Mom Says I’m Running Away

Day: 128

Leaving the country for a few hours we crossed into Canada to see Niagara Falls and have the most expensive meal at a chain diner of the whole trip. Loading back into Skittles we drove across a rainy Canada into Michigan (spending two hours getting back into the US) found a White Castle for dinner, then drove until one in the morning through Ohio, Indiana, and Illionis. We found a Motel 6 and passed out.

We have a few more days of driving like this if we can make it to Vegas for the weekend. I’ll try to be witty, but driving seems to dull my senses even more than drinking.

Day: 127

We left Boston heading into Maine, then about an hour later I realized I left my phone in the last cab we were in. Bummer. I called it a couple of times but no answer. No worries we kept driving, across New Hampshire, Vermont (where I found some fresh Vermont cheese), and New York finding a place to have some steak and a hotel somewhere just outside Niagara Falls.

Rather boring day, the only good news is that the cabbie called me back and said he’d mail my phone home for me.

We’ll see.

Day: 126

First things first, I shaved off my civil war beard. It was fun for a day but I just can’t manage to look that white trash for more than one twenty four hour period at a time. Maybe I’ll grow it back in Cambodia and see how it works for me there.

Matt, Chad and I had to move today; we had Rex Sox tickets for tonight but the hostel (which was about 100 yards from Fenway park) was full for the weekend. We found a average little (over-priced) hotel in midtown, moved our bags, ate lunch, wandered abound Barnes and Noble bookstore for a while (where I bought a new book of course) and went back to the hotel for a little pre-game pool time and napping. We never actually made it to the pool, but the nap was amazing. Around four we grabbed a cab and went to check on Aaron and Lei Lani, to split them up (only had 4 tickets) and take Aaron along with us to the game. When we made it to the ballpark the streets were packed, it was like the circus had come to town, but it was only the Angels playing the Red Sox. All the bars surrounding the stadium were overflowing into the streets, and the streets in turn were covered with people selling everything from steak sandwiches & sausages(delicious!) to a complete Red Sox uniform. It was pandemonium, and it was wonderful fun!

After a few rounds at one of the bars, and a few assorted street snacks, we made our way into the stadium. There was rain on the forecast, but since we paid $80 each for the tickets on ebay, we were pushing our luck with fate and hoping for clear skies the rest of the night (or else we would be out $80). The boys grabbed a few more beers and we found our seats, all the way at the back of the covered ground level, Probably some of the worst seats in the park, but Fenway Park is such a small stadium that it really didn’t matter and the game was relatively close.

About 6:45pm we see an army of guys in red shirts and khaki shorts run onto the field with a gigantic rolled up tarp. They unroll and begin to cover the infield just as a massive boom of thunder crashes in the distance. Within seconds a deluge of water and gusting winds soaks everyone in most of the park, excepting us in our “bad” seats which were far enough under cover to keep us dry from all the blowing water.

A voice comes over the load speaker: “The storm is expected to last sixty to ninety minutes then blow over, the game will be delayed until the rain clears.” By this point most of the stands had cleared into the covered hallways below the stands and we thought with this amount of water there was no way the game would go on. We stayed, mainly because the had beer and we had payed so much for our tickets. Our spirits started to slump and the field started to turn into a lake.

Time slowly clicked away, but just after eight we started to see light on the horizon (literally) and the crowd started cheering. Within minutes the storm cleared as quickly as it had came and the army of guys in red shirts and khaki shorts came out to clean up the field and get ready for the game. By 8:45 the teams were warming up on the field and the crowd started to fill back in and by nine the stadium was once again, surprising, completely full of screaming Sox fans. As the Angels stepped up to bat I started screaming for them, getting the dirtiest looks from everyone around, but I’d be damned if I wouldn’t cheer for my home team. It was a great game and after all my encouragement the Angels won 8-3.

We stepped out of the stadium into a bar for a few more drinks before bed. After last call we had meant a Boston local who took us into Chinatown to have “cold tea” (which was actually beer served in a tea pot after it was last call for the rest of the city) and Chinese food. Matt, Chad and I piled into our cab and headed home to pass out after a long day.

Day: 125

This morning I shaved myself a wicked new beard in a style that, when I meant new people and they asked;

“What do you do for a living?”

I could reply “I specialize in civil was re-enactments and photography and am working towards my doctorate in civil war history at Northwestern.”

I am aware that it is a bold faced lie, and I don’t really know enough about the civil war to carry on a 5 minute conversation much less write a thesis on, but I don’t think anyone would actually confront me on it, and it seemed like a hell of a fun way to spend a day.

