Reality Returns, Eventually.

But we still had a bt more fun to have. Being renergized by the show, we got to wandering again, and decided to head a bit further downtown to check out Union Square and NYU as well as Greenwich Village, a suburb known for its artists, poets, and playwrights, a place my friend felt right at home, and could see herself living in someday. Again, it was pretty late at night, but there was still hustle and bustle around the square, so we grabbed a seat on the steps leading into the park to just take it all in. There were some stunt bike performers that were pretty good, some random skateboarders showing off their moves, and just a truckload of youth from the city all talking about their latest and greatest exploits.

After hanging out there a while and pondering the meaning of a series of numbers on one of the buildings and eventually figuring them out, we got our walk on and continued South. After cruising through Greenwich Village and checking out NYU and discussing how nice it must be to be richy rich, we deicded it was time for a snack. She had some sort of tiramisu concoction, while I went with a simple cup of jello from the little market on the corner. I hadn't had jello for a really lengthy period of time, I'm not sure why. Jello rules. Having walked something like a couple miles by that point after the show going by the fact that twenty north south city blocks is a mile (a nifty fact I found in one of the guides I was reading while bored on the subway) we decided we'd call it a night. By this time we were subway pros and easily hopped on, transferred, and eventually hopped off at the closest stop to our hotel, er, hole in the wall we were making failed attempts at sleeping at.

The next day we wasted away most of the morning doing something or other, and eventually got our act together and headed downtown again. Having seen nothing but each other for the past few days, we decided it was time to split up at City Hall and handle a couple of our priorities separately. She really really really wanted to go shopping, and thus headed for a few of the areas north of there known for it, and I headed southwest towards the former site of the World Trade Center. I didn't really have any interest in shopping for bathing suits and whatnot, and she felt a visit to the site would bring up emotions she'd rather not, so we agreed to meet back in a few hours at a prearranged location and call each other's cells if there were any changes of plans.

The WTC site really isn't hard to find, you just look upwards and look for an obvious gap between several buildings, something found nowhere else on that end of the island. The one thing I regret is not having a very good memory of my visit to the WTC several years ago. I vividly remember the view from the top, and some of the inside lobby and whatnot, but I apparently never really paid attention to the surrounding area, or what everything looked like from the outside. Thus while I was standing there at the viewing wall looking out over the expansiveness of the site, I didn't really have anything to compare to. It was obvious though the devastation that had taken place. Most of the site had been hollowed out by repair crews, so you could see the outlines of the former two towers. All along the viewing wall there were sections where they showed pictures of the area in its former glory, as well as detailed accounts of what had taken place, and long lists of all those involved in the tragedy. There was a dull silence over the area, which was unlike anything else I saw in New York. Whereas elsewhere everyone was on cell phones, chatting, complaining, everyone in the general vicinity of the site seemed pensive, thoughtful. Rarely was the silence broken, even those passing out fliers did so with respect. Everyone seemed like they were in their own little coccoon, thinking about how the events of September 11th affected them personally, or those close to them. It really doesn't seem like it was that long ago, although closer to two years have passed. It was shortly after I began this blog, in fact. I eventually wandered around the circumference of the site, over to the World Financial Center. From an elevated position there I snapped a few digital pics, hoping to someday return to the same spot and see the site rebuilt as it is planned to be, with a huge observation tower as the central pinnalce towards the sky.

I then had the worst smoothie I've ever had in my life from a place inside the WFC, which I shall never return to again. It was absolutely terrible, I'm not quite sure how a smoothie could possibly taste that bad. Blech. Finding myself on the west edge of the island, I decided to walk down the esplanade alongside the Hudson river. It was filled with joggers, corporate america execs with their laptops open on the park benches while wolfing down sandwiches at the same time, and many a cell phone conversation. It was quite a neat place to walk, lined with trees, towering skyscrapers just on the other side, the Statue of Liberty standing stoically in the distance across the river. I ended up walking around the entire lower coast area of the island, through Battery Park and all. I probably walked more that weekend than the previous half year combined. There were a bunch of neat memorials set up in Battery Park, including one with this massive statue of an eagle that was really neat and earned a picture. From there I wandered over to the infamous Wall Street, and saw more of the world I'll never fit in to. By this time it was getting closer to the meeting up time with my company, so I took one more detour over to the Brooklyn Bridge, and then headed back to City Hall. There I found a little grassy spot under a tree, and watched dozens of squirrels skirting around the plaza. They were pretty brave, willing to come right up to you in case you had food to toss their way.

