Day 2 is coming to a close and I have a blister on my ankle that, I'm quite certain, has its own heartbeat. I suppose that's the price one pays for walking/longboarding at least 5 miles in a day-- or more.

My day started early with a trip down from my place here at 34th and 8th down to Chelsea to look for a bike. Hoping to stumble across a flea market, I eventually realized it was a futile effort and returned back to my room. On the way back, I wandered through Macy's. I was expecting something grander, something much more vast like Harrod's of London, but was fairly disappointed, minus the collection of vintage Indycars lining the cologne/perfume section.

I also watched a fairly interesting interaction take place. A man on a cell phone flagged down an NYPD car. The officers lowered the windows, asked him what he needed and the man went on with his phone conversation. The officers continued to ask him what he needed when the man walked to the back door and tried to actually enter the rear door of the police car. Hands on their guns, the officers got out and convinced the clearly confused non-native man to move along.

You really just never know what sort of surreal, bizarre nonsense you'll see here-- and this is only 2 days in!

Directions to a Goodwill and a few other thrift stores in hand, I went back down to Chelsea and still had no luck finding a bike. Bikes seem to be as valuable- and as rare- as gold here. I stopped at a Whole Foods for their lunch buffet (I've decided officially that curry doesn't taste very good, from a buffet or not) and then headed back to my room to pick up my longboard.

Waiting for the train, I helped a fellow Ohioan get onto the right train and onto Times Square. I must've tricked him into believing that I knew what I was talking about; I did take the wrong train once today.

I arrived at Central Park and longboarded/walked the entire perimeter and encountered some seriously fast hills with entirely too tight of turns for my longboard or myself to handle. I ended up jumping off a few times and walking down the big hills; hitting 45 MPH on a piece of plywood just didn't appeal to me today.

On my way back to drop off my longboard and get cleaned up, I arranged to meet up with Esteban, a fellow CBS intern from Colorado. I took him on a small, amateur tour of some of the must-see parts of Manhattan and, at one point, we even made it down to the CBS studios to see where we'll be working this summer.

The return home found me helping a Frenchman get out to Queens and ended with a quick trip to K-Mart (just a block away) for a stocking up of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the breakfast of champions.

At this point of the night, I'm exhausted and am looking forward to crawling into bed and finishing this Top Gear marathon on BBCAMerica that has been playing since I arrived.

Tomorrow will be pretty low-key, I think. I'm planning to tackle some writing/page design for my practicum assignment so that I don't have to balance it quite so heavily with the internship itself. There's a Starbucks across the street from me, so I may drag my blistered feet across the road and hunker down there for a good while. The idea of walking or exploring more tomorrow is a bit horrifying when I think about the ache in my legs and feet, but we'll see how I feel once I get a good night's sleep.

A few things I've learned today:
1. If someone approaches you on the street trying to give you a free CD of their music, it's not actually free.
2. Don't eat curry before longboarding in 90 degree weather.
3. If there's a Ferrari dealership and a Rolls Royce driving down the street, you can't afford the restaurants in that area.