Thank you, RichG. I should have remembered the M1 if nothing else.

I still recommend the express bus to Grand Central. The best view of midtown manhattan is on the Midtown Tunnel approach. If it's a nice day the view will knock your socks off. You drive up over a hill, and on the way down, the skyscrapers of midtown beckon, rising up out of this tiny island, and they are literally right there. At the bottom of the hill is the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel. The bus is worth the extra money, just for that view, plus it's more convenient than taking the A train from Howard beach all the way through Queens and Brooklyn, mostly underground. In the morning, you will hit some traffic heading into Manhattan, but you'll have plenty of time, and you'll get to see first hand how the Port Authority of NY and NJ is spending millions if not billions to provide an almost useless monorail link to Jamaica station over the Van Wyck Expressway.

-David