We are now a
day and half away from flying to NYC and have no idea whether we can or not.
Over the
last 24 hours, Hurricane Sandy has rolled through NYC and its surrounds and
closed airports, subways, power stations and most other things we need in order
to step foot on that crowded little island.
Our
apartment in NYC is located at 118 West 27th St, in Chelsea. The owners have kept
us up to date on developments and are only mildly confident the infrastructure
will be able to meet our arrival.
Somewhat ominously,
the last two emails from the owners have been:
Dear Daniel, Well we survived the
storm! At the moment we have
electricity. We are very grateful for
that. Let's hope it continues. As it stands right now, I think your plans
for your arrival to NYC are fine with us.
I assuming that as long as the electric power company (Con Edison)
doesn't do anything to our power sources, everything will be okay.
And, when
asked how the subways were looking:
Terrible!! I was born in NYC (Manhattan) and lived here
all my life. We've never seen anything like this before. I don't think this will be cleaned up too
quickly. At this moment I just heard on
local TV news that there is 7 ft of water, still in the Holland Tunnel!! That's one of our major tunnels, downtown
westside to New Jersey. That's hard to
believe. I'm sure there will be full bus service by the time your here. But I
doubt the subways will be working, they will get the subways in Manhattan fixed
first. I will keep you up to date.
I have spent
the day talking to our travel insurance company, the travel agent, and scouring
the internet news trying to work out whether it is even worth driving to the
airport in 36 hours time. At the time or
posting, I would give us a 50/50 chance of tasting the big apple on cue. As it
stands, the next 24 hours will dictate whether we leave Australia at all or try
to recover our costs back from the insurer. Accordingly, this may be our last
post or the first of a very interesting adventure.
