It’s my very first time experiencing New York City outside of a car or JFK airport. I was one of the lucky chosen to come here for the BMX segment of the Today show. I took a night flight in so I didn’t have to miss training yesterday and landed undeniably with red eyes at 5:30am this morning. A blacked out Lincoln courtesy of NBC was waiting to pick me up and I was lucky enough to catch the sights of the city waking up. Call me nostalgic but I was pretty psyched to be driving down Broadway in downtown Manhattan watching people come in and out of the tall tall buildings. There is so much more culture here than any city out West, it’s definitely a different world. I couldn’t help but think of clips from Seinfeld as we were cruising along, like the Parking Stall episode….anyway I feel more connected to Jerry and Kramer now. The Lincoln dropped me off directly across the street from Central Park at The Essex House, built in 1931 and by far the NICEST hotel I have EVER stayed in.

I received a nice little present from Nike, a $500 shopping comp at Nike Town. Kyle and Donny had some foreign photo shoot going on so I went out on my own little adventure experiencing New York for the first time on foot. I caught some Central Park, walked down 5th Ave, and landed myself in the 4 story Nike Town. The whole place was a trip, tonz of clothes, shoes, watches, casual wear, even shoes that talked to your ipod while you run. It was more than I could handle for sure, stimulus overload.

This afternoon we ran over to ESPN magazine and got a tour of the place. It was pretty amazing to see how everything comes together to put out a magazine. We met the executive editor and had a sit down with the Editor in Chief to discuss why he thinks BMX isn’t big time. His reason?? Because we look so funny on those little bikes. No disrespect to our sport he assured us, he thought we were rad but thinks the rest of the world doesn’t understand us yet because of our little bikes. Hmm. We did a little video interview for the “dot com” portion of the magazine and signed the famous athlete pole already marked up by BMX’s own Jill Kintner and Mike Day.

I’ll tell you one thing that New York does right, food. I walked into a tiny deli today for lunch and came out with the best sundried tomato chicken wrap I have ever had. Tonight we hit up an Italian restaurant with a name I can’t pronounce but once again the food was dialed. The one thing I don’t like about New York is the constant impression I get that everyone is pissed off and in a rush. Not the friendliest city in the world but everything else makes up for that.

Tomorrow I have a 5:30 wake up call to get ready for The Today Show so I better call it a night.