Matt, Chad, and I left our hostel, had a tasty seafood lunch, and meant up with Aaron and Lei Lani at their downtown hotel. We had an entire day in Boston, without any plans, and want to be tourists. Which major attraction would you take in? Yeap, I didn’t think any of you would disagree. We made our way on the T(subway) to the outskirts of Boston to the Sam Adams brewery for a 2 pm tour.

I have been on a couple of the “big” brewery tours in the past (Heiniken and Guinness) but I wasn’t expecting something so small. They took us into a tiny brewery without air conditioning where fifty miserable people sweated for an hour in the climbing humidity and excessive temperatures while some random intern told us all the witty rhetoric of Jim Koch, the founder of Sam Adams. We watched Jim in a few videos and he seemed to really love his beer, and with charming phrases like; “A Brewer and A Patriot” who could resist his goofy charm. I took some pictures of a few brewing tanks, but the bulk of the tour was in one little area and was the live equivalent to a really long commercial.

That is until they funneled us into an undersized bar (where I astutely positioned our group in the back, for beer drinking reasons), that actually did have air conditioning and they passed out 7oz. (200ml) tasting glasses. They spent the first round teaching us how to “taste” beer, about color, smell and what a beer should really be. They passed around three rounds of pitchers of beer for everyone to sample, but after each round we were the last people to get beer so the extra pitchers seemed to funnel into the back of the room where we were standing. The entire tour would have a single glass and we were hiding in the back after each round with a couple of leftover pitchers, slamming our 7oz glasses as quick as we could. Other than a few fireman who were on the tour also (and quickly picked up this tactic for themselves) no one seemed to care that we were drinking so much, probably because the rest of the groups were families with little kids. “Look little Billy, this is how to get drunk really fast on a free tour!”

The beer that was flowing like water quickly stop and our buzzed selfs were ushered into the attached gift shop (surprise, surprise!) before we made our way back to the T to get back into Boston. we wandered around downtown for a while, and even had another couple of rounds before everyone decided that it was naptime so we could still make the most of this evening. Our group split up and went back to our respective sleeping establishments.

By the time we showered off the brewery tour sweat and slept off our buzz, we were back out and it was after dark. Aaron and Lei Lani were having “date night” so the rest of us just grabbed a cab and headed into Feanual Hall area to find some dinner. After a few hours we meant back up with the others and set out to do our own little Bostonian pub crawl. Where I meant lots of people who thought Civil War history was completely interesting.

Day: 124

We all got up kind of late, after the late night in a thoroughly sweaty mosh pit (in which all of our shirts were completely soaked through with sweat) and some crowd surfing for me it was really needed. When I finally did manage to get up, I turned on my computer and started looking for some place to stay tonight in Boston. Aaron has his lady friend, Lei Lani, flying out to join him and they got a swanky downtown hotel (which was a little pricey for Matt, Chad, and I), so that left me to find a bargain in Boston. I searched the internet and found Fenway hostel with a private three bed room for $89. The cheapest on anything in the city. Unfortunately they have no room for Friday night so we our on our own after our Red Sox vs. Angels game on Friday, but that’s future Rob’s problem, so we just headed into Boston for the night.

Getting all checked into our assorted hostel and hotels, the four of us went in search of the perfect Boston clam chowder. We tried assorted varieties from a number of fine establishments, and wandered the streets looking at famous sights like the “Cheers” bar(they didn’t actually know my name by the way, they just tried to sell me a bunch of over-priced junk), the brick buildings in the surrounding area, and the big park in the center of downtown.

Still exhausted from last night we dropped Aaron off at his hotel somewhere around six, stole a bag of ice from the hotels ice machine and headed back to our hostel for a nap before another night out. Lei Lani had missed her plane and had to get the next one, she wasn’t going to make it until after midnight.

Day: 123

Today after a morning of not much activity we left Joerg’s house to go into Boston to see a Brand New concert. We wandered the streets for a while, had dinner and drinks and went into the concert where I was easily the oldest person there (other than a few parent who had brought their pre-teen kids).  I felt slightly out of place but still had a great time in the pit with an assortment of 17 year olds.   After the show we headed back to Worcester to stay with Joerg and his wife another night.

Day: 122

It’s time to finally leave New York and head into Massachussets to stay for a couple of nights with Joerg, a family friend of Aarons. We managed to get a late check out of our hotel and climbed aboard Skittles after 1 o’clock and pass through the most states in a single afternoon. New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Conneticut, and Massachussets.

We made it to Joerg’s Just after seven and spent the night in, just relaxing, ordering pizza, watching movies, and playing on the internet.

