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The Big Apple Turnover

Saturday 22nd March 2014

Of course we made the flight by the skin of our teeth and of course we were the last to board, because that’s what always happens. But before we knew it we was up up and away in our beautiful balloon. Well, jet aircraft, whatever.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Yes. It's a plane.

Over the Atlantic to the US of A, my ninth flight (one way or the other) over the pond since I completed The Odyssey Expedition. The flight was pants and our movie selection was lacking, but it got us to Newark in good time — around 9pm Eastern. Since our connecting flight to Costa Rica was a good twelve hours away, Casey and I decided to STAY UP ALL NIGHT (woo!). So we hired a car and headed off to Manhattan to meet up with my awesome filmmaking chums Oscar and Cesar as I only hang out with people who have names that are hilarious to say in a pirate voice ie. Oscarrrrr, Cesarrrrr, Hitlarrrr etc.

Side note: JESUS CHRIST IT IS NOT EASY GETTING OUT OF NEWARK AIRPORT IN A CAR!!!

It’s like Spaghetti Junction has grown to encompass the size of a the Isle of Wight and all of the road signs (that you have a 5 second window to read since YOU’RE ON A FREEWAY) have more names on them than Tracy Emin’s tent.

Hey NJ/NY – how about a big mofoin’ sign that reads MANHATTAN (TOLL) and MANHATTAN (FREE)?? And that’s it.

We found Oscar around 11pm beavering away on his latest film at his University somewhere in the Middle of Manhattan – near Times Square, if that helps.

Well they did say "Give me your tired"...

Dragging him away from his edit suite, we somehow got into a incredibly popular Japanese place for din-dins (Oscar claims it was the force of my ridiculous good luck that I’m blessed with) and talked movies and what on Earth I plan to do with this island. After dinner, Casey and Osc took the big red cube for a spin.

Then we said our tally-hoes and headed off to Brooklyn to go meet up with “One Second Every Day” Cesar Kuriyama who was up drinking in a bar near his gaff. It was now around 2am and with NY being 5 hours behind the UK, my bodyclock was screaming that it was really 7am and I should probably be thinking about getting up for breakfast.

Cesar told us he should be coming out of the bar soon, so we decided to just wait in the car for him.

Within five minutes we were both sound asleep.

Whoopsie!

Graham Hughes

Graham Hughes is a British adventurer, presenter, filmmaker and author. He is the only person to have travelled to every country in the world without flying. From 2014 to 2017 he lived off-grid on a private island that he won in a game show, before returning to the UK to campaign for a better future for the generations to come.

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