Only been in NYC for 2 days and already joined a cult! Haha (Rooftop bar at 230 5th Avenue)

New York is a different beast. This much is true.

I’ve started this post and deleted it, only to start again, and delete again. New York is a difficult place to write about because it’s always different. I’ve been here for six days now, and I’ve had incredible highs and crummy lows, captivating conversations with heaps of interesting people, and solitary afternoons spent walking along the boardwalk. I’ve felt like the luckiest person in the entire world looking down on the city from a rooftop bar surrounded by amazing people, and as if I’m too small to matter in the grand scheme of things while talking to a stranger over brunch. The city is made of an eclectic mix of people and you never know if you’re going to be sitting next to an opera singer at a juice bar, or end up dancing next to a rocket engineer from Italy at a cute bar / nail salon, going to a haunted house with a Jersey boy, having lunch with a partner of an asset management firm who just flew back from Bermuda, getting to know a lawyer / UN intern over drinks, or even making random street conversation with a Russian speaking African-American bouncer who is in the midst of writing a book about the city. You can’t even begin to expect any of these things, but I’ve found myself in all of these surprising situations, and more! So where do I begin?

Coney Island boardwalk

I tried recapping just my first three days in my journal and it took me eight pages! I don’t think you want to read all of that, so I’ll give you a quick rundown of the highlights:

Landed on Monday night.

On Tuesday I got a new phone and made new friends by making random conversation during lunch at a deli, in the waiting room before a meeting, and at a mingler event. I also did a bit of walking around Times Square and Central Park, and stayed up until 3am doing some work.

I spent most of Wednesday writing, took a walk along the boardwalk to Coney Island in the afternoon, and went to another event where I met someone in the lineup who introduced me to all of his friends (who are all amazing and loads of fun). After that, we all went to another event at the swankiest bar I’ve ever been to and then had a late night snack at a diner. I think I got back around 3am.

Terri Romeo, Fashion Consultant and Personal Shopper at Macy’s

Thursday was a rainy bum day. After spending the morning writing, I was supposed to tour NYU and then grab a drink with a friend but both were cancelled last minute. I wandered around the city and did some shopping before heading back.

On Friday I met up with Terri, who I met on Tuesday. In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t mentioned any other names so far because I’ve found that New Yorkers tend to be more private about their personal information (I found this out when I wrote my full name on an event name tag and eventually tore off the last half because everyone was telling me it wasn’t safe). I’ll mention Terri’s name though because she’s a personal shopper at Macy’s and if you ever want to book a free appointment to go shopping (and get a staff discount), she’s the one you want to ask for; Terri Romeo. After shopping, I was supposed to go for coffee with another friend from Tuesday but we ended up ditching that idea for a horror / magic show (Times Scared) and dinner at Carmine’s (HUGE portions!). Fun times!

Saturday’s original plans were cancelled due to the weather (winter fair), but luckily someone I met at Wednesday’s second event was back in town so we went out for lunch at Gravy and he gave me a tour of the surrounding areas. In the evening, I met up with the group of friends from Wednesday and we went dancing at Beauty Bar. Loved the music and the dancing! I didn’t get back until about 4am and pretty much crashed after that.

This morning, Terri and I had brunch at Harefield Road in East Williamsburg and snooped around the area. I spent the rest of the day catching up on errands and recharging my batteries (literally and figuratively — I’ve been running on about 5 hours of sleep each night and my cell phones both had to be recharged).

Looking forward to what this week brings!

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Kissing Bumpers

Prius: “I know you think I’m spectacular and all especially since I only use a fraction of the gas you need, but do you mind giving me a bit of breathing room?”

American Monster Car: <burp>

Prius: “… I’ll take that as a compliment.“


Location: Asheville, North Carolina

Trees Under Water

We’re in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee right now doing absolutely nothing. It’s been pouring all day and most of the activities around here require being outside (ex. go-karting, hiking, zorbing etc). So, we spent an extra day here hoping the weather would clear up for tomorrow and caught up on our trash / crap TV including an episode of Bible Man (seriously, wtf!? This is taking cheese and indoctrination to a whole new level), Dallas Divas and Daughters, Supernanny (not so bad), and The Dish. So this is what Topanga is doing nowadays eh?

I’ve still got a boatload of pictures to upload from our visit to New Orleans (pronounced “nawlins”). In the meantime, you can stare at the above picture that was taken from our car on the highway to New Orleans featuring some drowning trees. Flash flooding isn’t a joke around the Southern states — it’s real and it’s scary stuff.

By the time Ang and I finished getting snacks, Morten became good friends with the hot dog

When you step into a Wal-mart, K-mart or any other something-mart, do you ever feel bad for the person at the door who has the mundane job of greeting you?

We stopped at K-mart yesterday in Phoenix, Arizona to get some snacks for the road. Ang and I got in just fine, but Morten was stopped by the door greeter dressed as a hot dog (she was promoting the store’s Halloween costumes). She wouldn’t let Morten in with his camera bag and he didn’t want to check it in at their counter so he had no choice but to stay at the entrance with the hot dog. Normally he’d argue about being denied access even though several women with large purses were being let through, but how can you argue with a frail woman in a hot dog costume!?

