After my ball just dropped: the Homeward Bound Sojourner

From the last installment…

Many decide to stay in and sleep. It was my plan to stay up.

From this installment…

The ball has dropped and so have many of my colleagues, my buddies, face-down in the mud. The plan was hatched a while ago, and it looked a lot better on paper. I was to stay up with two of the CG all night. One was to be in a taxi-cab by 5:30AM to go back to Square State Capitol, the other was to be escorted by yours truly to the city of Love Brotherly.

I disappeared briefly from the CG group at the Hotel W and retrieved my bag and belongings from Actress-lady’s apartment. When I returned, everyone was asleep in the W except for my two early morning comrades. We found refuge in a nearby McDonald’s.

I nearly get thrown out of the McDonald’s for being logical.

“Hello. You want?”

“Hi, Ma’am. Happy New Year’s to you and your fine crew. I was hoping to procure a McFlurry and sit and talk with my friends in your fine establishment here in New York, New York.”

“No McFlurry.”

“No problems. I will adjust what I desire to have in the cup of good cheer . A chocolate shake, please?”

“No chocolate shake.”

“Very well then. May I please have a sundae?”

“No sundae.”

“Ice cream cone”

“No ice cream cone.”

“I’m getting the impression that this restaurant doesn’t have ice cream available at the moment.”

“No ice cream. None at all.”

“Oh, well this game has been fun, and long, especially for those behind me in the queue. Logically, it may have been –“

“No logic! Get my store out!”

“Hold on, hold on. A number one combo, please. Hold the ice cream, oh wait-“

“You give me the sass?”

“What are you going to do? Shoot me with an ice cream gun?”




We sit down and chat about our hopes, dreams, fears, and other things that pertain only to those of the female persuasion. Then, the Invasion.

Two gents and a lady sit at the table next to us, and they are HAMMERED. They set their bags o’ food down and then carefully reveal some contraband from the inside of their coats. They had snuck in some sweet booze. They asked us where we were from and we replied The Square State. Immediately the happy-go-luckiest of the group says,

“Colorado! Very comfortable. Durable.”

He explains that Colorado is a clothing brand Down Under. The other gent is as big as a house and keeps feeling around his pockets commenting that he is always losing his keys and cell phone. We asked him his profession. He said “detective.”

So we have a bartender who can say nothing more than “Colorado! Very comfortable. Durable” and a Detective who is no good at keeping track of inanimate pocket sized objects who snuck double jacks and cokes into a McDonald’s. The thing I really dislike about the situation is that it made me realize that the Aussies and the Brits make us eat their vituperations with a smile, and it is all because of the charming accent. These Aussies attacked everything, from the obesity epidemic to the size of the NYE ball that they just saw dropped to the fact that no good surfing can be found anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. If you have an accent, you can say anything to anybody and get a smiling laugh from them. Example:

Aussie: The ball was a f##ing joke.
American: Hahahaha. Yeah, it sure was.

Aussie: Your country sucks a big river.
American: Hahahaha. Yeah, it sure does.

Aussie: You Americans sure do eat a lot…and it shows.
American: Hahahaha. Yeah, we sure do.

Aussie: You have really big hips, for a lady, I mean.
American Lady: Hahahaha. Yeah, I sure do. Is that an accent I detect?

I have a story that involves a Brit and myself, but I must restrain myself at the present time and finish the relaying of this epic tale.

Anyway, the Bumbling Detective saw that I was engaged in the shenanigans of the Bartend, so he asked the ladies to come with him over to a corner of the restaurant, and proceeded to give them his Detective Business card complete with international phone number. Cast many nets, I suppose. And he was charming. I’m sure if the Colorado ladies find a weekend free and happen to be 10,000 miles away from Denver in Australia they’ll look him up. Or, if on Valentine’s Day they find no cards in their milk carton / mailbox contraption at work, call to just see “what’s up.”

