I am One Up On The Pope

I am One Up On The Pope was Originally Posted on March 29, 2013 by lavarock

Before moving to Hawaii, I often “flew for miles”. In order to get more Delta frequent flier miles, I would book a cheap trip, sometimes with multiple stops, just to get miles. When I reached certain plateaus, the point vales increased (getting double miles for each trip, etc).

One day I heard there was a cheap deal from Atlanta to New York City and flew there for the weekend. Using careful hotel choices, I found a reasonable hotel on the Upper West Side (77th and Broadway).

To get there from the airport I had to take 2 subway rides and change trains. As I came up out of the first subway and crossed the street to go down the next station, my phone rang. It was my Mom calling from Florida. “Where are you?” she asked when she figured out I was not at my home and heard the background noise. I looked around and replied “Harlem” as the phone went silent for a minute. “Harlem? New York?” she asked.

It is one of those times that you just stand there trying to figure out what is going on in someones head.

The rest of the weekend was fun, not having been in NYC in decades, but could not hold a candle to the Harlem part of the story.

As regular readers here will admit, I often tie a couple of ideas together in the same blog entry. So here is another similar item.

In 2000, press agent Lee Solters arranged a ceremony orchestrated in front of a crowd of 50,000 in Saint Peter’s Square in which Pope John Paul II was recognized as an honorary Harlem Globetrotter.

So while both I and the Pope sometimes trot the globe, I think I can safely say that of the two of us, I was the only one of us to have actually visited Harlem.