New York 2004 Flash Forward Trip

From July 9th to 11th 2004 I was in New York city for the Flash Forward conference. This is the story and pictures from my adventure.

The fun began on Tuesday night the 8th of July. I came home from work and was getting the last few things packed up for my trip the next morning when I thought "when is the flight". I was not sure of the exact time so I went and looked on the flight itinerary I was given and it said June 9 2004 at 8:15am. Seeing as it was July I found this quite odd so I called the airline and confirmed that the flight arraignments had been booked wrong and I did not have a ticket for the next day when I was supposed to fly out. So I jumped on the phone with the person who booked the flight and got everything straightened out for the trip. I left early Wednesday morning and was on my way. The flight was short and we arrived at Larguardia in New York at about 11:00. We hoped a cab to the New Yorker hotel on 34th and 8th, where we were staying and where the Flash Forward conference was being held.

We got to the hotel at about 12:00 which sucked because I missed Ze's presentation where he talked about the scribbler. The confusion in the flight from the night before and the flight taking a little longer than it was supposed to combined to make me too late for his speech. So we checked in and went up to our room. This picture is looking down from the window in the room to 34th street.

After check in I went about to get some pictures for Fullsail, since they paid for our trip and it was something they had asked me to do. I tried to get pictures with the Flash Forward sign and a sign that Fullsail had given me, but the people at Flash Forward did not want me doing it because Fullsail was not a sponsor. So I thought I would just take a picture when no on was looking, but their was a person in front of every sign giving me a hard time. I thought I would take them at night when no one was there but they took them away at night. Here are two of the pictures I did take.

After the picture taking we went to go walk around the city. We went down 34th st and saw the Empire State Building so we decided to take a look.

This was the lobby.

Me.

The Chrysler building is in this one.

Looking south towards the Statue of Liberty

Looking North the GE and Metlife Buildings are in this one.


South again.

North East I think.


East.

West?

This one is looking straight down to 34th street.

After the Empire State Building we walked down Broadway to Times Square. Times Square is crazy there are a so many people and there are big signs and lights everywhere.

The Naked Cowboy is a guy who plays guitar in his underwear in Times Square.



That's me in the middle.

At night.

Looking North.

MTV Studios.

Looking South.

After Times Square we went back to the hotel. I finally got a hold of Ze and he was down at the Flash Forward get together on Wednesday night in the lobby of the hotel. So I changed went down to meet him. It was nice to finally meet him since we had worked together but never met in person. He is a lot taller that I thought he would be. We talked and he introduced me to some other people it was a good time. I met one of his friends, Kirk who is a really cool guy. If I can find his website will post it soon.

Day two started by eating some breakfast then I headed out to some of the Flash Forward seminars. At the end of the day was the Film Festival and Flash Forward party. Ze gave the opening presentation to the Film Festival, he is a great public speaker. After the Film Festival we all went to the remote lounge for the party.

Ze at the beginning of the Film Festival.

Day 3 we went to the natural history museum. It is huge, it took us 4 hours and we still didn't see everything in there. We also did some more walking around the city.

Dinosaurs.

Gems and rare Metals.

The Frog Exhibit.

Me in front of a 34 ton meteorite.

Late Show with Dave

The Post Office

ESPN Zone and a Stargate Billboard

The same picture as the one above just a better view of the building.

Another cool building.

After the museum Paullette was nice enough to hook us up with a discount on a Broadway show. We went and saw Little Shop of Horrors. After the show we went to the Laugh Factory.

Little Shop of Horrors.

Laugh Factory.

You can see the Laugh factory across the street.

Day 4, Saturday we went to the Guggenheim and to Central Park then we walked down Madison Ave back to the hotel. The Guggenheim was a weird museum. The architecture was cool but the stuff inside was too artsy fartsy for me. Their were exhibits like a box or a light or a blank canvas. Most of the stuff could be seen by going to the local hardware store. It was weird. Central Park is huge and their are thousands of people there. It is neat being in the center of the city but not. There were people everywhere sunbathing and playing sports.

This is the Guggenheim.

This is inside the Guggenheim. It is a giant spiral you start at the top and curve your way down.

This is the great lawn in Central Park.

This is some castle in the middle of the park.

On day 4 the last day there we also went to see the Statue of Liberty, Battery Park, and Ground Zero. The lines to go see the Statue were too long so we just looked from Battery Park.

The pointy thing way off in the distance is the Statue of Liberty.

This is a more zoomed in picture.

Battery Park south looking at the statue.

This was the sculpture that was in the front of the twin towers, it is all ripped and smashed up. The circle in front of it is the eternal flame for those who died.

Ground Zero of the WTC part of the giant hole.

Part of the big fence around the hole and a damaged building to the left.

This is a cross made of I beams from the towers

Looking into the hole.

Another view of construction in the hole.

More construction.

Seeing the WTC and Ground Zero was pretty surreal. It is a giant hole in the middle of a city where there are buildings everywhere. It is huge and makes this big hole in the sky.

Day 5 we packed up and headed home. Our flight was an hour late taking off, but it was ok because we got bumped to first class. Then we got over Orlando and we had to circle for like an hour due to storms. When we landed we had to wait on the runway for an hour because the ground crews don't work in the rain and lightening. We finally got home at around 6:00pm after leaving the hotel at 9:00am.

Going to New York was a great experience. I got to see lots of neat things and famous land marks. I would definitely go back again.