6/14
So right now I'm sitting at my grandmother's house killing time. I was supposed to have been on the road right now, but my car's in the shop. I took it in yesterday to get the oil changed, and as we were picking it the mechanic told my dad and me that a CV joint was shot, that the boot had cracked and all of the grease was gone. He recommended getting it replaced, of course. The grease in part keeps it cool, and if it kept running hot it could cause the whole wheel to pop off. Or something. My own knowledge, my dad's experience, and just now my uncle all say that it's much more likely to run (poorly) forever without catastrophic failure. But my dad's paranoid, and mechanic said it'd be an hour and a half, so we had him do it. I said I'd come by in the morning to pick it up. Expected cost, $60-70 for the CV joint, 1.5 hours labor?
I got a call late last night saying that the CV joint was somehow fused to the wheel bearing, and he wanted me to call him back in the morning to tell him whether he should blowtorch them apart. I called at 8:30 (I had to get up at 8:30... Ugh.) and told him to do it. Added cost, ~$30 for the wheel bearing.
He called at 11:30 and said that the CV joint he'd ordered didn't fit and he'd asked for another. I called at 2:40 and he said it'd be half an hour, so I went by at 3:20. My car's still up on the lift without a wheel. Ugh. Turns out the replacement didn't work either, so the original CV joint, which had been rebuilt, was on its way back. That was maybe an hour ago, and I'm waiting to see how much longer it takes and how much it costs. Then I have to put air in my damn tires and power steering fluid in the reservoir, after that hopefully I'll be able to get on the road.
6/15
I'm at a Panera in Maryland now, waiting for Marshall to get off work and commute over here to meet up. I hate Panera, but they have couches, AC, and free wifi, so I guess I'll let them live when the revolution comes.
I finally got the car back at around 6 yesterday. After wiping down the steering wheel and the shifter (the mechanic had driven the thing around while wearing oily gloves) I took it for a test run around town and out onto the highway, taking sharp turns and driving fast and such. This was during rush hour, so the reality is that it took 30 minutes, 20 of which were spent waiting to exit the highway. I'm not quite sure what the idea of my test run was. I guess that if anything failed I'd be close to home and family with cars, but in the event of my wheel bearing or CV joint blowing out I'd probably lose control (and the wheel) and kill people. Not that the idea didn't appeal to me after sitting in stop and go traffic in Burlington, but at heart I truly am a peaceful man. Honest. I just curse a lot. And like guns. No, fuck it, I'm lying.
So I packed the car as quickly as possible, raced my grandmother through her obligatory last-minute photos (seriously, you've spent all week with me and taken photos in Maine and at graduation, how important are a few photos outside of the house?), and sped off. I had to stop to put air in my tires and get gas, which because I was late was a serious drag, but it turned into a minor blessing by the fact that I'd left my suit carrier at the house and my mother brought it downtown to me. Had I been on the highway I'd have had to turn around, and that would have sucked.
Leaving later than planned wasn't fun, but most of the traffic was gone, so I made great time. I was cruising at about 80mph at some point maybe 20 miles after leaving, and I noticed that my hood was starting to pop up and was shaking in the wind. I pulled over (which I've never actually had to do on a highway before) and closed it. Turns out the mechanic hadn't shut it properly, the bastard. I had these wonderful images of my hood popping up and blinding me, or maybe it'd rip off entirely at high speed and I'd be driving with an exposed engine compartment.
This wasn't actually that dramatic, but getting up to speed in the shoulder and back into traffic was interesting. I mean, my grandmother's car has a turbocharger, I think it's only fair that I should have one, too. Speaking of driving my grandmother's car, that's what I've been doing lately. So slowing down at the tollbooth with the music on loud I completely forget that I'm driving a manual and ignore the clutch. I stalled the thing right in front of the toll collector, who must have been laughing at the confused look on my face.
I hit about 30 minutes worth of traffic on 95 just outside of New York. Last time I went into NYC I took Merrit Parkway on the advice of someone stuck in traffic on 95 up ahead. It's a really beautiful 2 lane highway with lots of hills and curves, and the bridges that pass overhead are all unique and made of stone. I think what makes it fun to drive, though, is the fact that there are trees on either side, overhanging the road. If I ever make the Boston-NYC commute again I'm definitely going to take it, 95's just a huge drag.