Eventually my company returned, with many a story about how her all black outfit had earned her compliment after compliment as she wandered around, and how she could attest to the bravado of men in New York. Her ear to ear grin was really something else, just goes to show what a random compliment to a stranger will do for them. It was late afternoon now, and with a 9pm flight, we figured we should try to avoid the last minute heroics of Vegas by heading back in the general direction of our living accomodations then. We ended up snagging some dinner at this Indian restaurant nearby, at which I understood nothing on the menu outside of the descriptions of the items, yet ended up having one of the most scrumptious meals I've had in quite a while. Something about the spices they use make everything yummier. Our flight was at 9:30, and we grabbed our stuff from the locker and headed toward the subway around 7:30, so we figured we had it made.

Well, maybe if someone else had navigated. Although she said it wasn't my fault, we ended up on the A train, but when the track turned south towards the airport, we kept going straight. I noticed this basically immediately and whipped out the map, and noticed that A trains served both the section of track we were on and the one that led to the airport. A helpful passenger on the other side of the car noticing our predicament mentioned that only certain A trains go to the airport from the previous stop, and we had needed to get out and cross over to the other side of the track to find one. This appeared to be a minor gaffe at first, as there were only two more stops on this run anyway, after which it would head back to the transfer. We decided to just wait it out, but unfortunately there was a good 15-20 minute delay at the end of the track before it began heading back, instead of the usual 5 second delay at most stations. By the time we got to the bus station at the airport that would take us to the terminals, we were pushing 8:50 or so, dagnerously close to the 9pm cutoff. We were hoping they wouldn't do all the stops through the long term parking they'd done on the way out, but no such luck, although we did end up skipping most of them. Oh the best part was we didn't know what terminal we were in, so we had to guess between the 1-3 bus and the 4-6 bus. Having paid no attention when we arrived, it was literally a random selection that put us on the 4-6. Blind luck put JetBlue in terminal 6, or we really would have been screwed. Still, it was the last stop by the bus, and by the time we had gotten off and were running toward the ticket counter, it was 9:15. There we were informed that the computer is locked out thirty minutes before flight departure, and that the flight was closed. Should have seen our faces sag. There were no more flights that night, so we were in quite a bind. Luckily the pity card apparently worked, as the worker called up to the gate to check the status of the plane. Apparently they were still loading the last bit of fuel and hadn't actually closed the doors yet.

I'm pretty sure I broke some sort of land speed record for a man carrying large amounts of luggage while sprinting for the gate. My company wasn't too far behind, although she was complaining loudly that her pants were being dragged down by her duffle bag, or something. We made it to security and tried to hurriedly get all our stuff on the conveyor belt and walk through, at which point I was blocked hard by the security personnel. Apparently the custom there is to remove ones shoes and put them on the conveyor belt as well. Given I didn't and apparently looked suspicious, I got to sit in a chair for a few minutes while they waved some sort of swab around my shoes and then put it into a machine that took a while to give a readout. In the meantime the security woman commented on the fact that I was shaking. I told her I'd just run a quarter mile and had probably another quarter mile to go to catch my flight that might have already left. After that she felt bad and tried to expediate the process. Then it was off to the races again, with our gate of course being much further back in the terminal. Somehow though, we made it, and were the last ones onto the plane before the doors closed.

As it turned out, there were only about twenty people on the flight, so they allowed us to basically sit wherever we wished. This was a good thing, for when we arrived at our assigned seats, there was at least a four hundred pound young man in my assigned seat by the window, who was also using at least half of her seat in the middle. When the stewardess asked us if we minded sitting anywhere else on the plane, we gladly obliged. Having our own row worked out quite well for her, as that sprint through the airport had tuckered her out plenty, and she ended up sprawled across the seats asleep for the vast majority of the trip. I wasn't complaining too much though. After all I did have the window on a night flight, which is a damn cool thing when you're flying over metropolitan areas. Sleeping on the flight back really would have been intelligent, as I'd volunteered to drive the first shift on the way back to Santa Barbara. Unfortunately I'm never very good at sleeping on planes. For some reason though, I wasn't all that tired while on the plane. I guess the entertainment was good, or something was occupying me, or something. Oh I should mention that this was the liveliest flight I'd ever been on when it came to the excitement level of the passengers. Obviously this was a flight towards Vegas, so that's probably expected. When they were doing the safety demonstration and announcing the names of the men and women of the crew, people were literally giving them rousing ovations. You'd hear like "in the middle of the plane we have Steve" which would be followed with cheers and whistles and "YEAH STEVE ALRIGHT STEVE!"s from all over the place. I heard the person working near us say "wow, now this is is a first." They also made the monotonic weather reports and whatnot much more fun, by adding a second voice yelling things like "FIVE DOLLARS ON RED" in the background of the mic. I really had a good experience with JetBlue as a whole, and will definitely be checking them out as a possibility for future flights.

