What do you do if your unit’s scheduled flight overseas gets bumped back a few days and you find yourself stuck at Ft. Dix for the New Year? If you’re Sergeant Major Falardeau, you organize an impromptu trip to New York City, complete with some sight-seeing and a Broadway show!

Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead gives me a combat hug.

As anyone familiar with the blog can tell you, the whirlwind trip picked our spirits up and reminded us that if things don’t always go according to plan, we can always adapt and overcome, making the best out of a not-so-great situation. For me, however, the trip was a particularly special treat as I got to say goodbye to my second home, the city that never sleeps, the Big Apple, good old New York.

While Massachusetts will always be my home – my deep-rooted love of the Boston Red Sox will never let me forget it! – the place where I have worked, gone to school and lived for the past 5 years has been New York City. Despite the heartfelt send-off my friends gave me way back in September, my departure from the big city felt rather abrupt. A truck packed with boxes, hugs on the curb, a quick bite at the deli, a few tolls and the long stretch of the Merritt Cross parkway and suddenly I’m back in Massachusetts waiting to get on a plane to Alabama.

Over the last few months, I’ve had ample opportunity to say good-bye to ol’ Beantown, but somehow, I never got to properly say a fond farewell to NYC.

Until last week.

http://blogsoverbaghdad.com/soldiers/2008/12/new-york-city-loves-military

http://blogsoverbaghdad.com/soldiers/2009/01/nyc-baby/

http://blogsoverbaghdad.com/soldiers/2009/01/thank-you-sergeant-major/

All I can add to that is my personal enjoyment of being able to share “my” city with the rest of this Alabama unit, a unit that has so graciously taken me in (and all the cross-leveled soldiers) and shown me true Southern hospitality. From this Yankee Northerner, it was an honor to be able to reciprocate, even a little bit.

As we somberly assembled at the site of the WTC, I recalled how eight years ago, in late October of 2001, my father and I pulled guard duty, working with the NYPD and NYFD as they worked tirelessly to recover bodies from the site. I can still hear the strains of TAPS from my father’s bugle as they pulled the remains of firefighters from the ground…

We trudged through my old stomping grounds in lower TriBeCa, overlooked the city from atop the Empire State Building, and we even managed to sneak in a genuine celebrity photo op with Clay Aiken after taking in Spam-a-Lot!

The best part for me, however, was one more chance to see some family and friends in the city. From my sister who drove down from Kingston to my Adam who I haven’t seen in months to all my friends and coworkers on Shoot the Messenger’s Wake Up World (the show I work in NYC), I could not have felt more loved and appreciated. Lizz Winstead and the whole STM crew were even nice enough to ship me off with beautiful memento – a 12 month Wake Up World calendar to help me remember the cast and crew of the show while I’m gone. The calendar will proudly hang on my wall for the length of the deployment and by the time I get to December, I know it’ll be time to come home to get an all-new one!

Thanks once again to the Sergeant Major for making the trip possible and thanks again to that great city – the city so nice they named it twice – NYC for reminding me what a fantastic city it is. I have a lot to look forward to when I return.

And maybe long good-byes aren’t so bad.