I have to start by saying that this post is long overdue. The events inside happened from August 12th – 22nd, so it is about a month late. Do I back date the post to make it look like I wasn’t lazy? That said, on to the story. We had been hoping to go to NY and visit Mary Ann’s sister and take some time seeing NY for a long time, then along came the perfect opportunity. The Gallery team offered to foot the bill for my airfare so we could all meet up for a launch party dinner. Mary Ann flew up to New York on August 12th, I on August 16th. Unfortunately for me, I had to work until the 15th. We both stayed with her sister in the basement apartment of a brownstone. It was about 4x larger than the room I stayed in when I was in New York about 7 years earlier!
The first weekend Mary Ann was there with her sister, they decided to try on wedding dresses. I think that might be a hint that we should set a date, but I am still working on that. Did you know that most places don’t actually WANT you to take pictures of you in their wedding dresses? They had to think of sneaky reasons to get the helper out of the room, and sometimes couldn’t use the flash since the only thing separating them was a curtain. So some of the images might not look so great. Her favorite one was the one with the red bits in the skirt and corset. It was a deal at $2500!
On Tuesday, she met me at the airport and helped me get back to her sister’s apartment. It was about an hour away by bus, then train. She had already gotten me a week long metro card too, what a perfect girlfriend. It was about 4pm, so we just waited for her sister to get home and went out for Sushi. Since I had just gotten off my 7 day, 12 midnight – 12 noon work shift, I was dead tired by that point and passed right out when we got home from eating. This will become a common occurrence, there were only a handful of late nights for us in the coming week.
Wednesday we went to the American Museum of Natural History and Central Park. Unfortunately, the camera’s batteries died about 7 pictures in. The Natural History Museum was probably the best museum I have ever been to, but I found the stuffed animals part to be a little bit creepy. The Rose Center (the space section) along with the Hayden Planetarium were incredible. There was a collection of space photographs scattered around the entire area, all NASA images that had been lost or forgotten until some guy went through NASA’s archive and picked out the ones that looked great. And let me tell you, there were a lot of excellent space pictures.
I have to say though, my favorite part of the museum was the evolution exhibit. It started at the very bottom and room after room, worked its way up. It was well laid out, interesting and done in a manner that encouraged you to take the time to examine each part. It went on for rooms and rooms. At one point, we ended up skipping ahead to the dinosaurs and having to go back in time to where we should have been. Strangely enough, we couldn’t find the creationism exhibit.
That night we met Sando and his father for dinner, they were on their way to England and just happened to be spending one night in New York before they left. Sando is a friend from EverQuest who we have been playing with for about 4 or 5 years, I think. When he started, he was like 12 or something. I think he is like 13 or 14 now. Is his hair white? Just a little!
Thursday was our Coney Island & New York Aquarium day. We took the train all the way out there, it was quite easy and was probably the shortest walk from train station to point of interest. We rode the roller coaster, went to the aquarium and had a hot dog at Nathan’s hot dog stand. It wasn’t a bad day, but when you get down to it… Six Flags beats Coney Island in the amusement department. The Tennessee Aquarium beats the New York Aquarium hands down too. It didn’t help that there were millions and millions of screaming kids at the Aquarium. Don’t get me wrong, I like kids… but there were just too many.
Thursday night was the best night in New York ever. Mary Ann’s sister managed to get us tickets to the Spamalot show. We were almost center, about 6 – 8 rows back. It was just awesome. It was like a live action Monty Python and the Holy Grail with a little bit of Life of Brian and a fair bit of original material. Absolutely fabulous. We even bought the soundtrack! Of minor note is that sitting 2 rows in front and to the left of us was Danny Masterson (Hyde) from That ’70s Show. We were not 100% sure until some girl came up to him and asked him for an autograph.
