The pilot informed us that Air Traffic Control in Newark was holding us on the ground for certain reasons that only trained aviators could understand. I'd heard that one before, the translation being something like: "Three engines flamed out on this mother on the flight to SFO and the mechanics are still trying to find the problem. They probably won't though and we hope that it don't happen to us." We spent 2 hours on the ground. When we finally took off I commented, "Those tailwinds had better be 300mph now" (the captain had previously informed us that they were 120mph).
Flying was no problem, the libations we had consumed while on he ground made everything quite smooth. Our inflight movie was "Ghostbusters" which was a pleasant surprise and now I'm more hip to a lot of the Temple of Zuul. The "Customer Service Managers" (what you and I call "stewardesses" (are male Stuardites "Stuards" and female "Stuardesses"?)) were quite grumpy people, harumphing up and down the aisles and saying things like, "Are you >done< with that yet?"
Those 120mph tailwinds put us in Newark only about an hour late. We hopped a bus to Manhattan's Port Authority Bus Terminal, a semi-romantic spot where young artists with no money always arrive in New York. A friendly gentleman offered us his "cab" and when we got outside and saw his red lowrider, I say, "I thought you were a cab!" He shows me some sort of permit and (knowing he'd say the right thing) I ask my cotraveller if he wants to ride in this vehicle. Astutely, he responds in the negative. I think it was the furry dashboard and the toy poodle (stuffed toy, that is) hanging in the back doorway that turned us off. We hail a real cab and he informs us that he don't wanna go to our host's neighborhood. "Fuck you," I say as he slams his door; I'm really geting into the New York swing of things. The next cab we throw our luggage in the trunk and climb in before we tell him where we're going. He takes us there for $5 less than what that "phony" cab driver proposed. We make it to our host's at about 0300 EST.
After some sleep (finally) we wake up and...it's a glorious day (as glorious as you can get, anyway): sunny and cool. Our host makes us coffee and we head out for the I'm-going-to-walk-you-until-you-drop tour of the city (note lack of capital c). First stop, though, is the hospital where the host works. He has an eye problem and wants to get one of his friends to look at it. We go pounding into the Emergency Room (where my host was working during November) and the guard says, "Hey! Where are you going?" My host replies, "It's ok, they're with me." "Well who are you?" asks the guard. "I'M DR. A AND I WORK HERE! WHO ARE >YOU<?!" retorts my host. I must say I was impressed. It was also the first time I'd heard my host refer to himself as Dr. A (he really is a Dr.). It's a little strange to see a longtime friend as an authority figure.
The other Dr. looked at my host's eye and they muttered something about "follicles" and other cool medical jargon and sounded quite professional. The lowdown was that my host shouldn't wear his contact lenses for about a week. Wow. Let's go.
We hopped on my first subway ride and it was kind of fun. Part mass transportation, part bathroom wall and part Disneyland ride, we hurtled through the underground caverns of Manhattan. We got off somewhere around the southern part of Central Park, walked through the Park and then toward downtown, via Times Square. We walked a little further and there was Macy's! Large signs proclaimed, "World's largest store! You haven't seen New York until you've seen Macy's!" We went in and rode the escalators up and up and up. The upper escalators' treads were made of wood! How archaic! We found the toy department and played with all the fun stuff, trying to put together the funky Japanese robots and generally fooling around.
This got a little old, so we went outside to the Empire State Bldg. "Should we go up to the top?" "Sure, why not?" We buy our tickets and stand in lines and finally make it up via 2 different elevators. The view on this clear day was marvelous. I found I knew a lot more about NYC's landmarks than I thought I did. Probably comes from planning to go to NYC for the last 5 years.
On the way down, we found that some woman had lost her cookies after debarking the first elevator. "Shit!" we say. "How'd she manage the flight to New York?" (I think the nausea was induced by the car's deceleration toward the top.)
We dropped down to street level and took another subway train (I always called them "trains" and not "the subway"--I don't know why) to Greenwich Village. We did quite a bit of walking here, meandering to Soho and just looking in shops and galleries. In Soho were lots of stores carrying very neat-but-expensive used furniture--some beautiful art deco stuff. We went to a clothing store called "Ex" that featured some Japanese designer. Prices started around $100. Ouch, but nice clothing. We finally ended up in the east Village, using a circuitous route that took us through more stores and boutiques and galleries. We had dinner at an Indian restaurant on a block that was nothing but Indian restaurants. My host later informed me that they all seemed to have the same menu (only the prices varying), the same waiter and the same kitchen. Visions of the backs of all these restaurants using a single kitchen were amusing.
We made it back to a train (subway, you know?) and back to our host's apartment. My feet were in immense pain from all the walking. We settled down to sleep, looking forward to meeting Jon and Tachyon the next day. Boy, my feet hurt.
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