It was my last day and the only thing I had planned was to make my way down to Central Park. I could have easily taken the bus but I chose to do the "walk" towards the 62nd street entrance. If I had known that my shocks were on the verge of giving out...I may not have...but kind of glad I didn't know.
After about 30 minutes, I got to the entrance. I had no real plan of where I wanted to go so I bought a map and just started wandering. Even though I enjoyed the parts of Central Park that I saw, I will always remember this is the place where my emotional cup runneth over.
There I was in a very public place and, at that moment the emotions of the last seven days came pouring out. The frustration, the humiliation, the anger, the happiness, the excitement...all of it.
I cried for the things I accomplished and I cried for the things I didn't accomplish. I cried for the things that happened and I cried for the things that didn't happen. There was that one thing where if it didn't happen now, it was never going to happen. Try as I did...the stars never aligned on my side and the window of opportunity is closed. Some things only come once in a lifetime and that was one of them.
As emotional as I was, I still wanted to see as much of Central Park as I could. I made sure to go where the author statues were and there were a lot of caricature artists around. I made it to the Bethesda Fountain, took it all in and snapped a couple of photos.
At this point, I had been there a couple hours and I needed to get the chair back to the hotel for a charge before I headed out in the evening. When I left the park, I somehow ended up on the Central Park West side. Instead of going back in and retracing my steps, I decided to stay on the CPW side. I would just go the long way around back to the hotel. Get a little lost and give myself to see more of the non-tourist part. And this is when my chair had had enough.
During one moment of going down a curb cut-out, I suddenly felt that familiar feeling of a chair without shocks. It is not a good feeling because there's nothing anchoring the chair as it navigates hills & bumps. This latest problem, though worrisome, wasn't going to keep me inside on my final evening.
When I got back to the Hotel, I rested/recharged for a couple hours then I headed out again. Time to go down some different streets and get a little lost. At one point in my midst of wandering, I looked up to see that I had somehow ended up on 34th Street and I had a nice chuckle. This night was the latest I stayed out and close to 9pm, I knew it was time to head back towards Shake Shack and Grey's Papaya to pick up what would be my last meal in NYC.
It was a sad moment. It was an emotional day.
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