Friday found us going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see a Roger Fenton photography exhibit. They were quite interesting, one of the earliest “photographers.” Eventually photography became so easy, popular and congested that he quit and became a lawyer or something. We got in touch with “Bart” (the gallery project lead) who got us in touch with someone who wasn’t at work like he was. They informed us that they were in Chinatown having Dim Sum. That sounded like a good idea, so Mary Ann and I headed down to Chinatown and called them to find out where they were… only to find out that they were done. And this is where meeting up with the gallery people starts to fall apart. We wandered around Chinatown visiting fun shops and had lunch, then set off to meet Mary Ann’s sister and her friend while we waited to find out what the gallery folk were doing that evening.
After waiting a while, we decided to have dinner and drinks with Mary Ann’s sister and her friend… and of course, 10 minutes after committing, the gallery folk call to tell us what is going on. So there went our first possible night with them.
Saturday night was the gallery dinner… but before that, the Bronx Zoo! We set off pretty early with Mary Ann’s sister to visit. Let me say, that Zoo is great. I had tried to get a feel for it from Google Maps and Google Earth, and that feeling was that it sucked. This was part of the reason we decided to do it on Saturday, when we would only have about 1/2 a day to see it. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was a quite aw some zoo, nicely done and interesting. There was even a mono-rail!
Of course, the most important event of the whole trip was the gallery dinner. And that can be summed up with two words: “Too Much To Drink.” Free drinks, free food… it destined to be interesting at the very least. I finally got to meet most of the people I have been talking to and sometimes working with on a nearly daily basis. This included “Bart”, volksport, floridave, tim_j, h0bbel, thumb, mrtorrent, ckdake, joan, jmullan, valiant, dmolavi, johnk, beckett, schultmc and a few of the significant others. There was talk, drinking, eating, hugging and speeches. Afterwards, I had to go home and pass out. Mary Ann passed out a little earlier, but that is probably because she had far, far more to drink. Coming home was also my first taxi ride in New York, during which I learned that taxis only have two speeds: Floored or stopping.
On Sunday, we went to some pizza place on the river to meet Mary Ann’s other sister. We arrived a few minutes early and went down to a dock where Chinese wedding parties would show up for picture taking. We had our pizza, then went back for ice cream and more Chinese wedding party watching. Did they pretend to throw the groom in the water? Of course. Silly poses with the bride and bridesmaids? Yeah.
We followed up with a little attempt to go to a “Beer Garden” even with Mary Ann’s sister’s friend. Only, the subway was against us and shut down. So we hopped on a gondola, went to FAO Schwartz and got some candy and went home.
Monday was the flight out, which I thought was at 10:30am. This would be the first of a few very minor issues that would lead to us missing our flight, taking a puddle jumper to North Carolina, transferring to a bigger plane and arriving in Atlanta about 2 or 3 hours later than originally scheduled. First, our train was canceled and we had to hop off about 4 stations before the airport. Our old train was an express, one more hop would have been the airport. There is the first 10 minutes for you. We then had to wait for a local train and we arrived at the airport stop to find a bus waiting for us… to get ALMOST to it and drive off. There is the next 10 minutes.
So we arrive at the airport right around 9:28am, plenty of time to pop in, get our tickets from the auto-magical machine and get to the gate… if our flight was at 10:30am and not 10:00am. So the machine stops giving out tickets 30min before the flight… and it took us a few minutes to get inside and find the machines, so of course we couldn’t get our tickets. Then we waited in line for 10-15min which really made it impossible to make our flight. We talked to the flight attendant who told us to call some Delta “you were bitches and missed your flight” number. They say they can book us on a 5pm flight, but we can’t actually reserve them until 2pm… and its 10am now. How about connecting flights? I dunno, would have been nice if the Delta person had been smart enough to mention it. Mary Ann’s sister suggests we talk to a real person at the ticket booth again, and thank god we did. She managed to book us on a puddle jumper leaving at 10:30am with a transfer to Atlanta. It was very nice of her. Of course, I had to work at midnight on Monday… so that was awesome.