Tuesday October 10
Lauren and Travis arrived in Newark airport late Monday night after the parents. In classic Neuberger style, all children shared one room in the grandparents house while Todd slept on the worlds tiniest "bed", luckily Lori Lee doesn't sleep and stayed up all night with Wendy because that bed is not big enough for two. We all got up and packed up the new rented van to head to Kyle and Caitlin's stomping grounds, the big CT. Of course we couldn't be driving or doing anything without eating some new delicious food, so we stopped at the Abel Bakery for some bread slices and scones. The man helping us was scary enthusiastic with his motions. Great guy though, definitely loves his job. We had some great conversation in the car and saw the beautiful coast and the dense trees of CT as we drove along. When we arrived we made a quick stop for some classic food truck tacos that were lined up along the coast. Best part was they had a nice assortment of toppings and salsas to put on top. Having just narrowly avoided starving to death, we headed up this nice hill/viewpoint to look over New Haven. It was all very beautiful. Then we found a great hike in the state park and found an interesting tower at the top of a hill. Then we all went to the grocery store and got food for dinner and Lori Lee made one of her salads which are amazing. And we roasted brats over a fire and to top it off we had out first guitar sing along of the trip. We learned that we could not get the melody down for "Calling all Angels" and that only Caity could bring us back from the suffocating depths of off tuneness.
Wednesday October 11
On Wednesday morning we took off with our tour guide Kyle. We did some amazing parallel parking in down town New Haven next to Yale campus (shoutout to Todd!) Then we got out and started walking around what looked like Hogwarts. Kyle clearly has spent a lot of time in this area because he knew so much about the campus. It was a great time to walk around, Travis and Lauren were happy to stretch out their still wooden feeling legs. Then we all had amazing ice cream. It was truly quantity over quantity. They had about ten flavors of ice cream which I'm sure are all phenomenal but the chocolate, coconut, raspberry and chocolate chip sweet cream were succulent. After our Yale adventure we hopped in the adventure bus again to go to the Submarine museum, which was super cool. (Side fact, it was rated on Southwest's most recent edition of the airplane magazine as one of the coolest places to visit in Connecticut, a must see if you will). We even got to go inside a submarine and take a tour. After the submarine tour we ventured to a cute coastal town called New London, just off the coast guard academy. We got lucky because it was a sunny and mostly warm day and it wasn't too chilly. We drove into what seemed like a forgotten alleyway until we made it to Captain Scott's Lobster Dock, which had excellent ratings on google, and for good reason. We ordered an excellent meal of New ENGLAND clam chowder, lobster bisque (which had real chunks of lobster in it), clam fritters, and a hot lobster roll and a cold lobster roll, and of course fries, which Kyle still can't eat. It was amazing. Lori Lee got some ice cream after that with over 10 toppings in it and made the ice cream scooper girl's day. Then we started making the beautiful drive over to the apple orchards. Which are really just a bunch of people out in the more rural area of Connecticut that have decided to make orchards in their backyard. Stay tuned for 15 years from now when the Neuberger Apple Orchard becomes the hottest new orchard in the Northeast. It was a tough decision between what orchard to go to, do we go to the posh fancy orchard that will roll their eyes at you if you ask where the Red Delicious are, or do we go to the orchard with the best apple fritters since the Chicago world's fair and the sweetest Vietnam War veteran on oxygen that will chat Lori Lee up for days? Tough call but I think you know which one we picked. We discovered