We bid them adieu and go back to the W to send off our comrade. This leaves me, the Transporter, and my cargo, the Transportee, in the lobby of a rather somber high-end Hotel. It is 5AM and it is startling to see how many people are checking out at this time. The Lobby is over-run with the group of smartly dressed, authentically beautiful Indian men and women. I asked the fattest man of the group if a marriage could be arranged, and he said that whatever it was that I learned in “Bend it Like Beckham,” it was wrong.

The Transportee and I go up to the room, step over sleeping people of a weaker constitution, and gather our goods so that we can make our way to Port Authority for an early morning bus ride to Philadelphia. We successfully get down to the lobby when she realizes she does not have her hat. This is a problem because she is the one that checked the room out, and she locked the key in the room with those that were staying in New York longer than she was. I was about to suggest a Romeo-Juliet ending, because this hat seemed like that big of a deal. The front desk was contacted, and spare key secured, and she went up to the room. She came back down, and confessed that the hat was in her purse the whole time. This is why, as a Transporter, I always allow six hours more than *needed* to get anywhere.

At the Port Authority, I was disheartened to learn that on-line specials are only good for purchases on the internet. The trip to Brother Love City was 21 dollars each instead of 14, all because I did not have the wherewithal to sit down and purchase tickets. The System gained 14 (2 passengers x 7 dollar mistake) dollars more than it should have that day. Do not worry, I nearly got it all back (more on this later).

We are insanely early and insanely tired. We sit in the Port Authority basement café and watch a man in a coma get his hair mussed by another bum, and his face playfully slapped. I did not intervene, because my pacifism dial could not be found due to willful blindness.

We sleep on the bus.

We roll into Philadelphia.

Philadelphia is a ghost town. It is not only a Sunday, but a Holiday Sunday. It looks like the city has been evacuated. My cohort and I walk up the street to City Hall, and eventually see groups of men dressed like girls. Like Li’l Bo Peep girls. We walk through the splendor of City Hall, a bit dazed given our sleep deficit and the fact that the only Philadelphians we’ve seen are fairy tale cross-dressers.

Perseverance pays off, and we eventually see a parade. The streets were lined thick with spectators, and the streets were filled with cross-dressers yelling inanities. We were still in the court yard of the City Hall, a way from the street. I had no desire to watch this or make my way to through the spectators to watch this, so we start to head back from whence we came. I notice off to my left is a dad pushing a double stroller. The double stroller is structured so that one child sits in front of the other kid, not side by side. Their was a female toddler in the back, and a slightly younger male in the front. The dad was standing in this historic court yard, scratching the bill of his hat against the crown of his head. His dilemma, his quandary, his quagmire was how the heck to get the double stroller up a set of 6 steps. This made me think, as I was heading to a Starbucks I saw open on the way to the Sexual Identity Crisis Parade, that it must be an interesting problem to make historic areas Disabled-Friendly. I mentally wished the father of two good luck, and hoped that an early marriage did not end his ambition in life. This is where I wish the story of this man having any construct in my brain ends.

I understand his logic. This logic was a theme of my frickin’ trip. A mega theme.

He turned on his scanners and set the setting to “largest man in the crowd.”

He yells for me to stop and turn around, and then gestures that I should pick up the front end of the stroller and move it up the steps. I want to ask him if he has insurance, because the bulkiness of the stroller would not allow me to use my legs and not my back, and going backwards up steps with a load is never an OSHA approved activity. For whatever reason, I lumber down the steps and grab the front end of the stroller.

Keep in mind the situation.

Keep in mind, the little boy in the front.

He has no idea that I have been commissioned by his father to come and pick up the stroller. All he sees is a giant, hairy mountain man lumber up to him on a direct vector and pick him up. He did what any child would have done: kick and scream.

The dad said half-heartedly, “It’s okay.” This did not stop the onslaught on my ears. This did not stop the onslaught on my groin. This kid is kicking me in the balls and the dad is barking orders for me to just “move up the steps.” He gets to just roll the back end up, while I am carting his two cannonball weight kids while getting screamed at and kicked in the crotch.
I set down the stroller gingerly, although, according to the Geneva Convention, I had every right to toss the stroller in front of a steamroller.

