Gettin' Lucky with Dick

Hey guys! We're hanging in NYC (well, Jersey technically). We've had a great past couple of days and missed blogging immensely yesterday. Trump charges $12.95 a day for internet access and since we don't spend much time in our room it wasn't worth it. I guess that's one way he keeps getting richer.

Yesterday morning we spent time in Amish country. It was so wild to see buggies & horses trucking down the road with cars and big rigs. It also smells like poop there. Seriously, no urban myth. Hershey may periodically smell like chocolate (if Shore Turtle tells me he smelled chocolate there I believe him) but I bet Lancaster ALWAYS smells like poop. I'd put money on it. We checked out some of the local quilt, jams and craft stores and hung with the old people in the fudge shop. Old people love the fudge shops as much as they love ice cream, and this one old lady kept pushing me out of the way so we got out of there. (I'll have to tell you about the really mean old ladies who nearly pushed me down in Vermont in 2001 at Ben & Jerry's sometime!) We decided we'd try a buggy ride. Not like a shopping cart ride, but an actual ride in a horse & buggy through the Amish farms. It was only $10 bucks a person for a 30 min, 3 mile ride. We learned SO much about the Amish I'll have to share sometime. It's such a fascinating life style. He drove us through a couple of farms and at one point a lady came out to sell us some of her "handyworks". It was a little angel (about baby doll size) shaped out of several dish towels. My mom made some of these for all of us last year for Christmas. I never knew my mom was Amish!! J/K, but I'm sure she would have been so excited to see what they had in common.
Brent had the most fun in Intercourse, PA. They have several unusual town names like Blue Ball, Virginville & some others I can't remember anymore. We had lunch at a local restaurant where some Amish girls were serving as waitresses and other Amish people were eating. It was basically home cooking type food - pretty much like every meat & three in the South. We did sample Shoo-fly pie for dessert. YUM!

From there we headed to Atlantic City! Woo hoo! We've been to Vegas a few times (super fun!) and also some of the crappy gambling places like Biloxi and the Indian reservations in NC. Atlantic City was a blast, it's not as elaborate or large as Vegas but the Boardwalk is too cool. Biloxi needs to take some notes about how to properly have casinos on the ocean, it would be huge (or "hoooge" as Trump would say). We checked into the ornate Trump Taj Mahal and were really surprised at how cool (and nice) or room was. A little cheesy, but very nice. We had a great view of the ocean and immediately ran down to watch the sun set and take some pics. (I know you're shocked). We wandered down the boardwalk and had dinner at a Cuban place in the Tropicana. It was EXCELLENT! We wandered back up the boardwalk stopping at a few casinos along the way to play. In one machine I put in 5 cents and ended up with $12.50! NOT BAD!! In the Trump Taj Mahal I started with $5 in my favorite machine - Dick Clark's Rockin New Years Eve - and was down to about $2 when I hit the jackpot and got another $12.50!! Woo hoo! I walked away with $17.50 from that machine. Not a lot of dough but excellent for us. Brent got lucky with Dick at the Tropicana and then again with the poker machines. It was great fun and we were entertained for hours AND came out over $30 ahead.

This morning we got up, ran 5.5 miles on the VERY windy boardwalk and headed for NYC. We got here around 2.30 and ended up getting upgraded to a VERY nice suite because our TV was broken. Sweet!! We took the train in and walked from 34th to 72nd to meet Danny for dinner. We shopped all along the way and I even found a little Pippin (who I miss GREATLY). Times Square was really a sight. Larger than life, really. It started raining right when we were leaving TS, so the rest of the walk was a little difficult to see for the rain, so we just caught glimpses of Central Park & some of the other sights. We met Danny & his friend F at a Chinese place near 72nd & Broadway. It was very good. I'd much rather eat somewhere where the locals eat than something randomly picked out of a book for tourists. We had a great time, proving that runners ARE fun people and bloggers are NOT nerds. Everyone is so much fun to meet in real life, and exactly the same as they are on their blogs (except for the accents part =) ). I'm voting for some massive RBF meet-up party!

Tomorrow we're starting at the bottom near the Financial District/Statue of Liberty and working our way up! See ya!!

Rachel