New York was brief. I didn't find parking until like 11:30, and that was only after I'd given up on finding the correct side parking for Friday morning and had resigned myself to waking up at 8 to leave. The New Yorkers went to bed early, so I didn't actually get to do much more than say hi. Ah well.
The drive to Maryland was uneventful, but I was shocked that between the NJ turnpike toll, the George Washington Memorial Bridge toll, the Delaware toll, and a toll in Maryland I hit $13.85 in about 50 miles. Apparently in NJ it's illegal to have self-serve gas stations, too. Gas was still 20 cents cheaper than in Boston, even with the attendant, but full service stations make me uncomfortable.
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Friday, June 15, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
Center of the Universe
In addition to all of the more philosophical (pretentious) stuff I just posted, this is also a journal, and one of the things I really wanted to talk about was this past weekend. On Friday I drove down to NYC with a few friends from No. 6, partly to go to the Annex party at the Sixer apartment in the Upper West Side and partly to get out of the house while we hosted prospective freshmen during campus preview weekend. They annoy me with their bright, "We got into MIT!" faces. Also the house is dry while they're around, and my liver demands consistent exercise. It's like walking the dog, only with more slurred speech.
I'm not even entirely sure what to write about. I know that every time I go to NYC I love the place more and more. I grew up as every good kid who likes to think he's from Boston does, hating New York very passionately. It's just that I try to think of myself as a scientist, and this unsubstantiated ideology demanded testing that proved it to be unfounded. I love New York. I love that it's open all night, and that it's huge and busy and chaotic. I can picture myself living in a few places I've been to. Berkeley for sure. Maybe Tuscany. The idea of Vancouver sounds nice, but I've never been. But I feel like I could absolutely live in NYC. One problem is that I have a biased opinion of the place. I tend to go on weekends, with friends, to have a good time. I've never had to work there, for example, so my memories of the place are all happy and fuzzy. Well, the fuzziness is probably more the booze than anything else.
So this trip had a few high points for me. The first was on Friday night. We went to a bar in the Upper West, and then a few people expressed interest in dancing, so we went downtown to a place called Home. Three of us taxied down with Conor, who as we got out of the taxi told us to have $20 ready and to only talk to the transvestite, but not really anything besides that. So we walked straight past the winding line and Conor palmed the be-lipsticked and fur-hatted man a $20. I guess he was more of a doorman than a bouncer, he wasn't very intimidating. But he said, "4 people is an awful lot for $20", all the while looking with disapprovingly-pursed lips and a frown at my jeans and t-shirt. So I wordlessly hand him my $20 and walk past him. Now, the other two guys with us could have followed me right in, but since Conor had told them to be ready with $20 they each handed him the bills they were holding as they walked in. I think they thought they were paying a cover, the idea of bribery hadn't quite sunken in. Ah well. The inside of the club was really upscale. The people were all attractive and rich, the decor was red and leather and decadent, and the place was packed and bouncing. The DJ was playing 80s music layered with hip-hop beats, think Sweet Child of Mine meets Mos Def. This was also the first place I've ever been to (anywhere) that ignored the public smoking ban. I don't really dance much, so I decided to justify the cover with the fact that Conor was buying the drinks and that I had an opportunity to play anthropologist. I spent a long time watching guys with popped collars get shot down by girls with short skirts. There was everything shy of actual intercourse happening on the couches and against the pillars around the room. My favorite, though, was watching the other wall flowers. I feel like I was having a lot more fun than they were. They seemed to want to be dancing or flirting or whatever, but for some reason weren't. I, on the other hand, knew that I was completely and utterly out of place, and that somehow freed me from feeling uncomfortable, which was pretty cool. After the club we got pizza at the Pizza Bar, outside of which a homeless(?) guy hit me up for a contribution to the Rockefeller Negro Pizza Fund, which is apparently a common line, but it worked on me for a buck. I have a lot easier time giving money to people who make me smile than to people who try to make me feel pity or guilt. Anyway, that night was great.
We followed it up the next day with a an Irish pub brunch that started at 2 and lasted until 6. We rolled into the pub 9 deep, so they opened up the glass doors for us and we basically owned the place for a few hours. We lingered after the meal and had a few pints. I don't normally drink during the day, but there was something so appealing about sitting around after eating, watching people pass on the street, and chatting with friends that justified an exception for me.