The parade, I am told later, is called the Mummers Parade. Everyone I have told the story to has cut me off at “guys in dresses” and instantly shout with glee, “The Mummers Parade!” They offer no explanation of why it exists or why anyone would want to participate or spectator-ate.

Starbucks was nice. Getting the Transportee in a Cab to go the “Get Naked Christian Initiative” convention was nice, too.

I could ride a train in Philly to get to StockBroker’s house, but I am too exhausted and have a feeling I will be on trains aplenty in the remainder of the trip, so I contact StockBroker and he kindly picks me up.

Now, in the planning stage of this trip, I contacted him about staying at his house. He was amazing mature and inviting and said that he was renting the top floor of a house and that his buddy was renting the bottom floor, so that the impression was there would be plenty of room to accommodate me for a day or two. He also said that he would have some of his friends over, visiting for their first reunion out of college. How sweet. I picture a time of fellowship and camaraderie, and a house with 5 rooms.

The StockBroker drives me to a restaurant to where a lunch is in progress amongst his friends. I eat, I listen, I talk. Then the lot of us walk straight up a hill to his house. He lives in a place called Manayunk, which is American Indian for “trying to be trendy, and we’ll charge for it.”

Into the house. I just want to sleep. I want StockBroker to say, “Here is your room” and see a bed with freshly washed, folded towels on the bed. Him to walk into the room ahead of me, flip on a light in the private bathroom and say “You must be tired and want to freshen up. Welcome to my house. Let me know if you need anything.”

Instead, we march straight up the stairs, and I notice that the bottom floor does not look rented out, but rather, uninhabited. Not a trace of furnishings or anything. I am bringing up the rear on the staircase, and I look over the railing on my ascent, and see 10 more people in addition to the 5 that were at the restaurant crammed on a couch, crammed on the floor, and crammed onto what appears to be patio furniture, watching football and quoting Lord of the Rings over and over, and laughing mechanically after each line.

The top floor of the house is no bigger than a one bedroom apartment, and it is housing a fridge full of booze, a living room filled with recent college grads, and a bathroom filled with Hans’ stink. I retire quickly to the bedroom, which is filled with 14 sleeping bags covering the floor and a modest sized mattress.

I pass out. Somewhere in this time I hear the group ask if I want food. I wave them away. They come back, after a minute or an hour, and ask if I want entertainment. I wave them away. My phone vibrated in my pant pocket and I let it ring through. Then I hear StockBroker’s voice say “I’m not sure where he is.”

Then, an angel appears.

Her name is The Publisher. She scooped me up in her arms and whisked me out of Manayunk. How she knew where I was might have been due to a cell phone call I do not remember or the Divine.

She took me to Dinner in a trendy place in Manayunk where waiters are allowed to wear leather bracelets. I told her the story of New Year’s Eve and the Ball Drop, and she said that it was like a Jellyfish’s diarrhea: no form, no point. She is a publisher, so I figure her point is quite valid and I vow to never ever tell the story again.

She takes me to the West Side of Philadelphia (born and raised). She tucks me into bed, turns her head over her shoulder to show a stack of fresh towels, printed instructions of how to get to the metro (with handwritten notes elaborating the ambiguities) and a tour book of Philadelphia sightseeing, and a house key.

She asked if she could kiss my forehead, and I said Joshua Harris probably wouldn’t approve, but sure.

I awoke the next day, not sure where I was, but very sure of the time thanks to a watch: 4PM. That made it sixteen hours of continuous sleep. I am now recovered from Times Square.

