Is Disaster Following Me?

So so so very much has happened!  Needless to say, much of this trip has been unexpected, but let me assure you first that I am safe and sound.  Hurricane Irene (or rather Tropical Storm Irene) has died down in force and I seem to have stayed well enough ahead of it that I, my car, and my friends, are all safe.  But let me start at the beginning.

So while I was in DC, my aunt mentioned something about a hurricane.  Now where I'm from, this is a completely foreign concept.  A hurricane?  I have no frame of reference.  How big is a hurricane? What exactly do they do? Should I be worried?  But when she told me that a hurricane was heading toward the east coast, I kinda brushed it off.  I figured, I'm too far north for anything to really affect me.  Right? Wrong. I left DC on Thursday morning.  I had decided to leave late morning so that I could miss DC traffic.  I milled around the house a bit, talking with my aunt & uncle, I packed my bags with my clean laundry, my uncle made some fabulous little breakfast burritos with some of their genuine New Mexico green chile, and by about 11:15am, I was on the road.

As expected, I beat DC traffic.  I had no problem getting out of the city except for one thing, RAIN! It was rather bizarre.  There had been no rain the day before while we were walking around the District.  The sky was blue and there were a few clouds, but nothing that looked ominous.  But now, driving through torrential rain I was starting to wonder if this hurricane was something I should actually consider.  When the rain first started, it was so weird because it came out of nowhere.  While I was driving, for a split second, I could see the first few enormous drops falling from the sky, and almost like slow motion, I saw them on their way to hit my windshield.  It was like I was in a John Woo movie for a second or two.  Thank God my windshield wipers work!  The rain eventually let up, but now I kinda knew I was in for it.

So the drive to NYC sucked.  Plain and simple.  It was a 260 mile drive, and without traffic it shouldn't have taken me any more than 5 hours.  BUT NO!  First of all, let me just say that I hate tolls.  I've never had to pay to drive on a road until I came east of New Mexico.  I find it slightly absurd, but I suppose I can appreciate the logic behind it all.  But it seemed like every road between DC and NY was a toll road.  And expensive ones!  Where the tolls in Dallas had been a buck or two, the ones in New Jersey were $5 here, $4 there, a whopping $8 for a bridge somewhere, and by the time I was all finished, I had already dropped nearly $30 in TOLLS!  Grrr!!  To top all of this off, I had to take the New Jersey Turnpike to go across Jersey, and it was packed!  Traffic everywhere, partially because of a wreck, rain, stop and go traffic, big trucks, and amid it all I really really really have to pee!  But I don't want to get off the road because then I'll have to pay the damn toll again.  So I stay on the road, thanking God that serving tables gave me a strong bladder (too much information?  Sorry!), and I braved & conquered the traffic.  I was in New York. With more tolls.  Still having to pee.

By this time, I was just angry.  I was cramping, I couldn't get comfortable in my front seat, my iPod hookup to my car had mysteriously decided that it was now broken (more on that later), so I was stuck listening to the only 5 CD's that I had left in my car before I left Albuquerque & the Adele CD I had snagged from Jessi in Nashville.  Fortunately, that was about 7 hours worth of music, which is how long it too me to get to New York.  So here I was on the bridge to NYC from NJ when I caught my first sight of the city.  Somehow, I didn't care for that split second that I was hurting and tired in my car.  For two glorious seconds I caught a glimpse of a city that's immortalized in my theatre kid mind.  Enormous buildings seemed more imposing shrouded in fog and haze, and here I was on a bridge that quivered slightly with every massive truck that rumbled past.  And then it was stop and go traffic for another hour or two.  Everywhere there were people.  Someone honked, I tried not to take it personally.  Finally, I made it.  Thank you GOD!  7 hours later, no stops, $30 in tolls, and I finally got to pee!

this was my first sight of the city

When I finally got to my aunt & uncle's house, my cousin had made pizza so I got to talk to them for a few minutes and chow down.  It was really cool to see everyone because, again, I hadn't seen them in years!  Had a great time catching up, but as I was so exhausted I went to bed early and got some beauty sleep.  In the morning I woke up rather early to talk to my uncle.  He had to work super late the night before, so I didn't see him before I went to bed.  We got to chat for a couple minutes, but then it was on to the city!

They only live a couple minutes from the train station so I walked.  I was going to take the train in to Penn Station where my friend Tim was supposed to meet me.  Tim lives in Boston, but he has several friends in New York and has lived there for a few summers. He came down for the weekend & stayed with one of his friends to show me around and accompany me in the city.  So I met him at Penn Station and we took the subway to his friend's apartment where I left my bag.  Now we had to talk about the hurricane.  It seemed to be moving closer and closer. The weathermen kept saying that it was going to hit North Carolina and then it was going to head on up the coast.  No one seemed to really know how bad it was going to hit the city, but one thing was for sure, it was definitely coming.

The original plan was that Tim & I would stay in NYC Friday night & Saturday night and then drive to Boston together on Sunday so that Tim could be back at work by Monday.  But Hurricane Irene had different plans. Throughout the day we found out that the mayor had ordered an evacuation for low lying parts of the city and had planned to shut off all mass transit in New York (something completely unprecedented) by noon on Saturday.  So plans changed.  Tim and I would stay that night in New York, and then head to Boston late Saturday morning.  But that didn't mean that we couldn't explore the city on Friday!

