There's No Place Like New York City

It's really true - there's no place like the Big Apple. When most people think of New York City they think of Manhattan. Actually, NYC consist of five boroughs. 8.2 million people live here. Half of my crew is working in Queens. My brother and I are working on Long Island in the very exclusive Village of Sand's Point.

Two years ago I worked the same area of Queens my other crews are working in. A micro burst had come through and laid over many of the old sycamore trees planted between the sidewalks and the street crushing cars and taking out power. This time the area affected by Hurricane Sandy is much more widespread, but the damage is still similar.

Following our week in Newton, I decide to continue on to this job in New York. Finding hotel rooms for everyone was not easy because there are so many people out of power and of course all the out-of-town crews are filling the hotels too. Barbe spent three hours on the phone Tuesday afternoon calling hotels as far away as Connecticut, with no success. I was beginning to think we might have to sleep at a homeless shelter. Finally she did found us rooms at The Grand in Maspeth, one of the many "towns" which make up Queens.

Doing these storms is always an adventure. Staying at this hotel is certainly one. Our first indication that things weren't as one would expect was the cleaning lady on duty all night. That, and people checking in and out at all hours. The rooms look like they haven't been redecorated since 1970 and the red carpet with the diamond pattern in the hallway tends to make you dizzy when you walk down it. The rooms are small, especially with 4 of us to a room, but hey...it's a place to sleep and shower for $120 per night. We're hoping that maybe by next week we can move into something a bit more respectable, but of course that comes with a higher price tag.

On a positive note, there are lots of really good places to eat within walking distance. We get up at 4 am every morning and leave The Grand by 5 am. There's an awesome bakery with the most incredible coffee and coffee rolls 2 blocks down. We all savor breakfast as we commute the 25 minutes or so to where we park our trucks. Mark drove our 15 passenger van down here so there is plenty of room for everyone. Some of the guys brought pickups as well.

Getting gas is still a major problem. We were shocked to see lines of cars 10 blocks long waiting to gas up. Usually only one station in 10 even has gas  Crews like ours are given priority, but we still try to conserve as much as possible.

We are removing some very large trees which came down in the storm. To even be able to lift them with our loaders they need to be cut into short sections. Below is my brother Jon's stepson, Justin trying to cut through one of the large oaks with our saw, with out much luck. (This was taken the day it snowed.)

We finally had to call in reinforcements from Dom's Tree Service, the contractor we are working for. This is Vidal with a much bigger saw standing in the tree trunk. The picture is taken from up on my loader. Vidal is from El Salvador. Tomorrow he is making arrangements to have pupusas brought to us. This is a traditional Salvadorean food and one I really enjoy. I have been working with quite a few men from Honduras and Guatemala. It's been really cool because I know their countries and also have a chance to practice my Spanish.

Front: Vidal, Back left to right: Homeowner, my son Mark and Eliot