When did Gaiken grow all of those extra chins?

He must have gained weight during his pregnancy.

Tuesday, 14 October: It was only 4.5 grueling hours by bus from Arlington, VA to NYC. There was a ridiculously polite kid on the bus who was chatting with his seatmate, and he actually referenced his time in the Boy Scouts. It was such a cliché.

I dumped my stuff at a hostel, then walked to Times Square, that gaudy ode to consumption, and found the half price ticket booth, where I picked up a ticket to Monty Python's Spamalot. At half price, it was right at the upper limit of what I was willing to pay. The show was completely awesome, and was only dragged down a little by the presence of Clay Aiken, who was adequate in his multiple roles (kind of an inspired choice for Brave Sir Robin, actually) but who seemed a bit in love with being Clay Aiken. Unfortunately, he was the only "name" in the show, so all the Claymates were cheering for him, even though he is the least experienced actor in the show.

During intermission I chatted up the lone woman seated next to me, who turned out to be a reporter from Copenhagen. She had lived in New York for several years as a foreign corespondent for a Copenhagen newspaper. Shortly after moving back home, her boss, who also publishes travel books, sent her back here for two months to write a New York travel book. It's a tough life. I asked her to join me for a drink after the show, and we went to the bar upstairs at Sardi's, which was quite mellow. Our conversation was a bit odd, for a couple of reasons. She is one of those people who loves New York, and she spent a lot of time trying to convince me that it is a great city, and that I should give it a better chance, and why all of the things I dislike about the city can actually be interpreted positively... The love-New-York people and the hate-New-York people will never understand each other. The other thing that was odd in our conversation was that I found myself clashing with her Euro-brand super-liberalism. It's not that I necessarily disagreed with her critiques of our country, but I found them to be really condescending. She had that sort of "you unsophisticated gun toting Americans should just grow up and throw out all of your guns because you don't need them and your brand of democracy is weird" attitude. So sorry we invented it! I found myself in the strange position of having to defend gun ownership and the electoral college. Well, I guess I didn't have to, but I was feeling like *someone* should. I wasn't in the mood to agree with her condescension.

Wednesday, 15 October: I dragged myself out of bed super late this morning, after enduring hours of sleep interruptions from my thoughtless roommates. Seriously, people, if you are sharing a room in a hostel and plan on getting up at 4:30 AM, you need to figure out how the key works in the door, and you need to either pack the night before, or do it in the hall. You can not spend half an hour rustling through every single thing in your luggage while four other people are trying to sleep.

I needed some Canadian cash, but sadly my bank seems to be the only one that does not change money. All of the other banks will do it for their own customers, but not my bank. Sigh. I ended up at Western Union, which gave me a decent exchange rate (I think) and only charged me $5. So that's taken care of.

I spent the larger part of the day wandering around Central Park, which was pretty nice. I started to think maybe I hadn't given NYC a fair shake, and should have stayed longer and explored more, but that feeling went away once I left the park. Just kidding, I think I would come back with a friend, but I've had enough alone time here.

After Central Park I decided that a subway ride would be the cheese in my New York cake, so now that's done. The subway system seems pretty fantastic.

I checked back at the half price ticket place, but they didn't have tickets for the other show I wanted to see, which is just as well, because it would still be pricey, and I was beat anyway. Better to go to bed early, so I'll be ready to catch the train to Montreal at 8:20 in the morning. I'll likely be out of contact for the next five days while I'm there.



Many of you know that I've never really been interested in visiting NYC, because the bigger the city, the less I like it. And this one seems like the d-bag capital of the world. But I couldn't travel the entire country and just skip New York when I am *right here.* So I forced myself to come, kinda like when I went to Niagara. Besides, I shouldn't judge it without visiting.

This city is a trip. There is this kind of lawless feeling to people's actions, that reminded me at first of Montana. Everyone just does whatever they want, and expects everyone else to deal with it. That works okay when you live in a town of six hundred people with no stoplights, but in a city this big and crowded, pretty much anything you do, ever, will cause you to tread on someone's toes. It could be argued that this gives people all the more reason to behave selfishly since you will never get what you want unless you get assertive and take it for yourself. It could also be argued that people go too far with this mode of living, and that if more people followed the rules, there would be a lot less people getting angry about things. But the anger seems brief, and a way of life. People shout or honk at each other constantly, then walk away and forget anything ever happened.

The lawless individualism is paired, weirdly, with herd behavior. As soon as a few people start to trickle across a street against the light, the floodgates open, it's safety in numbers, and everyone is in the street. The cars are pretty much completely subject to the whims of pedestrians, and all they can do about it is honk. A lot.

It's weird to be in an area this crowded. I'm completely over-stimulated, despite the fact that I haven't had a real conversation all day. Central Park was better than the streets, but there is not really anywhere truly peaceful. I guess no one comes to New York looking for peace and quiet, and the people who live here can just go home and close the door and windows, and hope they have good soundproofing. Or maybe the noise doesn't bother them. After being here for a day and a half, it's easy to see how people who live here have to tune everyone else out, for their own sanity, which is why it's possible for people to be murdered in the streets while all of the neighbors pretend it isn't happening and don't call the police. You also have to pretend everyone else can't hear you, otherwise you would never be able to have a normal conversation. That's how you end up with something like this.

And of course, everyone is always talking on their bluetooth devices. Hardly any of the devices are imaginary-- way fewer than I expected.