The travels I have taken and the experiences that resulted.

Wednesday, May 08, 2002

It's now been a week since I left my home of Houston, Texas. The trip here while long(even longer without cruise control...it did work one and a half times for me) was a good time. Adam and I think we crossed the largest bridge in every state, at least we are saying we did. We left my house around 8ish Sunday night and made it to Lake Charles to spend a night with a friend. On the way we saw Mr. Big, the scariest gas station in Houston, and Fast and the Furious (3 Civics out of no where passed us).

The following day was Memorial day and we traveled to Penescecola Beach. It was gay pride week so that was a site to see. Not much eye candy for us guys. I was fortunate to meet my great Unlce Norm and Aunt Barbara. Also a second and third cousin. That night at the boardwalk my third cousin made me buy a drink called the Bushwacker, its like a Wendy's Frosty but with alcohol...very good. May 28th we spent some time on the beach and headed for our next stop of North Carolina. We drove quite a bit from 1pm till 2 in the morning. Random fact, you know how the Dairy Queen is a Texas stop sign. Well the south stop sign is the Waffle House, every town had one it seems. In Georgia or Alabama we saw a guy with a license plate that said NO FUN, he must be a winner.

Driving through North Carolina we were pretty dilerious. Crossing into the state we decided it was time for North Carolina to raise up and take our shirts off. We were getting pretty close to our destination but needed to sleep. My marketing prof once said that you can negoiate prices at hotels late at night so they don't lose money on an empty room, well thats a bunch of bull shit. We tried and all of them said no. We even went to a Scottish Inn, and there was not a Scottish person working. A dissappointment to say the least. We finally ended up at a Days Inn. There was still alcohol, lemons, limes and olives, and for some reason a tube of toothpaste by on the night stand in the room with a big king size bed. It only takes a little imagination to imagine what happened the night before. I'm just hoping they washed the sheets. So now its the 29th and we went to go check out Univesity of North Carolina and Duke. The campuses are amazing and put A&M's to shame. Hey here's a challenge go to CiCi's pizza and try to leave without them noticing. It won't happen, so you hear a lot of the co workers yell thanks for coming or something along those lines. After seeing the campuses we drove up to a suburb of Philly called King of Prussia where Adam has a second cousin. On the way we drove through DC, so that was kind of exciting to see some of the monuments from the road. So it's the 30th now and we take a train into Philly. The city is pretty much ghetto, but we decided to make it somewhat educational and check out Independance Hall and the Liberty Bell. Plus we got Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches. They were allright. Next stop New York. Carson Daly the host of MTV's TRL has a radio show on the afternoons we were fortunate to come across. Once again it was a quick conclusion to realize that he is a tool. Another question, why the hell does it cost 6 bucks to cross a bridge?

Adam and I made it to our new home of Dobbs Ferry, and more importantly Mercy college where we will be staying. The town is pretty small, basically has two main streets and they aren't that main. The houses on the hill are awesome and the car of choice seems to be either a Mercedes or BMW. Since we arrived to Dobbs a day earlier we were unsure where we going to spend the night. The two hotels we found were too expensive for what they looked like. We were gonna spend the night in the car when I decided to see if anyone was in the dorm that could allow us in. Luckily Clarence the security guy was nice enough to let us. In an hour he was able to location a RA who let us in. Everyone here is pretty nice, unlike the campus. However we are next to the Hudson river which is big.....and digustingly brown. The rooms here at Mercy are small, have no AC, community showers, etc...but they are cheaper than anything I could find in the city so that's a plus. Baseball is a big thing in this town, Im talkin about minors though. Every morning I wake up to parents cheering or Christian music played over some kind of PA system.

On the 31st, we got our rooms moved in and settled, we then did a Wal mart run, except they don't have Wal-Marts, which was a surprise. They did have a Kmart in a town nearby. There are like 5 towns here and you never really know when you are leaving one and going to another. All you realize is that you are stuck in traffic forever.

Yesterday was the first time we ventured into the city. I plotted out my route to work and its really close to Grand Central station which works out nice. I then tried to setup banking, need to be a NY resident or something. We then walked all around Midtown. Saw Times Square (they have those people painted in silver and do the robot thing), Rockafeller, Radio City, Chrsyler Building, up and down 5th Ave and Park Ave. We made it to Central Park. There are some good street performers. We saw a group of dancers and they were just crazy, one guy ran up a wall and did a flip. Which dancer was the worst, not surprisingly the only white guy in the group. He still would put me to shame, but thats nothing new.

Thats pretty much the first week in a nutshell, my job starts tomorrow followed by 11 weeks of it.