Sunday 28 January – New York

Felt as good as one could hope to feel after a 4am finish last night. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for Libe, although she came good within a couple of hours. When we finally got our A into G (arse into gear), we met up with Kristian and Luke and headed down to Central Park. Sightseeing was not the primary objective as one might believe; our priority was to find a bit of lawn and a bit of space to have a kick of the footy in Central Park. Quite simply, we were as toey as a roman sandal for a few failed torpedoes, and a few mongrel, finger-breaking, GDFL-reserves-special mongrel punts. Barrel had had a bit of empty space in his luggage coming over from Perth, thus a T.W. Sherrin, in good solid nick too, made the trip (surely "T.W. Sherrin" would be eligible for a Frequent Flyers card?)

We were quite out of luck today, as although we only walked halfway up Central Park from the south east corner, we were unable to find any great place to have a kick. The reason was that all of the decent lawns had been closed to prevent winter damage. We finally found a wet, choppy place to have a kick. Only one hour later were we getting tired of it.

But it would be remiss of me not to describe Central Park. Whoever made the decision to retain such a huge area of land in clearly one of the most sought-after locations in the world was a great visionary. This park just has everything – sports fields, lakes, restaurants, running tracks, a zoo, music / theatre bowls, and plenty of spaces where you can be completely oblivious to the fact that you’re in the biggest city in the world. In hindsight, this place has to be allocated a day to be truly explored – hopefully myself & Libe can find a place in our tight US schedule to have such a day.