aalgar.com

 

Day One

 

Woke up at 4AM after tossing and turning all night. I have this incredible, apparently unconscious fear of not waking up for things. This translates to never being able to sleep well when I have to be up early the next morning. The good news was, we did make it to the airport in plenty of time. It was more crowded than we expected for 5AM on a Saturday motning, but thankfully everything went smoothly. I was pretty impressed with Continental as a wghole for an uneventful and as-comfortable-as-coach-gets trip. Still, next time I really want to try this JetBlue. Comfy chairs and DirecTV are an easy sell for an antsy, claustrophobic and easily distracted fellow such as myself.

 

The advantage to being up at 4AM east coast time is that we arrived in San Diego well before noon. Granted, it was two hours till we actually made it to our hotel room (somehow my usually spatially-challenged friend Dave found it well before we did, despite the facr that we stayed here for a week only 9 months ago). In any event, the room wasn’t actually ready for us anyway, so we had to kill a little time.

 

Being, as we were, unbearably hungry, we turned to Dave for dining suggestions. He ran through a short list, identifying what he thought we might find interesting. We both stopped him at a place called Claim Jumpers, which he described as serving “oversized novelty food.” That sounded good to Lauri and I, not having had a good meal for nearly 24 hours now.

 

He wasn’t kidding about the food at Claim Jumpers. My portions and Lauri’s were sufficiently enormous, but the entertaining part was Dave’s lunch. I don’t remember what the exact name of the dish was, but the gist was “this is an enormous fucking sandwich.” The waitress warned him that it’s not nearly as big these days as it once was, but since he’d never ordered it before, Dave was safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t know what he was missing.

 

What they brought to him was, no exaggerating, at least 8 inches tall. Even if you sliced these sandwich halves in half, they still wouldn’t comfortably fit in a normal human mouth. This thing would make Dagwood cower under the table in fear. Somehow, though, he put a major dent in it, leaving only the pound or so of meat debris that fell out while he ate.

 

 

 

Somehow we managed to make it back to the hotel (good thing I got the extra-large Explorer or our newly-increased asses might have exceeded the rental’s weight limit) and found that, once again, the room was not ready. In fairness to the good people at the Fairfield Inn in Carlsbad, check-in time is officially 4PM, and we were pestering them on an hourly basis starting at about 1.

 

We had time to kill, but we were tired and weighed down by unholy quantities of food, so that seriously limited our options. I suggested we check out the used-CD store we had visited on the last trip — a store that had provided me with many new discoveries at a serious bargain. Dave and Lauri agreed, and we piled back into the Explorer.

 

As it turns out, we only made it about three feet before disaster struck. I could blame any number of factors on what happened next, but the sad truth is that I was just careless. As I reversed the vehicle, my progress was suddenly halted by a small bump, a faint “crunch” and the horrible realization that I had backed straight into a parked vehicle. It was a vehicle that was illegally parked on a “red curb,” but it was a vehicle nonetheless. I had sufficient clearance to back around him, had I actually been paying attention

 

 

 

I like to think I had the rear-view mirror turned off, and therefore didn’t see the SUV behind me. We had only moments before been joking about the apparently useless “power” button on the Explorer’s mirror. But again, I was dumb. That’s the only real explanation here.

 

 

 

i could have just driven off, but that nagging sense of decency got the better of me. I waited in the lobby to get the attention of the desk clerk, in hopes that he might point me to the owner of the vehicle, or allow me to deliver a message through him, should the owner show up in the near future. I had to wait for a customer in front of me to complete his transaction, however. Playing a hunch, I followed him as he walked out. Sure enough, the vehicle was his.

 

 

 

Here’s the sad part: he actually missed the damage, got into the vehicle and started to drive off. And I actually chased him down. Dammit, when did I grow a conscience?

 

He was upset at first, but also very insistend that we not involve insurance, which was fine by me. I got the distinct impression that he was doing something illicit, or at the very least, slightly sleazy, with the woman he had with him, but I could not prove this. Anyway, he took a check for $300 from me (a bargain as far as my limited damage estimate abilities were concerned, and Dave concurred) and agreed to drop the issue. I would, of course, have to deal with being $300 short of skimpily-planned vacation money, and with the rental people… but that would be later. Now I just wanted to engage in some serious retail therapy.