Eventually we landed in Vegas, although we lacked the excitement of most of the other passengers. After it was the end of our vacation and we had a long drive in front of us. First though we had to get back to the New York New York where our car was, so we decided to hop into a taxi. Now apparently, the fares basically double that late at night (around midnight). This was almost a big problem, as I only had $11 in cash on me, and she only had $6. Luckily it ended up being $15.80, although it was like $8 before we even got out of the airport. I'm not sure if they take cards or whatnot, but we certainly would have had a small problem if they didn't and the fare had gone much higher. Next came an amazing feat of self control, I actually walked through the entire casino without playing a cent, and went directly for the car. Of course, we were beginning to feel like we were going to keel over, so getting on the road as soon as possible was a good idea.

The car was still there as predicted by me, and so after dumping all our stuff in the back, we got comfortable and headed out of the structure. At the next stoplight we participated in an interesting "luck" ritual that is apparently a tradition for her in Vegas or something, although given I didn't gamble any more after that it remains to be seen whether it had any effect. Luck did shine on me in the fact that her car had cruise control, which is always nice to make driving long distances much more livable. We actually only made it about a half hour without stopping, as she was quite insistent on having some prime rib before we got too far, so we stopped in Jean, a place I'd driven through a bunch of times but never actually stopped at. I managed to leave my wallet in the car (I always take it out when driving so I don't end up with a large dent in my butt), so I yet again avoided gambling. Had a pretty decent meal for that early in the morning, and then we were once again on her way. At this point my company conked out for basically the night.

Long boring story short, I ended up having to stop in Baker, Barstow, and various other small towns along the way to wander around outside doing jumping jacks and whatnot to wake myself up. I even tried one of those double caffeine drinks Monster something or other, which is one of the worst things I've ever tasted outside that smoothie in New York. That eventually had an effect, and by the time the sun came up I was feeling much more livable. I got a call from my friend who happened to be heading out to Bakersfield that same day, so we probably passed each other somewhere on the 126. Intent on flipping him off or at least high beaming him I kept an eye out, but never saw him. I eventually stopped in Fillmore, deciding to finally put my foot down and actually make her drive the last forty minutes or so. Upon trying to wake her up though she was quite insistent that she would get up and drive in fifteen minutes. I then made the mistake of going to sleep, and two hours later we were still sitting there. I was now pushing being late for class, which would have been really pointless given if I was going to miss it I should have stayed somewhere like NYC or Vegas. With much complaining and after much provoking she was up and at em and driving the rest of the way. After dropping me off at the place I was staying and giving me a big hug she was off to her place, and I went inside, picked up my backpack, walked back out and drove to class. And so there I was, sitting in class again, four days later. I'd been from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and back.

No story about this trip would be complete without a bit more on the company I brought along with me. When it comes to spontaneity, she is head and shoulders above the pack. She's pretty much the only person I would have considered asking to do something this crazy. And I am so glad I did. I did do a lot of pondering about whether it was a good idea or not that Friday, eventually talking to an old guy friend of mine who wholeheartedly recommended it. The really amazing thing about the trip, was that I never got bored of hanging out with her, and better yet never got into any kind of significant argument that might have taken away from the fun. She's a very open minded and agreeable person, so making decisions about what to do or where to go never created any problems. Okay I admit it, aesthetically she probably makes me look better walking down the sidwalk next to her too. Don't get too excited though, we are very different people, and that just wouldn't work. As friends come though, she's one of the best kind. When I do finally leave here, I'll miss her.

So, chalk up another experience into my list of the greatest things I've done in college, which at some point in my life I'll get around to posting. Not until college is over, though.

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand…

So yeah, eventually we get off our ass the next day and hit the town again. Our first stop was the Nederlander Theater, to try to snag tickets for that evening’s performance of Rent. Upon being successful at that, we hoofed it over to the lower west side docks, where we’d read in a brochure there was a cruise type thingy that circled most of the island and showed you the major sites. As it was it turned out to be a slightly longer walk than expected, which was pointed out repeatedly by my company. :) Manhattan as a whole though is only two miles wide at its widest though, so if you’re somewhere in the middle it’s not like it’s a gigantic distance to get anywhere. Besides, easier to enjoy the sites if you’re moving slowly.

