Dearest gentle readers,
Did you miss me?
I gotta tell you... I have missed you, and writing this blog. I've realized that deliberately looking for the adventure in life by way of the Badass Blog has created a whole new world of gratitude, wonder, and awe for me. And not doing it has left a void.
So with Emily's encouragement, I'm back with a new personal challenge--the Badass 2.0 Edition™. Whadaya say I try to make it to 100 more badass adventures by the end of 2025? Challenge accepted!!!!
Emily's 25th birthday was coming up so of course I had to jump up to NYC to celebrate her. This amazing kid has found her perfect life in NYC and I couldn't be more thrilled for her.
Between taking sign language classes, volunteering at a food pantry, jumping on a bus to see where it takes her then getting off and exploring, and sewing her own clothing, she is loving her very best life. I want to be her when I grow up!!! That's all in addition to her super cool coding job at the mayors office.
It's hard to find places she hasn't explored yet but I accepted that challenge and planned a 24 hour birthday adventure where the child had to make zero decisions and we focused on celebrating the heck out of her.
We started the celebration day with a special birthday treat of a rainbow bagel and an iced oatmilk vanilla caramel latte, then after work we jumped on the subway to Times Square.
Our first stop was to The Sugar Factory for fish bowl sized mock tails, nachos and pizza fries (her favs). Then, for the next two hours, I told tales of her growing up--from her actual birth to school stories to grandparent and brother stories and on and on. Some stories she knew well and others she heard for the first time. Twas a real pleasant way to spend the afternoon--taking about my kids is one of my absolute favorite hobbies, after all.
From there, we checked into our room on the 35th floor after battling cranky tourists for a spot on the elevator.
And then we were off to The 20 Sided Tavern, an off-Broadway Dungeons & Dragons show where the audience participated by voting via phones, playing beer pong, and rolling a gigantic 20 sided dice. The set was amazingly cool and the actors' ad libbing was spot on.
We grabbed some fro-yo and Pad Thai, heading back to the hotel. Unfortunately along the way, we had a terrible badass Adventure where poor Emily saw her first dead person (with exception of a few funerals she's attended) when we realized all the ambulances at the entrance to our hotel were there to care for a gentleman lying half on the sidewalk, half in the street with what looked like the result of a massive heart attack. But let's believe that the paramedics saved him. I hope so.
Next day, we headed to SPYSCAPE to compete in Spy Games. Spy Games consists of 8 rooms, each with a different kind of physical and/or mental challenge.
In one room, you had to leap over and duck under laser beams. In another, you had to climb the walls using only certain colors wall grips. Other rooms included mental puzzles, memory games, and quick speed reflexes.
We did alright, y'all. We were very smug and arrogant about our place on the leaderboard.
Then, after walking though blocks after blocks of outdoor markets, we got to Exit Escapes and got checked in for our "Cupcake Escape".
As you know if you follow this blog, Em and I adore escape rooms and do them whenever we are together. We go into absolute laser focus mode, get ramped up on adrenaline, and über focus on solving as a team.
And we haven't lost one yet.
I'm guessing this was the 16th escape room we've done and we definitely did not want this one to be our fall from grace.
This room had a unique theme: we needed to bake a cupcake for a cupcake competition.
Our game master told us we would need to use all our senses. And we did! Let's just say that I squeezed a lot of cow udders, we taste tested items to answer riddles about the flavors, had to do a sniff test, and analyzed cookbooks and songs to get the clues needed for locks.
And guess what? We crushed it! Didn't ask for one clue and still escaped with 23 minutes left on the clock.
We swaggered out of there like the champs we are. Heee hee.
Those are all the adventures for today. Stay tuned for more tomorrow--I got 24 more hours in the city and we're not going to waste one second! Bye for now.
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