I still can’t believe we even did this…

1:00pm-2pm:
On Monday, December 31, 2012, we rolled into NYC and after eating a quick meal, we geared up to head to Times Square to stand and wait.

3pm:
I wore my long underwear under my jeans that I was discarding on this trip, in case I felt like sitting down on the dirty streets of NYC during our wait. I also wore my new Goldtoe socks with wool in them, which were supposed to be “very, very warm” according to my sales lady and my snow boots. On top I wore my tank top, thermal top, merino wool sweater, Häglofs down jacket, Häglofs gortex shell jacket, arm warmers, gloves, hat and scarf.

1. Thermal Long Johns, 2. Jeans, 3. Goldtoe socks, 4. Snow boots, 5. Tank top, 6. Thermal top, 7. Merino wool sweater, 8. Häglofs down jacket, 9. Häglofs Riot II Q Gore-Tex® Performance Shell Jacket, 8. Arm warmers, 9. Leather gloves, 10. Hat (personal photo), 11. Scarf (personal photo)

Because we read that no bags are allowed at the NYE event and that it might rain, in my jacket I had stuffed my umbrella, tissues, a bottle of water, lipgloss, and I could zip my jacket over my Canon camera with the 24-105 lens on it.

4pm:
We arrived at the Times Square subway stop around 4:45 and spent the next hour trying to figure out just exactly how to get inside one of those pens the police were blocking off. During this time we also stopped at a Subway and went to the bathroom for the last time that day.

5pm:
Having just arrived in the city, we weren’t that familiar with the street structure yet, so it wasn’t very helpful when the cops were pointing us in all sorts of different directions. Every one told us to go a few blocks this way, then that way… none of them seemed to know which areas of the square were blocked off yet. We sort of felt like they were just dicking with us.

I couldn’t help feeling like if this were a Swiss event like the Limmatschwimm, there would actually be event coordinators around the site who would know what’s going on, be able to communicate with each other and let attendees know where to go. But alas, we just had cops who seemed like they didn’t know much about the event at all.

6pm:
As we found out, most of the pens were closing pretty fast so we kept walking further away to try and find an open one. Finally we made it into one of the last pens available and after opening a pen in front of us, we found ourselves around the intersection of 52nd and 7th by Rosie O’Grady’s, a whole 500 yards away from the ball drop and right next to the intersection with a lovely chilling wind funneling right down 52nd.

This was pretty much our view. Not that close and a whole lotta people around. Were we sure  we wanted to wait for this?

7:00pm:
After an hour or so of standing in the cold, I started noticing that people were still pressing forward from behind, despite the fact that we were only 1-2 people from being at the front of the pen and there was no place to push those people.

Still, people kept pushing and I was cold. I started to jiggle around to warm myself and felt someone leaning pretty hard against me, so I leaned back. “Caroline” noticed this and shoved me kinda hard. So I turned around and asked “Would you like to move in front of me? You keep pushing me.” to which Caroline responded that she didn’t want me to “keep bouncing my ass” into her.

I explained to Caroline that there wasn’t any place for her to push and that we’d be standing here for the next 5 hours, so she should just stop. Caroline sort of shrugged it off and just said that people behind her were pushing, like that gives her a right to push me as well. Pff.

8:00pm:
God. Time was moving so slowly. Every hour there was a 10 second count down to get us excited about the ball drop, but other than that it was quite boring. We couldn’t hear the concert at all and there was no music playing in the vicinity. Just quiet penetrating cold, our thoughts and the occasional assholes blowing noisemakers.

9:00pm:
So cold. So so so so cold. Damn socks didn’t help anything at all. Evil sales lady. I couldn’t understand how people decided to bring young children and babies to this place. I was painfully cold and couldn’t imagine choosing this situation for someone else to endure without say. But by this point we had stayed long enough that I was not going to leave before the end.

10:00pm:
People around us either talking about whether they should leave or how they were never, ever going to do this again. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. Some people left, but most people stayed and kept pushing us. I would have complained again, but I was so cold that I almost wanted them to be leaning on me for more warmth. Some ordered pizza to the crowd which was somehow delivered through the walkway the police were guarding, but no one was allowed to leave the pen and no one went to the bathroom. Kay and I spent the bulk of our time in each other’s arms, grasping for warmth.

11:00pm:
11pm rolled around and guess who had shimmied her way directly in front of me? Fucking Caroline and her friend Christine. The English family in front of us crapped out around 11:00pm (which I thought was so close and sad to leave!) and so these two took the opportunity to waltz in front of us. Christine was pretty tall too, so she was pretty much blocking my view of Times Square. I was pissed.

People kept pushing us from all sides so I squeezed between Caroline and Christine when there was a moment. It was pretty awkward because they obviously wanted to stand next to each other and talk. Nearing midnight, things had shifted enough that Caroline tried to swap and stand by Christine, so I let her pass so I could get Christine out of my view. Thank God.

11:45pm:
At 11:45, this man popped out of Rosie O’Grady’s with the music blaring out the window and started waving his microphone up and down. He seemed a little drunk. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in hours. We were enamored.

Suddenly we could hear the music blasting from the bar and things seemed to wake up. The world seemed alive again, although I couldn’t feel most of my toes and Kay couldn’t feel any of his.

12:00am:
The final countdown started and the police officers let a bunch of random “priority” guests into the pathway in between our pen and the next pen. Fuckers. I’d been waiting for six hours in that pen, and here people were getting let in 15 minutes before the ball dropped. I’d pay to do that!

6…5…4…3…2…1… HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I’m not even sure if Auld Lang Syne was playing somewhere or if I was just singing it in my head. I have a feeling it was just me.

In fact, I just asked Kay and he confirmed that it was only me singing in my head. I can only hope he was imagine-playing the song in his head too.

Kay and I kissed, and then we got the fuck out of there. I wanted to go home and warm up!

The energy at the end of the ball drop was pretty exciting, but for how far back we were, I’m still not sure it was worth it. I mean, we didn’t have any concert or confetti or anything. Apparently we would have had to wait an additional 3-4 hours in the cold to get up that close. Nine hours without peeing? No thanks.

By the time we got home I had a very sore, raw throat from standing in the wind for six hours. My body felt destroyed. Everything hurt.

Despite drinking water and tea before bed, I had a fairly bad dehydration hangover the next day and I felt like shit when I woke up. I still went out with friends, but when Kay and I headed for the subway at the end of the day, I was chilled to the bone and couldn’t warm up even in the subway station. While we were walking home I realized I had a fever and that I was probably so cold because of chills.

Well… I felt pretty damn stupid. I stood in the cold for six hours and got sick. What do you expect?? But this was our first day in New York and I had almost a whole week of holiday there so we picked up some cold meds at the store, I made myself tea and took an ibuprofen and went to bed with a fever of 101ºF/38ºC.

The next morning my fever went back down to 98.4ºF/37ºC, which is still an annoying fever for me because my normal body temperature is 97.6ºF/36.4ºC, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from going back out in that damn windy cold for the rest of the week and experiencing New York and after that the fever didn’t come back. My body did try and give me a big “fuck you” for NYE though, and I’ve been dealing with a fairly nasty cold for the past week, albeit no coughing (yet.)

Would I do it again? Hell no! Am I glad we did it? Yeah, I guess. It’s another thing off my travel list and I have a story to tell at least.

Would you ever do NYE at Times Square?