I call StockBroker and we agree to hang out at his place, since 12 people have left in the last 16 hours. It was pouring rain, and by the time I am picked up Publisher is back and gives me an umbrella and warm wishes. She apologized for not having the time to bake fresh cookies or secure a cow and milk it. She is the best hostess in the world, providing me a bed and a shower and not controlling my schedule. I rewarded her efforts by losing the house key in the rain and leaving the umbrella in StockBroker’s car.

At StockBroker’s we try to decide where we can go to watch the bowl game (Ohio State’s Hawk vs. Notre Dame’s Brother of Hawk’s Girlfriend) on a decent TV. Every place in the trend-setting Manayunk (we built our homes in the hills, and hills are like trend lines in of themselves) has either a crappy TV or has kicked the StockBroker out for disorderly conduct (offering waitresses IPOs in exchange for an evening’s worth of “company”). So we opt to order in and watch on StockBroker’s TV.

The pizza that came was deemed the moniker of MeatWave. It was so grease-laden the restaurant’s standard policy is to put it in two boxes. The only spared of its wrath was StockBroker himself, who decided to reheat a steak on a sketchy contraption that did not properly fit over the burner on his stove. I asked StockBroker where he got the contraption, and he explained one of his co-workers had recently got married and brought in a box of various things that had been outlawed by the Mrs. Being an opportunist and not a shopper, StockBroker picked it up this heat-plate of sorts, and attempted to reheat steak with it, flipping the steak precariously with a plastic fork. I realized at that moment that nothing was in the cupboards or drawers as far as food or instruments, and nothing would be until StockBroker got married.

In the middle of a later bowl game StockBroker made a “Well,” noise and stretched his arms and went to bed. I asked how I was to get back to the place I was staying, and he said “Take a cab.” His friend asked how he should get back to the hotel at which he was staying, and StockBroker said, “Meet fantasticterrific. His specialty is sharing cabs. Good night, suckas.”

I call Publisher. She picks us up, as the cab company gave us an upper bound of infinity on a cab coming up the hills of Manayunk.

The next day I venture out into Philly. I have been once before an saw the Bell. I was determined not to do so again. So, I went over to the Constitution center. I was carrying my backpack and all my possessions in it. The security guard made strange faces as he pulled out clothes, toiletries, and an autographed picture of Aaron Burr. He informed me that I could not sleep in the museum.

With that, I loaded my bag to my back and started up the stairs, only to hear a sharp “HEY!” behind me. I turn around and the security guard was beckoning me with his Homeland Security endorsed gloved hand.

He took me under his arm, like a father about to say that it is “Cool to wait, you know, to abstain from smoking the drugs and doing it with girls” and informs me that free-of-charge venues are across the street. Apparently, I was just about to go see a museum without paying for it.

Apparently, I was going to see the Liberty Bell again.

I also saw Independence Hall. The Birthplace of the nation was pretty cool. Not as cool as Babe Ruth’s birthplace or JFK’s birthplace, but pretty cool nonetheless.

I needed cash before going to New York City, so I decided to hunt down a Bank of America. I finally find one and insert my card to gain admittance to the ATM. Being Bank of America LINK, I should have known they’d design their system to be the dumbest in the world. Instead, I had good faith that you would insert the card parallel to the ground with the strip on the bottom side. When I was denied admittance, I tried to enter through a lobby of sorts, where I was quickly accosted by a security guard and told that I could not sleep there. I told her that her assessment of my being a bum was not too far off, but that this bum had a credit card. She told me to try the card with the strip point to the sky.

It worked. Thanks Bank of America! When you aren’t liars or really inconvenient, I enjoy banking with you.

I did not just need cash for New York, I needed singles. So I ducked into a 7-11 and bought a coffee. In retrospect, I regret this choice, because at the spicket they were offering hot chocolate made with Hershey’s Chocolate. I imagine this is like having Clam Chowder in Boston: appropriate and rewarding and anti-climatic.

Publisher and I eat at a place trying to emulate Chipotle, minus the IPO. I asked her to forgive me for losing a house key and an umbrella. She said no. I offered buying her guacamole for her burrito, and she said that I was forgiven.

