New York City: The Finale

Before I go on, I would first like to give thanks to my sister Michelle, who generously donated her old 1.3 Mpixel digital camera to let me document my journeys through the City That Never Sleeps. I can only wonder how my life would be different had my Kodak CX7430 worked correctly for the last 6 months.

Also, all my New York pictures will be uploaded to my album here.

So the last day was pretty chill for me. I stayed up late putting together that pictorial which meant that I got up late, around noon or so, which made me the last person inside the apartment. Everyone else was out. James and Maricar went to work at their schools. Marlowe (who I've neglected to mention is also living in the apartment, but is always at work so I never see him) was at work, naturally. Chuck was in Times Square and eventually made it onto TRL. Jackie was in Connecticut visiting her roommate. Richard was with family. And the rest... who knows ::shrug::.

I had no idea how to lock up the place, so I felt the necessity to stay until someone came back to watch the place. I didn't mind; I'm a naturally chill guy and I need those times to recharge. Add the light sprinkle outside, and staying dry in the apartment didn't sound like a bad idea. So I spent most of the time playing some darts, listening to my autographed BKLYN soundtrack, and reading up on people's beautiful comments, and wrote some responses of my own, including that last entry.

When Maricar returned from school at around 4 PM, I decided to venture out on my own. But the first struggle... finding an ATM machine. I had a total of $0 in my wallet, even though these past few days I've been budgeting like crazy because I had a $1500 rent check that was about to be cashed, and I had about $1600 with two days left on the trip. And although I had plenty of credit on my credit cards, a lot of the cheaper places only took cash. Combined with the lack of Washington Mutuals on Manhattan (Bank of America and CitiBank are the big national banks here, with a few strong regional banks), I went on a wild goose chase for an ATM. It must have taken me an hour to find one, because when I tried to meet up with friends for a final dinner in Greenwich Village, they were already gone. I was bummed, so I was in the mood for a drink. Unfortunately, I had missed happy hour by ten minutes. Sigh.

So instead of meeting up with my crew, I took to the subway again and wandered around City Hall taking some final pictures. Got back to the apartment, with everyone scrambling to get their stuff together for the taxi that would pick us up at 6 AM. Due to my affinity to West Coast timezones, I figured that sleep would not be a good idea, so I stayed up the entire night. Remembering the disgustingly astronomical prices at the airport, I thought I would take one last food run so I wouldn't have to buy anything at the airport. That's when the final adventure began.

Just some points of note: Maricar and James's apartment are on 100th St. The subway station closest to them is 96th St. And by this time, it's about 12:30 in the morning.

So anyway, I decide to venture out to find food, but since nothing local was open I took the subway to 86th St. to find some shops there. Find some late night pizza and donut places open, so I invest $6 or so in food there. When I'm done, I go back to the train station waiting for the local uptown train (Note: For those unfamiliar with New York, downtown trains go south going to decreasing streets, and uptown trains go north to increasing streets), I see workers on the track. They tell all the people there that all the uptown trains will be on the express track (Another note: There are two types of subway trains: the local and the express. Local trains stop at every stop on their path. Express trains skip every few stations). So I go down to the express track and wait...

...and wait...

...and wait some more.

By this time I've rumblings above me several times, indicating that the downtown local trains have already stopped twice. My logic and impatience told me that since local trains appear more often, it might be faster to go further downtown and find a local uptown track that was open (forget that all the uptown local tracks are linked). So I tried that and traveled to 77th Street.

As I leave the station to re-enter the station on the uptown side, I see that the uptown entrances are COMPLETELY blocked. That's kinda when I realized that ALL local uptown trains would be closed. Crap. My only chance now was to go downtown to a station where express trains stopped, take the express train to 125th St., and THEN take the local downtown train to 96th. Realizing that my arrival at the apartment would take longer than expected, I called Chuck to let him know I would be late. Sadly, when I called, he assumed that I was already downstairs and just needed to open the door, so HE HUNG UP!!!! And I couldn't miss the next train, so I raced down to the track, where I had no reception. Hmmm... wonder what Chuck'll be thinking when he doesn't see me down there....

So I went back into the station, took the train down to 59th Street, took the uptown express to 125th, and took the downtown local. After finally feeling that I had found my way back, I began to relax. "Next stop, 103rd Street." I could have gotten off there, but I was more familiar with 96th. To the pass the time, I had taken to playing chess on my cell phone. Do you know where this is going? Let me put this into equation form: fatigue + Chess = "Next stop, 86th Street."

WHAT?!? As I got up attempting to rush out of the car, it had closed. I stayed silent, but as I stood at the door watching the 96th Street station pass by, I remained silent, but internally there was another sign that New York was growing on me: I picked up the New Yorker affinity for four-letter words.

By the time I successfully landed on 96th Street, it was 3:30 AM, and way more stressed out that I desired, and only marginally less hungry than when I began the trip. I went back to the apartment, called up Chuck, he let me in, and thus ended my last foray into NYC.

The taxi van came right on schedule, and the remaining eight of us left quietly into the early morning, leaving Marlowe, Maricar, and James sleeping quietly in their beds, as we started our journey back to our lives out west.