We eventually made it over to the NY Waterway cruises I believe it was called, and bought two tickets for the 90 minute half island dealy. Basically the 90 minute one goes halfway around the island via the southern end and then comes back, whereas the 2 hour and more expensive one goes all the way around the circumference. We decided all the cool stuff was on the southern end anyway, and we’d rather see it all twice. It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to hang out on the upper deck of the little ferry ship thing. They had a narrator who would go through all the different things we’d pass by, and give all sorts of need facts or inside stories about the buildings, bridges, and monuments. He was really good, didn’t sound bored at his job or anything, which made the cruise really enjoyable. I learned a lot about the different aspects of the city I never would have known before. Zipping underneath the massive bridges was pretty nifty, that’s not a view you normally get. The thing that worked out best for us on the cruise was the view of the Statue of Liberty. As we found out earlier, they had closed the statue to visitors, so you could go to the island, but you couldn’t go up in the crown or into the pedestal or anything. As it was, the boat took us right up to the front of the statue, basically as close as you can get without being on the island. Being up close and personal was really cool, and mad picture taking took place. I’m now even more glad I had the experience of going up in the statue during my last trip, as since September 11th, no one has been able to share that experience, and it’s unknown whether it will ever be reopened. It was also pretty trippy checking out the former World Trade Center site, and the gaping hole that it left. More on that later as I visited it the next day.

We eventually made it back to dry land, although I had really enjoyed just sitting on the sundeck zipping along with the wind in my hair. We then discovered the free bus (oops) that ran from the ferry service to the main bus terminal over by Times Square where we’d just walked from. These things are always useful after the fact. We got plenty of exercise during the weekend anyway, that was a good thing. It’s kind of sad that I’ve waited so long to write this, I’m sure I’m forgetting about all sorts of cool stuff that happened. Blah, next time I’m taking a laptop and updating every night. ;)

I’m not entirely sure what happened in between, but eventually we ended up back at the Nederlander Theater just in time for the massive line to start moving in. Our seats were assigned so it wasn’t a big deal we were near the end. As it was we were up in the mezzanine a bit towards the left, but I didn’t really mind. The orchestra level was all flat, so being in the back of that a person is probably way worse off trying to see over everyone. There was a decent about of depth and height to the stage as well, so being above and able to look over the entire expanse was advantageous.

Now I am a loser, and thus even though I lived in Los Angeles the majority of my life, I have never been to see a major musical that has come through. I’ve always talked about it, but never gotten off my ass and done it. So this was the first real musical I’d ever seen. I am now very sorry that I’ve wasted so much time. Coming out of the show, I really really wanted to extend my vacation a few days so I could watch at least a few more shows. It was just phenomenal. There were times when my mouth was hanging open for minutes at a time. Some of the performers were just unbelievably talented. Both male leads harmonized really well, while also dominating the stage when singing solo. I actually think that it’s better that I’d heard virtually none of the music going in, it really created a more powerful effect as I was exposed to it for the first time. The sound system in the theater was just out of control. We’re talking LOUD. Even I was impressed, and I tend to only enjoy it if I can FEEL it. There were literally a few times that I thought one of the performers was going to blow out one of the speakers, or at least an old lady’s eardrums in the audience. The most obvious example was the soloist during the one song I had heard previously, the signature piece “Seasons of Love.” The performers all walked out to start the second act after the intermission and lined up on the edge of the stage, and just stood still and sang their hearts out. For me it was reminiscent of “Heal Their Hearts” in Riverdance, the song that doesn’t involve any dancing, just a large group of motionless singing performers harmonizing. Interestingly enough, according to an insert in the playbill we received it wasn’t the normal performer in place that night for the soloist role. Whoever it was though, she just dominated. I was never more impressed than during the thirty seconds or so that she simply took over the stage. They basically had to hold up the next scene for a period while the crowd just went crazy with applause, cheers, and whistles largely supplied by myself. The show was only halfway over though, and I ended up loving pretty much the whole thing. After returning home I snagged the soundtrack by the original Broadway cast from a friend, and was playing large portions of it several times over for days. Some of the music even got better the more I listened to it. Seems like every time I listen to it all the way through I discover a song I hadn’t listened to so closely before, or it just moves me in a different way. My personal favorites other than the aforementioned in random order are “One Song Glory,” “Will I?,” and “What You Own,” as well as of course the “Finale B” immediately after which the crowd goes nuts. When it comes to getting stuck in your head though I’d have to go with “Santa Fe,” which is a catchy little tune by one of the secondary male leads about opening up a restaurant that I’ve been annoying my friends with repetitively for days now. As I mentioned before, when I came out of the performance I was revitalized, the energy level in there was infectious. The fact that you pop right out of the theater near NYC’s Time Square helps too. HIGHLY recommend this show to anyone who is ever in New York. I hear the travelling performance is pretty good to, but as they say, nothing beats the original. The fact that the show has been at the Nederlander for its entire seven year run makes it even cooler than I managed to see it there. At least download the music and give it a look see, you won’t be disappointed, there’s something for everyone.

We’ll have one more pause here, and the next post will finish up the story.