 

Fortunately, the music store provided it. I found an elusive Digital Underground CD I’d been seeking, and on a whim I picked up a greatest hits collection of Frank Zappa. I’m really glad I did that, but more on that later.

 

The store was good to us, and we eventually wandered back to a room that was finally ready for us. I even managed to park without colliding with any 2-ton objects.

 

That was pretty much our day Saturday, as we both slipped into unconsciousness soon after unpacking. It had been a long day, and we had an even longer one planned for Sunday.

 

Day Two

 

Woke up at 4AM again, but only because they call it 4AM out here instead of 7AM. (Still with me?)

 

Today is the day we visit Ridgecrest, the city in the middle of the desert in which my job expects me to work for six months starting next October. I had high hopes for the place, but they were quickly diminished… it’s about like the town in which I live now, only not near anything. Mind you, my biggest complaint about my current residence is that it’s not near anything, but I practically have the entire east coast in my backyard compared to this place.

 

The nearest town of any consequence is Bakersfield, which is a 2 hour drive. Los Angeles is 4 hours. San Diego and San Francisco are about 5. It’s a depressing little military town with no apparent comic store (or even book store for that matter!). The original plan was for Lauri and I to take up residence there for 6 months, then move out to San Diego for the next leg of employment. Now we’re leaning more toward her going on ahead to San Diego and us visiting each other on weekends for that 6-month period. Can’t say that I blame her.

 

About 20-30 miles outside of Ridgecrest, on the only road there is, we saw this ridiculous little shanty town. Dave accurately described it as such: imagine if you were cleaning out a junkyard. This is where you would actually throw the stuff you wouldn’t want in your junkyard. There were a dozen or so little shacks that looked like they were going to fall any minute, a diner that was apparently open for business, and the aforementioned junk junk. One of the shacks had a satellite dish on it, but possibly no roof. Hey, you gotta have priorities.

 

We entertained ourselves for some time, attempting to name the sad little collection of pseudo-structures. Among the better suggestions were St. Fecalsburg, Shit-cago and Diarrheasville (as in “wastin’ away again in Diarrheasville”). Yeah, it was a pretty slow trip.

 

What made it especially slow was the presence of a driving phenomenon that plagued us the entire trip and continues to baffle me: Californians’ complete inability to JUST FUCKING GO. At many points along this and other journeys, we would come to a complete bumper-to-bumper gridlock situation that would go on from anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours. Once we had cleared the jam, the result was always the same: no lane closures, no accidents, no major road shifts. It’s as if, randomly, everyone decides they like it fine just where they are and screw anyone else who needs to be somewhere.

 

I actually did that major assholish thing that I hate people doing — I passed a shitload of these freeway-parked cars on the right shoulder. I would never do this on the east coast, but something just felt right about it out there. Probably because I had been in the car for something like 14 hours at that point and I really just wanted to get back to bed.

 

I actually opened my eyes at one point, about 30 miles from the hotel, to realize they’d actually been closed in the first place. I’m not sure how long I’d been asleep, but it was sufficiently frightening enough to allow Dave to take the wheel for the remainder of the trip home.

 

Day Three

 

Adjusted to the jetlag now, we got up at about 7.

 

I woke up in a pretty foul mood this morning. Lauri says I was tossing and turning. I guess I have stuff on my mind: we wasted an entire day of our vacation driving out to the desert, and what we found — the place we’re expected to spend 6 months of our lives — was really disappointing. I very carelessly hit a guy, and I feel like a complete imbecile for it. I didn’t bring enough money with me to really have fun the way I like to, or even to feel comfortable in case of a proper emergency. (Forking over $300 to a stranger didn’t help.) I’m getting a lot heavier, my food intake increases and my ability and desire to exercise is steadily decreasing. (I spent 10 minutes in the gym and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Meanwhile, I’m shovelling in cheeseburgers like there’s no tomorrow. We’re in a land where McDonald’s actually has veggie burgers — quite possibly the most health-conscious area of the country — and I keep ordering double cheeseburgers and country fried steak.) The combined force of all this negative energy is making me irritable, which usually leads into antisocial fcelings. So unless I do something to radically turn around my mindset, I risk ruining the actual fun parts of this trip: assembling with my friends for New Years’ and other stuff. My goal for today is to quit moping and make a serious course correction before I ruin the vacation by worrying that the vacation is ruined.

