Percy Jackson: Prologue to The Lightening Thief

The trip to New York City this Fifth Sunday in Lent was as plane travel is. Flight delays, gate changes, a lost item to be retrieved, but all was as easy as it can be flying from one side of the country to the other.

Catching a yellow cab (so organized and easy at LaGuardia), my grandson’s face when he first saw the New York skyline made the whole trip worth it.

After settling in to our hotel, we walked a couple of blocks to purchase NYC slices. By then, we were more than ready to call it a day, and settled in to stream Home Alone 2, set in NYC.

Waking up on Monday, we decided to create a prequel to The Lightening Thief.

It’s the pre-volume where Percy, before he knows he’s the son of Poseidon, goes to visit family in Brooklyn—that is, his grandmom’s nephews and niece and his cousins (even though Austin reminded me that Percy had no grandparents or aunts or uncles, but this is fiction, after all). Austin has named the Percy Jackson prequel, The Calm before the Storm.

A train to Brooklyn for delicious vegan enchiladas prepared by Tex for lunch and so much fun playing with his little cousins.

Uncle Andrew taking him on a tour of Brooklyn in his Jeep which included a drum duet with Andrew (who plays in the Night Spins).

Then a drive to get Steve’s Famous Key Lime Pie, eaten with the Statue of Liberty watching over him.

A subway ride to the hotel to clean up before going uptown in the rain (the storm before the storm) to Dizzy’s club for a fancy dinner and jazz played by the Juilliard Jazz Band. A bonus was Percy (aka Austin) meeting the Dean of the Jazz School at Juilliard who gave him tips for improving his own saxophone play.