A bus is to take me back to New York City. I was going to write a hilarious little diddy on how this lady’s derriere owed me 3 dollars for taking up part of my seat, but this was better done on the best of Craigslist.

Back to ActressLady’s. I without snag get myself from Port Authority to her apartment and we watch Arrested Development episodes until we puke.

January 4th, 2005, will be a day remembered forever by Cat, ActressLady, and the Hawaiian. ActressLady and the Hawaiian had spent over 6 weeks and 82 dollars trying to get two items for the upstairs bathroom: an elongated toilet seat and a device that sat down in the tub drain to collect hair and germs.

In a matter of one hour and 4 minutes, Cat and I successfully secured a toilet seat and drain hair catcher, installed them, fixed the wall clock, ate Pizza at Pete’s around the corner and held a party for the Democratic Party in the living room. Ted Danson, Ted Kennedy, and the dapper Kerry step-sons were in attendance. We talked about Sharon’s health status and what could be done about that nefarious Toby Keith and the Ford truck revolution. The answer was biodiesel, obviously.

Later that evening, ActressLady contested an Xcel heating bill. The operator told her to check the meter readings, and ActressLady asked if it looked like a parking meter with a fundraising thermometer on it. Xcel wisely hung up the phone. ActressLady and I went into the basement where the washers and driers commingle. We spotted a door that was deftly labeled with a permanent marker “utility’s”.

Locked.

ActressLady was going to retire to the green room and let life hand her whatever script was in the chute.

I was never an actor. The world is not a stage, but a war zone.

I took out my wallet and extracted a library card. The ActressLady rolled her eyes, and started up the stairs, trying to think of some monologue to convince her roommates to shell out six hundred dollars a month for heat. She could not, so then she started to think about the indecent proposal that Robert Redford had given her the night before. Then the picture was shattered to smithereens by the audible click of a Mesa County Public Library card moving the locking mechanism out of the way.

She was thoroughly impressed and asked if I was seeing anyone. I asked her if she had read the Fountainhead, and she asked “Is that the Vogue spin-off?” and I told her I was a priest. A super priest.

Anyway, we read the meters, and decided to come back down the next night, a 24 hour period, read them again, do some SERIOUS mathematics and extrapolation and see if the Xcel bill was really that outrageous or not.

The morning came about quickly on January 5th. This was ActressLady’s Birthday, the first one away from home. The gals whipped up a great early morning breakfast and I was given the duty of getting her out of bed. Now, she has a cell phone alarm that has the voices of her mother and sister beckoning her out of sleep. I don’t know how she stands it. The most heinous sound to me when I am in the final REM cycles of the night is the voice of my mother, and just for the record my mom is a voice model.

Anway, I go down very calmly to her bed. I cannot touch her, because her bunk is 15 feet in the air. I trip over a pineapple top and it hurts because I am bare foot and a wuss. I decided to use the power of logic to get the birthday girl up and at ‘em. No wet willies, no yelling or water or peppermint sticks. It worked. It worked because nothing works without logic.

As an additional gift on the birthday I go with Cat to pick up a package on Birthday Girl’s behalf. For the record, for your information, by the way, I spent 44% of my time in New York in package pick-up related situations. Stop sending your friends in New York packages. Send gift cards. I’m serious. You are not being impersonal, you are being savvy .

The USPS took so long to find this package. The sign above the window said that ID must be presented, and we were hoping that Cat would be able to use her ID and the fact that she was a girl to pick up a package that was for a Cathryn and had a different last name on it (“I swear, mail man, I JUST got married.”). Anyway, the USPS was taking so long that Cat had to skedaddle off to work (Starbucks). So, here I am, in minute 45 of waiting for a package, not looking anything like a Cat or a Cathryn or a female holding the claim slip. There is no way, with the Patriot Act in full swing, that this Federal Institution would give me this package.

They call out ActressLady’s name.

