2009 New York St. Paddy's Day Parade

I actually do not mind getting up at 0300. I am a morning person. That being the case, I believe everyone found me a little annoying yesterday, as we piled, bleary-eyed into the vans to go down to New York City. I slept a good portion of the way there. It wasn't very restful sleep, of course; Ford Econoline vans are not known for there plush, quite ride and sleeping comfort.
We got to the Armory (I'm not sure what the actual name of the place is, but it's the headquarters of the 69th Regiment) and got dressed out in our dress blues, complete with spats, aguillettes, and asgots. The aguillettes and asgots are either blue or gold. Actually, a few of of us (myself included) put on white asgots and aguillettes first, because we were on a color detail. There was a presentation of a portait of Lt. Murphy to his parents. lt. Murphy was a SEAL who recieved the Congressional Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan. I was holding the Navy flag. After that we went to the parade. We had a little bit of trouble figuring out where were supposed to go, but we made it. The parade went pretty well. One guy almost dropped his rifle, but it sort of bounced back into his hand. The funniest thing someone said was (from a lady): "Look at those nice tushies!". That made it a little hard to maintian my military bearing, but I got over it. The parade was about five miles, but it actually felt shorter than the one in New Jersey because there were so many people. In New Jersey there were some parts where there weren't any people; here it was packed the whole way. We rode the subway back to the Armory; we looked a little out of place with M-1 Garands and full dress, but it was fun. On the way home we stopped at this little smokehouse BBQ restaurant. The food was pretty good and it had an awesome, sort of rustic atmoshpere.
People drive funny here. They sort of slow down and speed up at random. I don't like it.
-The Albatross