so many different kinds of apples!! Including our new favorite, the Cortland apple. Dark purple on the outside but a bright clean white on the inside with a delicate sweetness that could allow you to actually eat the whole apple. I don't know what we would have done without Kyle's knife and Travis's impulsive nature to bite into every apple he saw. Sad to say we never found the Honeycrisps on the tree, but we had a blast and brought home only the best apples. We then met Caity on her way home from work at the local Italian dessert shop. It was like a scene straight out of Harry Potter the Sorcerers Stone when Harry buys the entire stock of the trolley cart treats, we literally bought the store, and we got the cannoli's!!!!! I couldn't tell if the lady behind the counter hated us or loved us. Then we all went and had amazing pizza at a place with a cool ceiling and the world's best clear soda, Birch Beer, a much better rendition of Rootbeer, Then we stayed up til probably three AM playing Agricola while watching Lori Lee fight sleep so she wouldn't miss out on any memory :)
Thursday October 12
On Thursday we all woke up with swollen bellies from the day of eating before. The Utah Neubergers and the parents went to Walmart to buy all the good for the camping adventure we were about to have. It was tough to stay on task when there were unicorn, monkey, and tiger masks just sitting in the open. We got soooo many caramel M&Ms (which probably saved us during the race really). With only an hour left before we needed to leave for the race we raced home, got ready, packed and effectively tetrised the car with all our camping supplies. We were finally on the road and heading to Lake Wawayanda! The Johnsons and KL had already staked out campsite for all of us after looking through all the possible options we chose a nice flat, grassy field, close to the bathrooms and not too far off the main camp. Thanks to Brenda we had some cute decorations and Burger Gummies for the entire race. We set up our camp and started to make our backpack dinners! All the flavors were good but I think in the end we decided that Lori Lee's Santa Fe Chicken packed the most flavor into the meal. After checking out the main camp and seeing all the activities that would be available to us in the next two days, we grabbed as much free candy as we could before heading back to our tents. We then had our second sing a long with the whole crew, and Tim graced us with his Garth Brooks impression.
Friday and Saturday October 13-14
Let the race begin. Eight runners per team. 180 teams. Three loops with a total of 16 miles. Day and night until we were done. We finished 18th of 108 teams in our category with a time of 23 hours 29 minutes and all we had wanted to do was finish. Great time. Kind of crazy to be running through the New Jersey woods in the middle of the night, but when it was all done we wondered when we could all do it again. The race was a blast, the roots and rocks were a tough challenge but just a real good time. The mist in the middle of the night and the way your headlamp would light up each individual droplet was crazy cool. We all finished with positive attitudes and a solid commitment from all to do the race again or another trail Ragnar. Everyone agreed this would become a yearly tradition (and I think we all know a Neuberger tradition is binding, it cannot EVER be broken) We broke camp and returned to Maplewood for pizza at Tony's (Roman Gourmet). No better way to celebrate. Timothy said this was the best buffalo chicken pizza he's ever had in his life, which is saying something because the man's had a lot of pizza.
Sunday October 15
Day of rest. Church at the Maplewood Ward. Lots of Haitian and African immigrants. Amazingly good ward with a wonderful spirit. Singalong part 3. On this day we had an amazing family home evening and we all shared a conference talk and what we loved about it. The spirit could definitely be felt in the home, and it was incredible that everyone could be in a really honest and loving space.
