Vagabender

Getting personal for a moment, we're all kind of tired. We've had a good run here around the country, but it's a net expenditure of energy being on the move all the time, even if it does nominally qualify as a "vacation." We recognize the luxury inherent in what we're up to here, but on another level -- as the President is fond of saying -- this is hard work.

New York really takes a lot out of you, too. We spent five nights in the Big Apple, and we didn't rest for any of them. Thursday night the guys stayed in at Julia's while I spent an evening on the scene in the Lower East with that girl I met in Memphis (which was kind of "meh," since I don't tend to love the scene, it was too loud to really talk, and she was tired and digesting bad food), and that was as close as we got to a day of rest.

But we're not complaining. Our friends are amazing people who are unbelievably kind and generous about opening their homes and lives to accommodate our excesses. Frank was generous enough to let Mark and Sixto have the run of his Greenpoint man-shack for the duration. We all stayed there the first two nights, and Julia was good enough to open her home to myself and Luke for the remainder. Of course old habits die hard and I ended up crashing in Jeremy and Wes's den of Red Sox Fan Dudedom on a couple of evenings. It's very New York to fawn over the details of real estate, so there you go.

Friday night was especially spectacular. We had a slide show which morphed into a small but zesty roof party. We hit the Barcade just to see it -- which seemed to be what everyone else was about as well -- and then wrangled a car to roll us up to Greenpoint, where we rendezvoused with a local gang at the Palace. The Real Seal (a.k.a. Steve, The Mormon Rocket) never made it in the door, gracing Msgr. McGorlick Park with the contents of his stomach and then attempting to spend the night on a bench. We pre-paid him a car back down to Flatbush. He's going to be a lawyer.

At the Palace a few things happened. We goofed around a bit with Murph and Stock and Murph's on-and-off Asian girlfriend. Good ol' Brooke gave me her phone number which is exciting since I've been flirting with her whenever I'm in town for going on two years. I confessed to John the bartender that he was the man who turned me on to Judas Priest way back in 2001. There might have been a few other choice moments, but you get the tenor of the evening, no?

And then it was to the Lyric, to liven up Jeremy's shift behind the bar. It was a good scene, and after much gregariousness and arm-wrestling, I fell asleep in my barstool, waving away Julia, Luke and Mark's attempt to get me into their cab. Jeremy and Wes were noble enough to shuffle me home with them when they finally managed to close the joint.

So it came to pass that I woke up at 12:30, still technically drunk, hazily remembering we'd all agreed to help Frank with some carpentry at the new Transportation Alternatives office that he's building. Oh my. First I struggled over to Frank's place to collect Mark. I'd taken Jeremy's phone the night before with the idea that I could give it to Mark and be able to just call, but I'd only managed to get it into Julia's purse, where it remained. C'est la vie, so I brought Mark a vitamin water and we hit the road.

Luke made the executive decision to bail, and Steve was unavailable at that hour. By the time we got to the office (which is kinda near FIT in Manhattan), we were four hours late and two men short, and the Pizza that was supposed to be our lunch/reward had just arrived. It didn't look too good for us. Sorry about that, Frank.

But once we got into things, it turned out to be a memorable afternoon of crushing headaches, classic rock, hacksawing electrical conduit to create desk dividers, and grappling with an office plan that's essentially an all-custom job. It was fun, even when it was frustrating, and we had a large number of laughs.

To give you the quick list, here are the things we did in NYC:

• Tuesday: Arrival, settling, Capone's to see Julia do a little of her monologuishness (a piece called "Dumped" that I'd seen in embryonic form a few years back) and meet up with Mike and Kevin from MFA before they left town.
• Wednesday: Hangovers and crushing heat; errands around Bilzburg (wi-fi, lunch, computer parts), and then the Comedy Social and Grassroots Tavern in the evening.
• Thursday: Abortive attempt to work out business with Columbia and Luke. Lightning storm. Hanging out with Julia. Mediocre evening for Josh on the Lower East Side/Big Lebowski in Brooklyn for Mark and Luke.
• Friday: Egg sandwiches, laundry, rendezvous. Slide show, roof party, barcade and the Greenpoint massacre.
• Saturday: Carpentry at TransAlt, Sarah Baker's birthday party at the Cellar.
• Sunday: Brunch, organizing, dinner, exodus.

Exodus

To leave the city, we booked ourselves on the last ferry of the evening from Orient Point, Long Island to New London, CT. We had some tire trouble as we hit the LIE and we thought we were going to miss the boat, but through divine providence they were running a bit late and we were the last car on. We passed the trip in the on-board lounge chatting it up with the folks.

The bartender was second-generation at the job, a hard-working 20-year-old girl who was saving for her own ramblin' vacation next year in Europe. The other client was a gregarious Snap-On tool salesman who worked Providence, Rhode Island, but came from Long Island and went back there in the summers to dig clams and fish and get in touch with the earth. We talked micro-brews and jobs and travel and spanish and maritime cultures. It was a good experience, the ferry.

We arrived in New London and made it most of the way to Providence before going to ground at a Motel 6 at around 1am. Goodbye New York, hello New England!

(there's more)