Pure Evil

I was worried this blog entry would be kind of dry, so I have tried to juice it up a little. Here goes.

What follows is a harrowing tale of treachery, deceit, and death. Or, as some call it, how we came up with the idea to do this walk.

It all began on a chilly December eve, back in '06. The air was cold enough to freeze a man's soul. Except in Pasadena, where Rob was enjoying the balmy 70-degree weather. Come to think of it, it was a pretty mild December here in Brooklyn, too. It must have been about 50 degrees out. Still, I needed a light jacket. A light jacket OF DEATH.

As I recall, the two of us were concocting nefarious schemes in the dungeon of a haunted medieval castle. A more literal-minded person might describe our unspeakably evil encounter as a jovial exchange of emails between two buddies looking for fun trips to take together.

It wasn't long after I moved to New York (and became an axe murderer) that I found myself with a desire to walk the length of Broadway (while chopping people to bits with my axe). Considered by many to be the backbone of the city, Broadway essentially runs the length of Manhattan, some thirteen miles from Bowling Green up to Inwood, before continuing on into the Bronx and beyond. Whether I would walk the entire length or just the portion in NYC was undecided, but I put the idea on my list of "Things To Do While Living in New York," in between "Melt a child's heart with my wicked gaze" and "Get a great big yummy sandwich at Katz's Delicatessen - Mmm pastrami!!!"

Among other potential ideas, I mentioned to Rob my vague desire to walk Broadway at some point, thinking this might inspire a future trip some years down the road. So I was quite surprised when he said, "Okay, I can come to New York and do it whenever." I suspected, quite correctly, that some darker motives were at play here, so I cautiously replied, "Sweet! Sounds good to me, dude." And so the trip was born.

We decided that just walking Broadway wouldn't be enough to justify a cross-country flight, unless we continued on Route 9 farther upstate, where it is no longer signed as Broadway. But we figured we could find a better, more malevolent use for those miles, so we decided to do the entire walk in the city, hitting all five boroughs. What better way to wreak havoc on the metropolis, we thought, than to travel through it at safe low speeds, producing no carbon emissions and just generally celebrating all it has to offer. Yes, New York would rue the day Matt and Rob romped around it having a good old time. That much was certain.

In terms of total mileage, our initial goal was that most devious of all numbers, 100. We figured this would take three or four days to complete. But once we started plotting out tentative routes, we realized even 100 miles couldn't cover everything we wanted to see. The mileage gradually increased until it reached 150 over five days. This, we cackled to ourselves, should be sufficient to make New York's skin crawl, by which we meant it should allow us to visit a whole bunch of neato places.

Neato indeed. Be sure to tune in next weekend for the bone-chilling account of what kinds of tasty treats we ate on the walk.