I, the Lumberjack, the antithesis of feminity, approach the window.

“You’re Cathryn?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a girl’s name.”

“Ever hear of Cat Stevens?”

“Oh MY GOD! I lost my virginity while Hard Headed Woman was playing. Here you go, Cat.”

I left the Post Office and headed towards Cat’s place of work. She works, as mentioned before, at Starbucks. I passed three on the way to the particular one she works. I only walked 5 blocks.

America!

I then walked over to where the Birthday Girl was working. Her job basically entails taking reservations for a restaurant while the restaurant is not open for food or bar service. I told the owner that I had invented a device that could replace Birthday Girl. It would do the job just as well and not suck away money while practicing different ambulances for her Acting and Walking 101 class. The owner said I needed to eat something because I was too thin.

She opened the package, a birthday gift that contained some candies and a poster making fun of Winnebagos. Again, nothing that could not have been secured with a gift card that could be sent directly to her, instead of being re-routed into the annals of the USPS.

Later that day, I decided to go down to 14th street, for no reason other than the fact that Rufus Wainwright sings a song about 14th street. I concluded that 14th street must be a very long street, and I was not on the same part that Rufus had been. I did duck into a sweet Barnes and Noble and rock out to the OK GO cd. Then I made it back to ActressLady’s for a birthday dinner.

It was very delicious. ActressLady had her roommates, some of her classmates (all British with those accents that make us willfully eat our own excrement with a smile, if so commanded), and an old high school friend who had taken up residence in the Big Apple. ActressLady, being the Birthday Girl, very selflessly made us dinner and it was delicious (as I stated in the first part of this paragraph). During the dinner, the Hawaiian was shooting off a Gigapixel digital camera complete with paparazzi flash. This reminded the aspiring thespians of a paparazzi craze. This spawned the idea of creating a pseudo-paparazzi phase.

Basically, the set-up was to have one of the actresses dressed up in scarves and sunglasses and walking with a friend arm in arm. Then one “passerby” would shout, “Oh no way, Keira Knightley?” and dump their long johns while chasing them, which would cause a chain reaction amongst other strategically placed “passersby.” Then, a “member of the tabloid press” would just happen to be walking up 86th street and hear the shouts, and being an opportunist, quickly come into pursuit of the mob. The Hawaiian decided not to act, but just be herself, which involved sitting on the stoop and sporting a half consumed bottle of Midnight Express.
The whole ordeal (anagram: Laredo) was filmed with a digital video camera, and was about as exciting as an arson (anagram: Sonar) without an instrument of ignition. The camera could not be everywhere there was sound, so only the tail end of the scene could be deciphered as to who said what. Oh, and of course, at the end of each run we would run into the apartment and watch what had just happened! Basically, it was a session of not being able to hear a single thing and all the female participants pointing out other’s “cuteness” and “funniness” in hopes of receiving the accolades themselves. It escalated something like this:

“You’re so funny.”

“Oh that’s hilarious. You’re hilarious.”

“You are so cute.”

“No, you’re cute.”

“You’re SO THIN.”

“No, you’re so THIN, even on CAMERA.”

“YOU ARE THE BEST.”

“NO, YOU ARE THE BEST. I AM NOT THE BEST.”

Then, little slap fights broker out. Then I spoke up and said:

“Who wants to be Keira this time around?”

and the slap fights ceased and all the girls put their right hands in the air yelling, “Me, me, oh me, please? Me!” like Kindergartners.

Oy. And I did not escape it unscathed. When I hinted that I would like to be the star, one of the Brits commented, “Who’d you be? Louis Anderson?”

And because of the accent, I smiled and said, “Yeah, I guess I do look like Louis Anderson. Thanks for talking to me with your voice. I love Tony Blair. I want to buy you an orange glazed éclair that looks like Blair. Then I’ll hold it up and give it a little British voice, and ask you, “Orange you glad to see me?” What? You want me to eat my own poop? With a smile? Ask me again with your accent. Oh, okay. You are so charming.”

