor and General Manager (aka: my upstairs neighbors) cannot go, so it will just be three DJs who joined us last semester and me. I get the arduous task of being the senior representative for the station, having logged nearly four semesters there. I'm excited but slightly nervous about this. Without the Production Supervisor's keen sense of, well, supervision, I have a feeling that I'll somehow manage to screw up our schedule and wind up in a damn lecture about printed media instead of radio. Or worse. A Star Wars convention.

Of course, we have to attend the convention seminars that the University paid for. Hopefully, they will be enriching and educational in a way that we can use the information presented to operate the station more efficiently. I'm optimistic. Hell, even if it is boring, who cares? It is a small price to pay for free transportation and hotel fare in New York. I'm sure that I will learn something useful to bring back with me. Besides, the lectures end at 5:50 every day, so that gives DJ Oblivious & I plenty of time to skulk around the NBC studios in order to try to kidnap stalk see Conan O'Brien.

I plan to go back to the random places of interest that I was able to enjoy during my last NYC excursion. I wouldn't mind poking around a few of the art galleries in Chelsea. I would go to the Whitney again, but unfortunately, this is not a year that they have the biennial exhibition. I wouldn't mind scoping out TriBeCa. We didn't venture to that part of Manhattan the last time that I went. I've only been through it on a bus 10 years ago. I want to see what all the fuss is about.

Oddly enough, I'm more exited to be on a train again than anything. My Amtrak adventure to Los Angeles in 2005 was an experience that holds a great sentiment with me. We won't be venturing though landscapes nearly as remarkable as those presented to me in Colorado and New Mexico, but the atmosphere of a train--the shuffle on the tracks, the hold-your-breath-and-hope-not-to-fall-through-the-cracks of the gangway as you walk from car to car, the low whistle as we pass though the town...it's a beautiful feeling of antiquity and wonder. I love trains. I want a model train set...complete with half-inch plastic townspeople, a plastic rock tunnel and miniature shrubbery. Naturally, I'm making a train-music playlist, with lots of Johnny Cash (a man who clearly knew the beauty of trains--there are tons of songs in his catalogue to choose from..and I would love to own a copy of his Ridin' the Rails: The Great American Train Story), as well as eels, "Railroad Man"; Shout Out Louds, "A Track and a Train"; Neko Case's cover of "Train From Kansas City"; The Decemberists, "Engine Driver"; & The Notwist, "Off the Rail" to name a few.

We're actually taking two different trains there, as there isn't a direct link from Cincinnati to New York. We're leaving on The Cardinal (a line that I have taken from Cincinnati to Chicago once before), which will take us from Ohio into West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, ad finally Washington DC. I've never been to DC before...so that should be interesting during our three hour layover. From there, we board a regional service train that will take us from DC, back into Maryland, Delaware (a state that I have not yet been to), Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and finally New York. I just wish that I could bring Jeremy along.

I've blabbed about this for far too long. Who cares?! I'll post more interesting things when I return (aka: photos). I haven't written an entry in over a month--so I had to make this one long and boring.