 

*****

 

An hour later: made a bunch of phone calls, talked to several good friends, many of whom I have not seen in a long time. This simple (and seemingly obvious) act has made me feel tremendously better. I guess sometimes the best remedy is jumping in and facing things. We’re off now to Long Beach, to see the Queen Mary.

 

*****

 

We took the long way to Long Beach: up the coastal highway so Lauri could see the breathtaking views of the ocean she missed on our last trip out here. Eventually, with a little help from Dave, we made it to our destination.

 

The Queen Mary was built as a luxury liner for transatlantic cruises in the 30s, but was also used as a troop transport during WWII. The tour was expensive ($25 a person, though Lauri covered us), but a lot more interesting than I would have expected. I’m basically a sucker for anything historical I suppose.

 

 

 

It was Lauri’s hope that we would see some evidence of her grandfather’s passage aboard this vessel during the war. Unfortunately, according to the short film we saw, the Queen Mary carried something like 800,000 troops over the course of the war, and there weren’t a lot of pictures of individual soldiers. Nevertheless, it was an interesting diversion.

 

 

 

The drive back, despite the fact that we took the freeway, was once again long and frustrating. Either I’m more annoyed than I should be by this or I’m becoming a true Californian. I’d like to think the latter.

 

Late evening, we met up with several friends and ate in an authentic English pub called Shakespeare’s. I know it was authentic because the food was horrid but the drinks were good. I had a shot of some sort of toffee liqueur (did I spell that right?), and it was quite yummy.

 

Day Four

 

Surprisingly, dealing with the rental car people in regards to my idiotic mistake went surprisingly smoothly. I filled out like 6 blanks on a form (3 of which were my name, address and phone number), and someone glanced at what he called “a scratch.” They offered me a new vehicle, but I opted to keep the Super Star Destroyer I had drawn. I was almost starting to get used to the thing.

 

We proceeded downtown to meet our friends Ben and Jen, who were also visiting from Maryland. Their hotel had been overrun by something called The Weinernationals — a convention of weiner dogs and their owners. Being, as it was, sponsored by the hot dog chain Weinerschnitzel, the dogs were referred to only as “weiner dogs.” Not once did the word “daschund” come up.

 

The Weinernationals involved a parade of some sort, which made navigation downtown difficult. We eventually found parking and hooked up with our friends, choosing to wander down by the docks. In most cities, this is where you’d find the shiftier elements, but San Diego puts their quaint little shops down there for some reason.

 

I guess quaint shops weren’t up Jen’s alley though, because she wanted to go to the mall. Not to disparage Jen in any way, but I didn’t come 3000 miles to hang out at Electronics Boutique or Hechts. I wanted to see California-exclusive stuff, and apart from the fact that the entire mall was open to the elements, there wasn’t anything particularly unusual about this mall. So Lauri and I left, opting to hang out in our room for a few hours.

 

We eventually made our way back to Ocean Beach, where our west coast friend Jenn (note the two Ns for clarity’s sake) and several other friends from Way Back live in a sort of communal apartment complex. There, we enjoyed a fairly pleasant Mexican dinner and genuinely pleasant company. I had a lot of fun just sitting in my friend Adam’s house, discussing our thoughts on Star Wars, Tolkein and other stuff… I realize this doesn’t exactly make for compelling reading though, so I’ll end this account here. Suffice to say I was finally starting to not have a sucky time for the first time all week.

 

Day Five

 

My paycheck was deposited to my bank account today, 3 days earlier than normal. This means all my worries about money are finally over, and I can actually spend enough to properly enjoy this vacation.

 

We met up with Ben and Jenn in the morning for breakfast, and ended up eating in one of those places of which southern California seems to have an abundance. They’re generally run by hippies or some sub-group thereof, and 90% of the menu is vegetarian friendly or derives from some culture halfway across the world. I realize looking down on places like this really betrays my narrow-mindedness, but there are just some areas in which I’m not especially receptive to experimentation. I’ll try anything under the right circumstances, but when I’m hungry for a proper meal, I don’t want to risk getting something that will make me lose food from my stomach that isn’t even there yet. So I got some kind of wheat-breakfast-burrito thing, basically biding my time till we could find a Denny’s or something.