We left the pub and I split up with the group to see Ting Qi, a girl I'd met at a party in Cambridge the previous week. She's four degrees of separation from me, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, from Taiwan to Costa Rica to Wellesley. Her friend (3 degrees) hooked up with Anton when they were at the house last week, and Ting Qi and I spent the time while she was waiting chatting in Chinese. She goes to NYU, and I mentioned that I would be going down the next weekend, so we decided to get dinner.
I had some time to kill after the pub and before meeting her, which I managed by wandering around Chinatown. That was the farthest south I'd ever been in NYC; I tend to stay more uptown. It was awesome; the feel is completely different. I'm amazed by how quickly the neighborhoods change. You cross an avenue and all of a sudden all of the signs are in Chinese. You cross a street and you're in Little Italy and the restaurant window decorations are signs for cappuccino rather than roasted chickens.
The Grand Street subway station in Chinatown comes up in a park. I saw a big crowd watching people playing handball (which I'd never seen before), so I stuck around. I figured out by watching that this was a grudge match, as far as I could tell between members of gangs. The people on one side of the court all seemed to be wearing blue hats of different types and people standing on the other side all had clothing with hearts on them. There was lots of shouting, some of it angry, and a lot of the spectators seemed to be from the neighborhood but not directly connected to the players. I wish I'd asked someone to tell me what exactly was going on that made this game so important, but I felt like too much of a voyeur and a tourist. So I just watched. I don't know anything about handball; I was trying to figure out the rules as I went, but everyone else seemed to think that it was a really well-played and close game. Only when one team finally won did it occur to me that maybe I didn't want to be around to see the fallout. Nothing dramatic happened. I watched a lot of side bets resolved; big wads of money changed hands. One of the losing players, the guy who missed the last play, walked off quickly, to my mind trying to avoid eye contact with his 2 little children following him out of the court. That handball game is my archetype of New York. There was a tight, local community that I didn't quite understand, a subsection of this huge city that I didn't even know existed. It was a street event that I just stumbled on while wandering around. It was diverse and urban and maybe a bit seedy. I loved it.
So I waited a bit longer, then met Ting Qi and a couple of her friends at the subway station. We walked a few blocks to a Cantonese restaurant, where there was a long wait for a table, during which I recognized several faces from the crowd at the handball game. Dinner was good, and apparently authentic, and my Chinese is definitely getting better, even if we did spend almost all of the time speaking English. After dinner Ting Qi and I went uptown to the No. 6 Annex party, which was fun if unremarkable. Ting Qi went home to Brooklyn (which I've still never been to) at 3 or 4 just as the party began to die down and it started to rain (which hasn't stopped since). The Annex Sixers managed to fit 10 guests on the couches and a small blowup mattress, we watched some Aliens on TV, and all fell asleep.
So that, and a long drive back in the pouring rain and heavy traffic and the dark, was my weekend.
I'm not even entirely sure what to write about. I know that every time I go to NYC I love the place more and more. I grew up as every good kid who likes to think he's from Boston does, hating New York very passionately. It's just that I try to think of myself as a scientist, and this unsubstantiated ideology demanded testing that proved it to be unfounded. I love New York. I love that it's open all night, and that it's huge and busy and chaotic. I can picture myself living in a few places I've been to. Berkeley for sure. Maybe Tuscany. The idea of Vancouver sounds nice, but I've never been. But I feel like I could absolutely live in NYC. One problem is that I have a biased opinion of the place. I tend to go on weekends, with friends, to have a good time. I've never had to work there, for example, so my memories of the place are all happy and fuzzy. Well, the fuzziness is probably more the booze than anything else.
