What Are The Odds Part 2

When we left the New Jersey vacationers last week, they were recovering from a 3 a.m. arrival and the river outside the hotel was rising from 10” of rain.

Despite the weather, my son John, his friend Pierse and I drove 13 miles into Manhattan to attend the Big East Basketball Finals between Georgetown and West Virginia. The odds favored the Mountaineers 3-2 which matched the odds of being blown off Route 3 with 60 mph gusts of wind.
As locals will tell you, the odds of driving straight into New York City through the Lincoln Tunnel without stopping are slim to none but there we were cruising into the Port Authority parking lot feeling very smug.

We caught the subway to Penn Station which is conveniently located below Madison Square Garden and were smug once more that we had avoided the driving rain (hold that thought).
Following a great game, we discovered that the subways were shut down due to power outages caused by flooding. We were less smug as we walked 6 blocks against the cross town winds in the rain.

Meanwhile back in the swamps of Jersey, the busy Route 3 was closed due to downed power lines. We worked our way around that problem and headed back to the hotel – the one with the rising river. What are the odds that our evening was not over yet?

As we reached the crest of a long hill that leads into Little Falls (NJ), we noticed that the stores, diners and yes, hotel, was completely dark. The storm had knocked out power almost everywhere. Power is not a necessity when heading to bed late a night.

It was about 1:30 a.m. when I heard shouting in the parking lot 4 stories below. The odds of a fight breaking out between drunken wedding revelers may be 25 – 1. But even Jimmy the Greek would have a hard time predicting a fight between members of the same wedding party during a blackout in the rain. It made for great late night theater if we could see beyond the headlights of the wedding party van and the police lights.

I could only assume that the “Welcome DeRocco Wedding” sign I saw the next morning was placed in the foyer when the DeRocco’s were still on speaking terms.

The odds of the nearby Willowbrook Mall being closed outside of major holidays are 1000 – 1 but there it was, surrounded by the Passaic River up to aisle B-4. The entrance ramps were under water. We heard it made national news that day but we, of course, did not have electricity.
The rain continued as we waited in line outside the Ed Sullivan Theater on Monday. The odds of being chosen for the front rows at Letterman diminished with age and fashion sense. Those people with “the look” got numbered tickets while we were placed out of the camera’s view upstairs. The odds of Jennifer Aniston being Letterman’s guest were at least 300 – 1 but there she was clowning with Dave.

Our final shot at beating the odds came when we heard that the NIT (National Invitational Tournament) basketball pairings had Texas Tech playing in Newark (NJ) against Seton Hall the next night. The odds of two future Tech students being in Newark for the game were probably 3000 – 1 but there they were proudly wearing their Red Raider shirts and cheering with the other 22 fans who made the trip. Coach Pat Knight personally thanked them after the win because he couldn’t figure the odds of 22 people from Lubbock making it to Newark with one day’s notice.

The odds of the sun breaking out as our plane flew away were even because for once, it just what we expected to happen.