Monday October 16
What can be said about Monday October 16th, 2017? Oh I guess only that the greatest food crawl of the century took place on this day. If you had seen the lackluster planning that happened late the night before, you would have been very skeptical this day would turn out, but lets not be mistaken, this day was filled with memories, calories, and many steps on all the Garmin watches. We started the day with the intention of finding the best doughnuts, and of course were side tracked by one dollar hot dogs from a shop that Kristi Lee told us get closed down for health code violations every other month. A nice savory start to the day. We made it to the doughnut shop, which we decided were okay doughnuts, their fatal flaw being they didn't have cake doughnuts (give me sugar or give me death). BUT our very own Caity Loo saw Josh Lucas in the flesh. Next we back tracked and hit up a little bakery that had an amazing window display of chocolate cupcakes, we got a cupcake and a muffin to split and continued on. We weren't quite sugared out at this point so we continued on to Schmakeries, which had lots of different cookies with lots of different toppings. They were good but the Neuberger clan is divided on whether these are the best cookies in NYC. We then started a longer walk to a more savory item, the best macaroni and cheese in NYC. On the walk there we found a halal food truck, crazy I know... those are hard to find. The food truck provided more than just delicious middle eastern food though. We witnessed a sitcom in the making. The interactions between the food truck guy and the construction workers that clearly make up his regular customers were hilarious. We took our food to the newly refurbished highline. We all sat down and devoured the halal food like a pack of dogs. Then we walked along the highline and looked at cool apartment buildings and views of the city. We even suntanned for a short while. We continued on to search for our mac & cheese. Unlike a lot of the other places, this restaurant was less of a take the food and go kind of place and more of a sit down, despite that, the customer service was unbelievable. We sat outside and the guy that wasn't even officially waiting on us gave us the best water we've ever had in the greatest cups ever. He was a super cool guy. Half our crawl clan headed down the street to follow Kristi Lee to a place with supposedly phenomenal empanadas. After eating half the bacon mac & cheese, the rest of the clan walked down to the empanada store to join the rest of the crew. After a little bit of a wait, the empanadas were everything they promised to be, hot, cheesy, savory, greasy, and yummy. We needed a bit of a break to digest some food so we started walking towards Kristi Lee's work, because unfortunately she would be leaving us soon. We intended to go to KL's favorite library in NYC but got sidetracked by the donut pub which looked promising. After buying some more donuts and finding even more space in our stomachs we finished Kristi Lee's food crawl journey off on a sweeter note. Then we continued towards the library which was really neat looking inside and out. In desperate need of bathrooms we speed walked towards Strand book store, which turned out to be a massive book store of 4 floors that contained any book you've ever seen. Lauren and Brenda left the crew in a small square with the intentions of shopping for clothing for Lauren's upcoming PA school interview. When they returned only ten minutes later, the Neu Crew was gone, whisked away by the temptations of a chocolate shop. A cookies and cream hot chocolate had been ordered. It was the thickest sweetest hot chocolate any had had. Our next stop we knew would not disappoint, it was said to house the best burger in the entire city. The food crawl way is to order and eat on a curb, but the Gramercy Tavern staff insisted we sit at a table and order our two burgers. So Brenda and Lauren took off to do some more shopping while the rest of the crew ordered at a table like true civilians. Their waiter ended up being unbelievably nice and he was actually from San Antonio so Todd gained major bonus points with him. The focaccia bread that was brought to the table as a complementary taster proved to be almost as good as the burger. It was filled with grapes and cheese, and delectable herbs. But the burger was insane. Absolutely amazing. It's actually so good that its now a secret item on the menu and you have to know about it and order it off the record (that's how quickly these burgers get sold) The meat was beautifully cooked and perfectly pink in the middle. Brenda and Lauren also succeeded in finding Lauren an outfit for her interview which is probably the sole reason she got into the school. The food crawl team then walked a long ways to the south side of the city, right by Little Italy to a small store that was said to house the best cheesecake. Right as our men walked into the store, an entire tour bus of Latino tourists crowded into the store, it was crazy. Our two faithful men fought the pack and did their best to order under extreme pressure. The little cheese cakes were really good but with time to look over the menu there were still items that looked too good to pass up. We went back into the store a second time and ordered a whole other set of cheesecakes. The last stop of the food crawl was a little popcorn shop that Lauren and Brenda found one time. Pop Karma has been a true friend to Brenda and we had to visit while we were there. We got several bags of popcorn to be shared later, including White Cheddar Truffle, Dill Pickle, Mediterranean Sea Salt, and pumpkin caramel. This day was not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for the tiny stomached. Only the most serious eaters could have pushed through the mental and physical challenges of this day. The Neuberger clan will always be remembered by the people of NYC on this day to be true champions.
Tuesday October 17
Time for one more trip into the city before flights home. Visit to Ground Zero. Train ride from Battery Park to 72 Street just for what is truly the best cookie from Lavains and then a dash to Penn Station to get home in time to get to the airport.
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