The birthday party ended, and the next day I re-visited Garlic Bob’s pizza. I went on a pizza tasting rampage, and decided that Garlic Bob’s had the best pizza. I ordered a whole pizza for pick-up.

I showed up to pick up my pizza, and while waiting in line a Puerto Rican comes in with two of his buddies. The Puerto Rican engaged conversation with the over-worked Garlic Bob:

Puerto Rican: You played me.

Garlic Bob: What does that even mean? “You played me?” “YOU PLAYED ME?” I played you in basketball? I played you in a game of cards?

From stage left, entered the sweetly retarded help. Garlic Bob was yelling at him to give me my pizza, while snapping a towel at the Puerto Rican youths. The help handed me the pizza and told me to have a nice day.

Now, in the confusion I was never asked to pay. I wanted to leave with the most delicious, most free pizza in the world at the time being. But, I believe that this would have been wrong. I am not gaining a pizza so much as losing integrity.

Plus, God would have given me a burnt roof of my mouth for all of eternity, and I hate having a scorched roof.

So, I wait in line again, with a pizza. The Puerto Ricans re-appear.

Puerto Rican: Hey, Hey! Garlic Bob, how much is that slice?

Garlic Bob: Sixty-five thousand DOLLARS! A special just for you!

The Puerto Ricans disappear again. I can only imagine they were going to a bank to withdraw sixty-five thousand dollars.

Garlic Bob asks me what I am still doing there. I tell him I haven’t paid. He nearly slaps his help with the pizza splade.

The help takes my card swipes it, hands me the card and my receipt. The cost I was quoted on the phone was $13.58. The receipt said my card would be charged $1.35.

I was really frustrated. I earnestly tried to do the right thing once. I contemplated leaving a $12.23 tip, but then I took the stance of tough love. The help needed to learn from this experience. So, I left a $0.65 tip and walked out with a two dollar pizza.

God said he is considering a reduced sentence for my first efforts.

The roof of my mouth hangs in the balance.

I then find myself in the Port Authority to get on an Amtrak train from NYC to Chicago. Now, I had purchased a student advantage card minutes before purchasing the train ticket online. The card cost 20 dollars, the savings it enabled on train ticket was 28 dollars, for a net of savings of 8 dollars. This combined with the $11.58 savings on the pizza made it $19.58 total in my favor, whereas there was the Greyhound bus on-line special debacle that had cost me seven dollars lands me still at 12.58 in the fat money. That’s how you travel!

Anyway, I did not have printing capabilities when I purchased the card, but was able to copy and paste the id # into the Amtrak site to get the savings.

Well, there I was, staring a New York train ticketer in the face trying to convince him that I legitimately owned the card and did not just use my buddy's. He asked where my final destination was, and I said Colorado. His face changed. He said, “Coloradans are honest, God fearing people. You have a nice ride.”

18 hours on the train from NYC to Chicago. Kinda cool, kinda not. No, I did not have a Sleeper car. I did not plan well and had no food or liquid for the trip, and the microwaved brawurst from the food car made me swear I would remedy that for the next leg of the trip via train.

Chicago was awesome. My hostess in Chicago was awesome. Chicago Pizza was awesome. Sipping a Windy City martini in the Signature Lounge on the second highest floor in the John Hancock Center was awesome. It is way better to pay $10 dollars for a drink and get a view for free as opposed to paying $10 dollars for a view. We weren’t sure if there was a dress code at the Hancock center, so we called ahead, and they said no street shoes. This made us go to a huge department store and nearly had me purchase marked down Merrill slippers for 19 dollars, size 16. We decided to instead risk it and that my hostess would stand very close and directly in front of me to hide my street shoes.

Turned out to be a non-issue. The dress is beyond casual. One man had his genitalia out, stirring drinks.

In the morning, I boarded a train with 28 dollars worth of candy bars and drinks purchased from a train station convenience store (all other down town grocery stores were closed, and I was not about to eat another Bratwurst or lap up water from the lavatory sink).