Day: 121

With plans to get out of the city today (not that we wanted to, but it was far to expensive to stay) we stumbled out of bed around 11:30am and tried to attempt to get ready to leave (it had been a rough night). Just minutes after our return to the world of the living Matt’s phone rang. It was his uncle, who lives across the water in New Jersey. He wanted to see us and told Matt that if we stayed he would pick up our hotel bill for all three nights in the city. At $185 a night, and no plans until Tuesday night, it was not an offer we could refuse. He said he’d head into town and meet us for lunch. Now we had all the time we needed to get ready.

An hour later we were on the streets with Matt’s uncle looking for somewhere to eat breakfast (more like lunch, seeing as it was already 2pm). We settled on a little Irish pub, unfortunately the food wasn’t as good as it was in Ireland, still tasty though. He then gave us a driving tour through all the streets of New York showing us all of the buildings of importance and telling us a little about their history. I fell asleep in the back seat. (Hey it was a rough night yesterday!)

Startled from a dead sleep, Chad pushed me out of the back seat of the jeep and onto the bright streets of New York. We said goodbye and thanks to Matts uncle, and started making our way through a street market to downtown to see Wall Street, Ground Zero, and the Statue of Liberty. We walked for a few hours, then ran out of city as we hit the water, we climbed on the subway and made our way back towards our hotel to find some dinner and a bottle of wine at a small Italian food place. During dinner Jandiz called me and happened to be a couple of blocks away, so she made her way to us and shared some of Chad and my food. She had to take off to meet with some of her actors (she’s a director) but said she’d call us later and we might hang out.
We just went back to the hotel for some zoning out watching TV and naptime until we were supposed to meet Matt’s cousin Dan, who had just got back in to town, for beers and burgers. Around midnight we called our day and returned home for one of our first early nights in a long time.

Day: 120

We are not the most excessive of planners (long time readers already know this about me), when I joined this little road trip across the country the only thing the boys had planned on was a concert and a Red Sox game in Boston. This left us to try and fill in the rest of the gaps ourselves, hopefully with some culture and history not only drinking.

This morning when we finally made it upand ready it was just after eleven. We grabbed some breakfast in the park and headed into the overcast city (looks like rain again) to try and find ourselves tickets to a broadway show today. Fortunately, from my last visit here in May, I already knew where the half price ticket window was so we headed there first to see what was playing, and what we could get a last minute deal on. For $54 each we managed to get tickets to Avenue Q a musical complete with puppet sex. It has to be great. We still had a couple hours to our two o’clock matinee, but the rain had just unleashed its complete power on NYC (easily the worst rain of The World Tour so far) and we were all in sandals. We grabbed a cab to the theatre, found a bar next door, had a pint and played some pool while we waited for our show to start.
After a couple hours of classic musical comedy, complete with songs like “Everyone is a Little Bit Racist” and “The Internet (is for Porn)”, we made our way back to Times Square to get ticket to see Kevin Pollock at Carolines Comedy Club tonight, $30 cover and two drink minumum (funny to think I was living it up in Turkey just a few months ago for less than just the cover charge for entire days). Reservations in place we went on a little shopping spree for clean shirts and went back to the hotel for a few drinks in our room and a little down time.
The taxi dropped us off outside the club just after seven for an eight o’clock show. We went inside, got a table and laughed our asses off for a solid two hours. Afterward we piled in a cab and told him to take us somewhere fun; he smiled and shot through the streets of NY at sixty miles an hour barely missing just about everything. $9 later he dropped us off on a street full of bars and we began wandering from one to another. The night flew by, but it somehow ended up with us breaking up a fight and me getting blood (not my own) on my new shirt. Damn.

Day: 119

Waking up just in time for our noon checkout (this seems to be becoming general practice), we were headed into New York City today, supposedly just a short two hour (127 mile) drive up the Garden State Parkway, over the Jersey Turnpike, and through the Lincoln tunnel. Sound easy huh? Well not in a torrential downpour mixed in with friday afternoon rush hour traffic. The last two hours into the city was easily the most stressful two hours of driving in my entire life, I could barely see headlights 100 feet away and the lane line were indistinguishable. There were thousands of cars on the road and everyone was coming deathly close to me.

My mind completely numb from the constant alertness, we managed to make it to our hotel sometime after five and only passing it once. We went into our surprisingly swank hotel and got ready for the evening. I had talked to my friend Jandiz earlier in the day and she had to work serving cocktails in a trendy midtown hotel bar, but invited us over to visit her at work for a couple of drinks to start the night. We put on our best shirts and headed off into the big city. After our first rounds with Jandiz we set off to walk around Times Square and make our way into the lower east side (on her recommendation) via taxi to sample the nightlife of the city.