100 Days to Paris @ Rockefeller Center
100 Days until Paris,
(or how I learned to get a real swelled head)
Well, the day began with taking a trip I had made so many times before, five times to be exact. Getting up at 3:45 in the morning, grabbed my backpack with my pin vest and hat inside, drove to my friendly Long Island Rail Road station, hopped on the train, and headed for Rockefeller Center. One change from the previous five trips was that now the trains go to Grand Central Station, which is a 2½ block walk instead of taking the subway from Penn Station, a welcome relief I might say.
Anyway, to continue, I arrived at the line for Today on the Plaza, and surprisingly the line was not as long as it had been in previous years, which kind of surprised me. Well, once I was electrically patted down, and my bag went through the scanner, (yes, they are not just for airports anymore), I made my way in. As we all lined the barriers, gracefully adorned with 100 days to Paris covers, I took my place directly behind the Eiffel Tower model placed in the middle and patiently waited for 7 AM.
Everything began with the normal show opening, and they gave us some nice little towels decorated with the Delta Airlines logo and the Olympic & Paralympic logo, with their slogan for their sponsorship, “Together we fly” which, in my own opinion is a saying needed in these times, so nice job Delta.
So, the show continued, and during the commercial breaks, the athletes about 20-25 mingled with the crowd. Met a couple of them, one of them being a paralympic swimmer who won gold medals In Rio and Tokyo. Wonderful person and we had a grand conversation, and we may have even met briefly in Rio, where I was a volunteer at the golf venue.
Again, note that the crowd didn’t seem as large as it had been in previous years, and it may have had something to do with the layout, taken up by two large facades of a Paris street scene. But no matter the size of the crowd, all were enthusiastic and happy to be there.
Now, for the explanation of the second part of the title of the blog. Towards the end of the show, we received an oversized baseball hat, from a company called NogginBoss. As you can see from the photo below, it is definitely “OVER” sized. Just imagine how many pins I’m going to be able to put on that hat before I get to Paris.
To finish this up, it was a great day, a fun time was had by all, and I made it home by mid-day. Oh, as far as any pin trading was concerned, I got one pin, an NBC Paris which I already had. I could possibly get the Toyota USA pin, a beautiful pin, but I completely forgot that I had a mascot Eiffel Tower in my backpack, must be age-getting to me, I guess… Nahhhhh will get one somewhere.
Off to pursue the search for other sponsor pins for now… until next time…
Ed
Eiffel Tower display, (countdown clock was on the opposite side)
Paris Storefront Street Scene
Myself, (yes, I forgot the new teeth that day),,my good friend Mark Feidler, and one of the Olympic Athletes posing with our decent amount of traders.