So we started walking.  Everywhere!  We walked up and down streets and avenues and buildings and bars and about a hundred Starbucks.  There were people EVERYWHERE.  It's unreal.  Like, you see it in movies, but the last time I had been to New York was when I was about 5, and I didn't remember it at all.  It was overwhelming.  Tim was making fun of me because I kept saying that I would love to live there, and then we'd run in to a ton of people, and I'd change my mind.  This happened several times.  I also thought that at some point we were going to get run over by a cab, or an angry driver (there seemed to be a lot of those), and everyone honks, constantly.

tim & i in central park

Our first stop was Central Park, which by the way, is huge!  I had no idea just how big it was.  And its beautiful!  Trees and grass and ponds and fountains and musicians and people on bikes and artists and everything.  Then we met up with one of his friends for lunch.  More walking after that.  We walked down Wall Street, saw the New York Stock Exchange, Trump Tower, Ground Zero, Rockefeller Center, Tiffany's (yay!), a massive line outside of the Abercrombie & Fitch, live models outside of the Hollister, two H&M's (those were for you, Jessi), and again... about a thousand Starbucks! We also got to ride the Staten Island Ferry, got a super cool view of the skyline (sans Twin Towers....), Hoboken City, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Lady Liberty herself.  It was fantastic!  We then walked to Time's Square & I got me one of those silly "I <3 NY" t-shirts.  So so so super excited.

ny stock exchange

look! its 30 rock!

view from the staten island ferry

Then we met up with a couple of his friends that evening for a drink at this cool little outdoors bar next to a little park.  It was then that I managed to convince Tim to go see a Broadway show with me.  This was the ONE thing that I desperately wanted to do in New York and here I was, buying tickets to Billy Elliot.  But the show didn't start for a little while so Tim & I went to go get some food first.  Then it was off to the theatre.  We get there at 7:41 and the lobby seems strangely deserted.  We go up to the ticket office and the lady looks at us all angry like and informs us that the show started at 7:30.  No!  We were 11 minutes late!  (I swear, at some point on this trip I will do something on time!) I didn't think they were going to let us in, but I suppose since a great many of Broadway's patrons are tourists, they kinda have to let the late ones in.  We only missed the first song so it ended up being ok.  By the way, Billy Elliot was AWESOME.  Absolutely fantastic.  I was loving every minute of it: the dancing, the singing, the acting, the sets, the theatre.  I was in heaven.  Absolutely one of the best things I've ever done. Tim even enjoyed it to!

me in times square

times square at night

After that we met up with some of Tim's friends and ended up staying out & enjoying New York's nightlife for a little bit.  But it was 1 am and it was time to head back to the apartment.  I got to have my ride in a genuine New York City cab, and it was off to sleep.  The next morning we had to get the subway & the train before noon so that we could get out of the city.  We were back to my aunt & uncle's house (where I had left my car) by 12:30 and on the road by 1.  And there was NO traffic.  None!  Apparently everyone who was going to evacuate already did, and everyone else was hunkering down to wait out the storm.

The drive from New York City to Boston is just over 200 miles.  In those 200 miles, we had smooth sailing except for one thing: rain.  And LOTS of it.  Rain everywhere, sometimes really bad, sometimes really light, but it was constant.  I was tremendously thankful that my wipers worked & that I have a decent amount of tread on my tires.  My visibility was quite low also because it was foggy on top of it.  While I was driving, I couldn't help but think just how gorgeous New England was.  But it's all kinda starting to look the same.  Green everywhere, trees everywhere, and now rain everywhere!  I'm actually kinda looking forward to driving through the mid west next.  Another change of scenery should be nice.

this was my view the entire way from ny to boston

The drive itself was fairly uneventful.  Tim and I listened to talk radio about the hurricane almost the entire time.  The reports kept saying that it was going to be bad, but they just weren't really sure how bad.  It was supposed to flood New York, but not too badly, and they didn't really seem to know how badly it was going to hit Boston.  We made great time to Boston, and we made it to Tim's place by 4:30pm.  We then went to go hang out with Tim's girlfriend (who had cooked us dinner!) and her roommates.  The rain still hadn't gotten terrible yet, so we went out for ice cream & goodies from Trader Joe's.  That night we played Taboo and then went out one more time to this cool little college bar that was right across the street.

That night I slept on the couch and it was awesomely comfortable.  When we woke up this morning, there was no widespread damage.  It had rained, and it had been windy, some tree branches had been broken, but nothing horrific.  Nothing to write home about.  Apparently Irene had downgraded to a tropical storm during the night, had flooded parts of Manhattan that morning, and had moved west of Boston through New England and is currently making its way up to Canada where it will eventually dissipate.  Now I've survived the East Coast Earthquake and Hurricane Tropical Storm Irene.  How on earth could I have ever known that this is what I was getting myself in to by going on this road trip!

Today's been a lazy day.  Boston's mass transit is shut down for the day, it's been drizzling all day, and there's not a whole lot to do.  And it's awesome.  Tim & I walked to go get some lunch at this little place that's like Boston's version of the Frontier restaurant.  It was delicious.  Tim also briefly showed me the BU campus.  It's pretty.

Tomorrow, the forecast is sunny.  SUNNY!  Turns out that my brother's father in law & brother in law are in Boston too.  They were here for a few Red Sox games and because of the storm, they couldn't fly home to New Mexico on Sunday as originally planned.  So they're here til Tuesday, and as Tim has to work on Monday, it looks like tomorrow I'll be hanging out with them!  How random is that?  Looking forward to it.  Gonna see what Boston's got to offer.

I'm not gonna lie, the last few days have been chalk full of unexpected events and I'm quite enjoying the excitement that they're bringing.  I didn't plan any of this, but as my car still runs, I'm still alive, & so are my friends, I'm not complaining.  Tuesday takes me to western New York to visit my cousin, and then from there I'm on the massive trek to Los Angeles.  4 more weeks before I'm home!

Peace!

TALLY:
miles driven: ~3,500
time spent in my car: 53 hours
cities visited: 20
cities slept in: 9
states driven through/in: 16