I snuggled into a seat next to a fierce looking bic-headed man.

He got up and offered me his Maxim. I did not want to look at it, then again, I did not want to be too rude and out reject it in a “holier than thou” sort of way, so I grabbed it and flipped through very quickly. Apparently, Hilary Duff is good at singing and acting and her sister is riding the coattails of Napoleon Dynamite but not wearing them: she posed in the Maxim in next to nothing, with her mom on the set.

The Bic-headed Man returned. He complained, emphatically about the price of a Corona.
I told him that I had spent a heavy amount of money at the Train Convenience store, trying to make small talk. I kept wanting to sort of share the misery, but this guy definitely had it worse.

Fantastic terrific: So, visiting Chicago?

Bic-headed Man: No. I came up from Louisana – took over 30 hours to get to Chicago, and then spent the night in Union station.

Ft: Oh. Well 30 hours beats my 27 to Grand Junktown.

Bic-headed Man: Y’know what also beats your 27 to Grand Junktown? The 38 I’m spending on this leg from Chicago to Martinez. My old lady told me to take a train – “see the country”…I’m going to yell at her when I get to California.

[I begin to read The Fountainhead, because I have no misery that can match this man’s]

BHM: 10 times worse what you’ve seen on TV. 10 times.

FT: Excuse me?

BHM: The hurricane. I worked on a shrimping boat. I was going to buy it in the next couple of months- I was saving my money. Wait – [gets up, climbs over me to the aisle, digs in his bag in the overhead bin, and produces a picture of a boat that is amongst debris that used to be housing] The Luna. One night I had to defend my house with a shotgun. These guys came up with sticks and clubs and were demanding I give them my diesel. I told them I would make them a sandwich, give ‘em a beer, but there was no way they were getting a drop of my diesel. They went on. So, everything’s horrible there, I sent my old lady out to California, where her dad is the head of the department of transportation, and he’ll set she and I up with jobs.

FT: How long has it been since you’ve seen your wife?

BHM: My wife? Years.

FT: I thought the hurricane –

BHM: Oh, my girlfriend? 4 months.

FT: Ah, my apologies. You see, when you said “old lady,” I thought you meant wife. Perfectly understandable. You needn’t tell me anything else about your life.

BHM: Yup. My Ex. That’s a story.

FT: (thinking: I am only in hour 2 of this 27 hour journey…just read The Fountainhead…just look like you’re really into it…)
BHM: My Ex won’t let me see my kid.

FT: Ah- (There’s a kid involved!)

BHM: When she was pregnant, far along, she was telling me how she wanted a divorce and how that she wanted alimony but she wasn’t going to let me see my kid and she was going to tell him that I didn’t love him, that his granddaddy and grandmammy didn’t love him. So I did the only thing I could do: I went out the night he was born and got a tattoo of his name on my arm. That way if ever searched me out, he would know the truth.

FT: Whoa. That’s a statement. (Or you could’ve bought a savings bond in his name and helped him out with college, but ink is louder than dollars, I suppose).

From Chicago to Winter Park, you are not missing anything. Do not let Johnny Cash’s version of “City of New Orleans” trick you into taking the train, as it did me. Do let Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt” convince you to never do drugs, as it did me. From Winter Park to Grand Junktown, it was gorgeous. You are on the other side of the mountains from I-70 and see beauty that cannot be seen by car, but only by train, boat, or stunt airplane/helicopter. My notes tell me I also saw a carcass of a buck laying on the frozen river, its blood bright on the white.

I detrained in GJ. I walked over to Burger King, and ordered the Trippple Patty skycraping Whopper, in the honor of the King Kong promo. I King sized it. Upon eating it, I realized that combining the cost of the food consumed on the train journey with the train tickets (even with the Student Disadvantage card) I saved no money (and definitely no time) taking the train.

My travels continue in the Square State. More on that later...