I’m fairly certain that the concept of a door greeter was invented in the states. I once watched a marketing video that talked about the differences between American and Canadian expectations while shopping. Americans like having someone greet them at the store entrance, and consider it to be good customer service when store attendees ask them if they need help finding something. In contrast, Canadians can almost find it an invasion of personal space to have someone greet them at the door, and prefer to be left alone while shopping; Canadians will ask for help when they need it. I think that in general, the video is correct.

When you travel with friends and family, you get to take dorky photos.

This isn’t travelling. To me, travelling is when you have to constantly push your boundaries and don’t allow yourself the luxury of becoming complacent. It’s a learning process where you experience everything for the first time without the influence of others so that you can discover what you really love and hate. It’s a means of discovering yourself and learning to modify your habits and ways of thinking to become someone better than the person you were when you left. This is a vacation.

I’ve gotten used to having to figure out where I should go next and how to get there by myself, getting to the next destination on my own, eating at a table for one, sightseeing by my lonesome, and talking to myself. Now I have three other people to talk and laugh with, take dorky photos with, order and share food with… etc. One person drives while a second looks up the cities on the map, a third figures out which hotels are viable options at each destination, and a fourth distributes car snacks. I don’t think it could get any easier! It could be comfier (we’re pretty crammed in the Prius), but not easier.

Oregon Caves

Paradise Lost

Today we visited the Oregon Caves under typical West Coast weather: rain, rain and more rain. I don’t have proper hiking boots so I wore my runners. My shoes and socks were soaked right through. Poor Kim didn’t have a jacket with a hood or proper walking shoes so he wore an emergency poncho and was soaked from head to toe by the end of the tour.

Oregon Caves is definitely worth a stop in my books. It’s only $8.50 US per person for an hour long tour of the caves and you get to go really far down the caves and up the mountain from within. You get to see calcite deposits and structures that are hundreds of thousands of years old as well as the remains of the markings made by tourists back in the 1930s which are now permanently embossed under a layer of limestone.

My favourite part of the tour was probably the damp cave called Paradise Lost. It’s a small area with a high ceiling covered in these giant limestone structures that look like “claws” (if you’re Ang), “jellyfish” (if you’re Morten or Kim), or “the Grinch’s hands from Dr. Seuss” or “parachuters” (if you’re me). You get dripped on quite a bit in here especially since you’re facing upwards to look at the structures, but it’s worth the look.

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From Left to Right: Alvin (Bessie’s husband), Morten (Angela’s husband), Bessie (cousin), Mary (cousin), Angela (sister), Lawrence (Mary’s husband), Jackie (friend), Me, and Bong (friend).

Ang, Morten and I tagged along on my cousins’ annual Memorial Day Weekend snow camping trip at Mount Rainier last week. We hiked up to Goat Island Peak at Mount Rainier National Park on Saturday and spent the night before coming back down on Sunday. These are some of the things I learned from the trip:

Sidenote: Why do they call it Goat Island if it’s not an island?

1. If you’re planning on sleeping on snow, make sure you bring a thick foam pad in addition to a sleeping pad. I was FREEZING and woke up about a dozen times because of the cold. The only upside to this was that when I woke up in the middle of the night, I got to see the stars which I would’ve missed otherwise.
2. Never hike up a mountain alone unless you know what you’re doing.
3. Never try to hike down a steep mountain early in the morning because the snow will have turned to ice overnight. If you must climb down, wear clamps and bring an ice pick.
4. Climbing down a mountain takes about 1/3 of the time it takes to climb up.
5. When climbing up, dig your toes in. When climbing down, dig your heels in.
6. Foxes are unlikely to attack you, but coyotes will consider it (they’re crazy like that). On our way down a large furry coyote crossed our path.
7. Always bring at least two extra pairs of socks.
8. “Mountain money” = toilet paper.
9. Spam musubi makes a great hiking snack because you don’t have to worry about squishing it in your pack.
10. Baby wipes are AWESOME!
11. If you end up needing a ranger rescue in the US as a result of your own stupidity, you’re going to have to pay for it out of your own pocket.
12. Levelling your sleeping area is important if you don’t want to be sliding around in your sleeping bag at night.
13. Sliding down an icy mountain head first will give you lacerations on your face. Not recommended.

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Fat Burger: The Last Great Hamburger Stand

Last Friday Ang, Morten and I drove down to the states to visit our cousins and friends. We stopped at a Fat Burger for dinner where an uninformed young woman was serving and (like many Americans) was surprised to discover that Canadian money is coloured. But, unlike most Americans (I hope), she also thought that Canadians come from “Canadia” and was excited to have visitors from such a distant country. We were about two hours south of the border.

When I took a picture of the Fat Burger sign, she delightedly hollered across the restaurant “Are you taking a picture of us to show your friends in Canadia?”

Yes. My friends and I have no lives in distant Canadia. Our only entertainment comes in the form of pictures we take of restaurant employees in foreign countries. I didn’t know how to respond. “No?” I said. Then she asked me to come over and take a picture of her. I thought she was weird but she was nice enough so I obliged.

We seemed so alien to her that Ang was convinced she took a picture of us with her cell phone when she walked past with the mop.