 

We met up with Jenn after that, and walked around Ocean Beach. For the first time, I was really starting to relax. I was seeing things I wanted to see (the ocean, little shops, scantily clad locals), but I wasn’t feeling pressure to continue on to the next thing. We just wandered, stopped for some coffee, and generally enjoyed ourselves, rather like two people on vacation might.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I say we weren’t feeling pressure to continue on to the next thing, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a next thing, because there certainly was. This was, after all, New Years’ Eve, and Jenn had expertly scheduled the requisite drinking for our small group of about 10.

 

And drink we did. It’s funny… I don’t like Red Bull and I don’t like Jaegermeister, but something about mixing the two together really appealed to me. That I don’t remember how many I had is a testament to just how tasty they were.

 

We all had a great time at Moondoggie’s, the bar that Jenn had chosen. I took great pleasure from 9PM onward that, where I was from, it was next year. No one else seemed particularly impressed by this. Nevertheless, we rocked in our own midnight to what was apparently a rerun of the ball dropping in Times Square, which felt like kind of a letdown. Fortunately, the festivities were not.

 

Much of this had to do with Jenn’s husband, Ian. Ian is best described as the id personified — he’s all about sex and violence. We all think it’s tremendously odd that Jenn, who is a staunch feminist, among other things, could tolerate, much less love, a guy like Ian. But they’ve been happily married for six years now, which just goes to show me why my friends listen to their hearts for love advice rather than listening to me.

 

Anyway, Ian. Ian is, like me, very ADD, but he does not enjoy the benefits of medication. Consequently, he’ll do things like chug down 5 drinks in half an hour and wonder why he’s not drunk yet. (Give it a few minutes, dude!)

 

At one point in the evening, I had the misfortune of laying eyes on Ian’s very hairy ass, while he was mooning… someone. I foolishly made a remark along the lines that the next time his pants drop, it had better be full frontal, because I didn’t want to see that again. Unfortunately, this bluff may have worked with any other friend of mine, but Ian saw it as merely a challenge. Seconds later, I found myself inadvertantly staring at Ian’s rather substantial penis. He himself was grinning broadly, and actually had to be told to put it away.

 

Eventually though, the evening caught up with poor Ian. Just prior to “last call,” he became deathly quiet, and began staring around strangely. He would pick up random objects from our table — empty bottles, salt shakers, a candle — and turn them over repeatedly in his hands, as if he’d never seen them before. And he started muttering about picking fights, which I knew full well he would do if given the opportunity.

 

So Ben and I (mostly Ben, though the Red Bull had a profoundly sobering effect on me the whole night) kept a close eye on Ian for what remained of the night. There was vomit involved — some of it on my vehicle as Ben drove us back to Jenn’s house — and Ian promptly passed out in the shower upon arriving home. Jenn assured us that this was normal, and that he was in no danger of drowning in there.

 

I ended up staying up till about 5AM local time, which I twistedly realized was 8AM (well into the work day) east coast time, hanging with my friends. A small pipe of green stuff was passed around, and I was forced, as I always am, to abstain. Such is the curse of federal employment. We watched TV, we talked, we generally enjoyed ourselves. This has been, by far, the best New Years since 2000… maybe ever. And I really needed it.

 

Day Six

 

Very little to report. Had breakfast (a normal breakfast!) in Ocean Beach, then limped home to the hotel and slept most of the day.

 

In the evening, we hooked back up with our friends and just hung out, watching TV. At one point, we ducked out for food and ended up at one of those west-coast-specific fast food chains: In and Out Burger. In and Out’s claim to fame is that they have three items on their menu: hamburgers, cheeseburgers and fries. This is intended to eliminate the selection process and ideally to help them focus on doing one thing really well.

 

Thing is, apparently there’s a “secret menu” at In and Out Burger. This is how people know how to order their burger “animal style,” for instance. (”Animal style” is “with grilled onions, you sicko.) This, and other oddities, are not on the actual for-the-public menu, and I did not personally invent the concept of a “secret menu.” The cashier actually mentioned it. He was clearly a trainee, which makes me wonder if he was actually supposed to tell me about it at all. Should I be fearing for my life over this?

 

Just in case I should, here’s a link to their secret menu, just so the secret doesn’t die with me.

 

After all that, the burger was only “eh” anyway, which is good because I’m swearing off fast food in 2004. Really. As soon as we get home.

 

Day Seven

 

We had no real plans today, which is probably why it turned out so well. We spent one more day with Dave, starting with a great breakfast, continuing with a stroll down the beach that was apparently 3 blocks from our hotel the whole time, moving on to fun at an arcade (I lost against both of them at air hockey) and concluding with an outstanding Italian meal. This is another of those “believe me, I had fun, but it’s a boring story” things.

