SUPER BOWL COUNTDOWN: Sam's Blogging Away - NBC Right Now/KNDO/KNDU Tri-Cities, Yakima, WA |

SAM ADAMS: After a day crammed with football on Tuesday's Media Day, I'm taking Wednesday as a football-free day. I know, I know... how dare I speak such words in New York/New Jersey the week of Super Bowl XLVIII! But c'mon, unless Richard Sherman says he's a better quarterback than Peyton Manning (don't you EVER talk about me!!!!), it's going to be an uneventful next couple of days out of Seahawks camp.

So we did the tourist thing instead this morning. Our enterprise photographer, Josh Godfrey, and I took a short cab drive to the other end of Times Square. Which reminds me, we encountered our first rude New Yorker! I was starting to get worried. The cab driver was ruder than a former Sports Illustrated columnist, shaking his head that we were taking such a short cab ride. Hey, buddy... you try lugging 100 pounds of gear in 20 degree weather, and then come back to me. $6 and ten blocks later, we arrived at Madame Tussaud's, a wax museum in NYC. Carly was our expert guide and led us on a tour of the world's finest wax figures. If you've never been, you've got to check it out. The wax sculptures are eerily realistic. Carly says these life-size statues cost more than $200,000 to craft! Our live shot for the morning show featured the sports room, which houses figures of Joe Montana, Eli Manning, Derek Jeter, and Yao Ming among others. Sorry guys, no Russell Wilson or Marshawn Lynch. After our live shot, Carly was kind enough to take me on a private tour where we saw all the greatest hits... Nelson Mandela, George Clooney, Brangelina... the list goes on and on. But Bruce Willis had to be my favorite. Us bald brothers gotta stick together!

Next door, Claudio took us on a similar tour of Ripley's: Believe It Or Not! Another must-see in Times Square, this place has everything. A stuffed albino giraffe (one of three in the world, Claudio tells me). A painting of the Last Supper made entirely of spider webs (because, you know, art just isn't the same without the use of spider webs). And my personal favorite... pickled heads in jars. There's even a glass window for you to pose so your head can be in the jar. Yum!

We wrapped up our morning with a jog across the street a souvenir shop, where we did some shopping live on the AM Show for our KHQ anchors, Shelly, Kalae, and Blake. Blake got a New York license plate with his name on it. Unfortunately, there was no "Kalae" in the license plates, so we got her a small snowglobe. And for Shelly, a New York Firefighters Pin-Up Calendar, of course!

Our day's just getting started. We're back to work with a stadium security press conference early in the afternoon, to see just how New Jersey and the NFL are keeping folks safe at East Rutherford's MetLife Stadium. Stay safe back home! It sounds like it's dumping snow back there, though it's not exactly sunshine and rainbows here in New York with temperatures in the teens.