The first trip Monica and I went on was to New York City from D.C. Yes, New York is quite extravagant, but this story is not about the glitz and glamour that surrounds the Big Apple. This is more of a story for a warm, no, HOT campfire. We took a bus on the first weekend in January 2018. It was not a bad bus ride compared to the buses I have been on here in Rwanda. We were late for the bus that freezing DC morning. The whole 4 hours were spent talking over the religious tongue podcast, which was being played through the phone instead of the guy’s unplugged headphones he had resting in his ears.
Before getting to the city, we watched the skyline grow closer through the bus window. Monica’s phone had the worst battery so it was almost dead before we even got to that point. Getting off the Greyhound at the bus station wasn’t too cold compared to what was looming when we got to the street. The shelter that an underground bus station gives is underappreciated. Turning the corner onto a sidewalk of a street I did not know, blindsided by the harsh wind, we walked. I was carrying a couple of bags and I had my nice big coat on, but even though the coat, I was getting cold. Being my anxiety-ridden self, I was trying to save my phone’s battery and find a place to charge so I tried not to take it out to look where we had to go to get to our Airbnb.
When we went into a warm and packed Starbucks where I realized how cold I was. I was so adamant to save battery that I had turned off the only working phone we had. And with that, after wandering for about 15 minutes around a Starbucks trying to find something to point us in the right direction, I surrendered my phone to that imminent fate of death I had so grossly feared. From then on Monica used maps to get us to a subway station with the right line.
Getting to the Airbnb, I remember shivering excessively and not being able to access our room. We met two friendly guests staying in the upstairs part of the house. After putting our stuff down in, Monica convinced me somehow to walk around Central Park, after putting some tea-bags and hot water in a cardboard cup from the kitchen.
This is where you huddle over the fire.
It was windy. There was snow. There was slush on the streets, and ice everywhere else. It was -15°C (6.8°F) with a 21 km/h (13 mph) wind, made the wind chill factor -23.1°C (-9.57°F). So cold that when I bumped into Monica while trying to get some selfies of us in the park (there was no one else in the middle of the park) and spilled the tea on my down coat I lent her, it froze. And after beginning to walk back, a new sensation of frozen knees hit my legs. I have never felt so cold, my legs were stiff, and what I am pretty sure was the onset of hypothermia began to hit me. Leaving the rest of the night to be a blur…
