The first thing you notice is how many people there are. At the airport, on the street. In the hundreds of restaurants and bars. In Times Square. New York is full. The next thing you notice is the scale of everything. In Vancouver, we are used to 10-15 storey buildings; in New York and especially in mid town, hardly anything is under 25 storey’s and 30 – 40 storeys are everywhere. Looking down the main avenues is like looking down a canyon. And then there are the NYC Cabs; about 3500 of them scream around the City darting in and out of traffic, honking their horns and dodging peds who challenge red lights at every intersection. The place just buzzes.

But if you sit back a bit and catch your breath, there is an incredible energy here. Something that is very contageous and exciting. Ever spent time someplace where activity levels rise and fall and your emotions go with them. Well here, there is a fevoured pitch to that energy that sweeps you up and won’t let go.

That is the reason why Penny and I decided to come to New York – to central Manhattan – for 3 months. We wanted to experience that energy, share in it and see where it takes us. For me, this adventure actually started in 2003 when I first came to the Big Apple for a conference. While I had heard about how incredible NYC is, I could never have imagined how intoxicating it is. I wandered the streets, visited many of the tourist attractions and even sat at the third base foul poll for a Yankees – Oakland baseball game with John MacPherson. I was in awe of how this place actually works.

In 2009, Penny and I came to New York for Canadian Thanksgiving. We stayed just half a block off Time Square at the Muse Hotel. We visited many of the attractions, walked Greenwich Village, SOHO, financial district and Battery Park and went to visit Ellis lsland where some of Penny’s relatives entered North America from Greece. The lights, the shopping, the lights, the people were fabulous, but we mostly were in touristy places. We both wanted more. We wanted to spend time in all of New York’s neighbourhoods, experiencing places that the locals experience, sucking up the energy and discovering what makes New York tick. We resolved to spend some serious time here, three or four months to take in as much as possible.

So here we are. We have made a signficant commitment to New York. We have rented an apartment, and have moved here. We couldn’t be more excited. This blog will hopefully be a vehicle for us to document our adventure. We will both post here and we will post together. Our experiences, our responses, our emotions will be documented for anyone who cares to follow us. We have been here for six days so we have some catching up to do. So far we are mostly tourists but over the next three months we hope to come to understand what New York is all about and to become energized by it.

We will share this journey with some friends who has “signed up” to take part in our journey. It will be an adventure. But it will be fun.

Stay tuned.