So this trip had a few high points for me. The first was on Friday night. We went to a bar in the Upper West, and then a few people expressed interest in dancing, so we went downtown to a place called Home. Three of us taxied down with Conor, who as we got out of the taxi told us to have $20 ready and to only talk to the transvestite, but not really anything besides that. So we walked straight past the winding line and Conor palmed the be-lipsticked and fur-hatted man a $20. I guess he was more of a doorman than a bouncer, he wasn't very intimidating. But he said, "4 people is an awful lot for $20", all the while looking with disapprovingly-pursed lips and a frown at my jeans and t-shirt. So I wordlessly hand him my $20 and walk past him. Now, the other two guys with us could have followed me right in, but since Conor had told them to be ready with $20 they each handed him the bills they were holding as they walked in. I think they thought they were paying a cover, the idea of bribery hadn't quite sunken in. Ah well. The inside of the club was really upscale. The people were all attractive and rich, the decor was red and leather and decadent, and the place was packed and bouncing. The DJ was playing 80s music layered with hip-hop beats, think Sweet Child of Mine meets Mos Def. This was also the first place I've ever been to (anywhere) that ignored the public smoking ban. I don't really dance much, so I decided to justify the cover with the fact that Conor was buying the drinks and that I had an opportunity to play anthropologist. I spent a long time watching guys with popped collars get shot down by girls with short skirts. There was everything shy of actual intercourse happening on the couches and against the pillars around the room. My favorite, though, was watching the other wall flowers. I feel like I was having a lot more fun than they were. They seemed to want to be dancing or flirting or whatever, but for some reason weren't. I, on the other hand, knew that I was completely and utterly out of place, and that somehow freed me from feeling uncomfortable, which was pretty cool. After the club we got pizza at the Pizza Bar, outside of which a homeless(?) guy hit me up for a contribution to the Rockefeller Negro Pizza Fund, which is apparently a common line, but it worked on me for a buck. I have a lot easier time giving money to people who make me smile than to people who try to make me feel pity or guilt. Anyway, that night was great.
We followed it up the next day with a an Irish pub brunch that started at 2 and lasted until 6. We rolled into the pub 9 deep, so they opened up the glass doors for us and we basically owned the place for a few hours. We lingered after the meal and had a few pints. I don't normally drink during the day, but there was something so appealing about sitting around after eating, watching people pass on the street, and chatting with friends that justified an exception for me.
We left the pub and I split up with the group to see Ting Qi, a girl I'd met at a party in Cambridge the previous week. She's four degrees of separation from me, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, from Taiwan to Costa Rica to Wellesley. Her friend (3 degrees) hooked up with Anton when they were at the house last week, and Ting Qi and I spent the time while she was waiting chatting in Chinese. She goes to NYU, and I mentioned that I would be going down the next weekend, so we decided to get dinner.
I had some time to kill after the pub and before meeting her, which I managed by wandering around Chinatown. That was the farthest south I'd ever been in NYC; I tend to stay more uptown. It was awesome; the feel is completely different. I'm amazed by how quickly the neighborhoods change. You cross an avenue and all of a sudden all of the signs are in Chinese. You cross a street and you're in Little Italy and the restaurant window decorations are signs for cappuccino rather than roasted chickens.
The Grand Street subway station in Chinatown comes up in a park. I saw a big crowd watching people playing handball (which I'd never seen before), so I stuck around. I figured out by watching that this was a grudge match, as far as I could tell between members of gangs. The people on one side of the court all seemed to be wearing blue hats of different types and people standing on the other side all had clothing with hearts on them. There was lots of shouting, some of it angry, and a lot of the spectators seemed to be from the neighborhood but not directly connected to the players. I wish I'd asked someone to tell me what exactly was going on that made this game so important, but I felt like too much of a voyeur and a tourist. So I just watched. I don't know anything about handball; I was trying to figure out the rules as I went, but everyone else seemed to think that it was a really well-played and close game. Only when one team finally won did it occur to me that maybe I didn't want to be around to see the fallout. Nothing dramatic happened. I watched a lot of side bets resolved; big wads of money changed hands. One of the losing players, the guy who missed the last play, walked off quickly, to my mind trying to avoid eye contact with his 2 little children following him out of the court. That handball game is my archetype of New York. There was a tight, local community that I didn't quite understand, a subsection of this huge city that I didn't even know existed. It was a street event that I just stumbled on while wandering around. It was diverse and urban and maybe a bit seedy. I loved it.
So I waited a bit longer, then met Ting Qi and a couple of her friends at the subway station. We walked a few blocks to a Cantonese restaurant, where there was a long wait for a table, during which I recognized several faces from the crowd at the handball game. Dinner was good, and apparently authentic, and my Chinese is definitely getting better, even if we did spend almost all of the time speaking English. After dinner Ting Qi and I went uptown to the No. 6 Annex party, which was fun if unremarkable. Ting Qi went home to Brooklyn (which I've still never been to) at 3 or 4 just as the party began to die down and it started to rain (which hasn't stopped since). The Annex Sixers managed to fit 10 guests on the couches and a small blowup mattress, we watched some Aliens on TV, and all fell asleep.
So that, and a long drive back in the pouring rain and heavy traffic and the dark, was my weekend.
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