 

The Trip Home

 

The flight and drive were entirely uneventful. It’s nice to be in our home, and to see our pets. I’m a little depressed that I have to go back to work on Monday, after having been off for an unprecedented 16 days. There’s a rough year ahead, but by the end of next year, I’ll be in California. Okay, so I’ll have to wait a few more months to be in the good part of California… but the point is, I’ll be out of here. And that’s the best New Years resolution I could ever make.

 

Oh yeah, and our kitchen apparently flooded in our absence. Fortunately, we left our home and our babies in very capable hands, and they apparently put a cork in the worst of it. It remains for us to mop the floor and call the plumber. Oh, and thank all the people that prevented the situation from getting much worse. So lots of free meals are almost certainly in my future.

This was a really great idea that I never got to properly see through to the end. The problem was, I had very little time available to me that summer due to the demands of my job. And I had a hard time convincing myself to do something terrible with the downtime I did have available, regardless of how entertaining it might have turned out. I may give this concept another try at some point. Like the failed “Consumer Retorts” feature I did for the now-defunct online magazine Hackedtobits, the title is just too great not to use.

Cruel Summer — the travel feature that drops me into things I’m guaranteed to despise — is officially in full swing. Despite the fact that I actually had a pretty decent time at the Orioles game a few weeks ago, external factors are doing their part to ensure that I remain sufficiently miserable for the next few months. My job’s been getting nice and incomprehensibly hectic, promising to deliver regular, unexpected kicks to my groin for the forseeable future.

And then there’s the rain. We’ve enjoyed (if you’d call it that) liquid precipitation for something like forty of the last fifty days, usually on Saturdays and Sundays. Our beagle would get lost if we released her into our front yard, which we haven’t had the opportunity to mow since sometime around when we rolled the clocks ahead an hour. But that’s okay, because she seems to be having lots of fun wading and paddling through the standing water in our mostly-grassless back yard. And we won’t even get into the brand new bicycles I bought for Lauri and I back in March. I’m starting to worry that they may actually somehow go rotten just sitting there in the shed like that.

So, yeah. The summer’s really shaping up, and it doesn’t even really need my help. Nevertheless, as promised, I will press on, continuing to seek out activities that provoke a blend of horror, squirmy discomfort and just a pinch of morbid curiosity. Which is how we arrive at Rose’s: the only topless bar in my entire home county.

Sure, on the surface it seems like I’m copping out. I mean, how hard can it be to get a couple of guy friends together and ogle at naked breasts over mispriced cocktails? Does this fit the bill of an intended “cruel summer” when the recipient is a young, heterosexual male who enjoys the occasional social drink? Clearly you’ve never heard of Rose’s.

The thing is, I have. Repeatedly, throughout my entire twenty-year residence in this area. Rose’s Place II (as it has officially been called for at least two decades) has become the stuff of urban — okay, rural — legend in this town. But, as with so many other legends, I could never find anyone to directly corroborate the stories. It was always the friend of a guy whose brother worked as a bouncer one night, or something along those lines. All the stories of the women being in their sixties and seventies, being at least 300 pounds each, having visible symptoms of horrid venereal diseases… as believable as they might be, these stories were all entirely unsubstantiated.

All I knew for certain was that, at some point in the latter half of the twentieth century, topless bars were outlawed in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. By virtue of having been open prior to the passing of this law, Rose’s Place was officially excused from its jurisdiction — grandfathered, as they call it — and has remained the only establishment of its kind in our area ever since. Beyond that, it was all sewer alligators and sasquatch sightings: fun to believe, but not bloody likely.

Mind you, it’s easy to play the disbelieving skeptic when you’re just sitting at home. Actually stepping into the place was another matter entirely, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little hesitant. (And I think that’s how I can really tell if I’ve chosen a good subject for this feature — if I’m desperately trying to talk myself out of it as the event approaches.)

I was among friends, however. In addition to the two Guy Friends I had invited down from “up the road” (I live on a peninsula, so everywhere is “up the road” to us), I also managed to convince Lauri to come along on this little adventure. So it couldn’t possibly be all that bad. And that was the problem, in a nutshell: it wasn’t all that bad. Mind you, it wasn’t “good” by any definition I’ve ever known… but it wasn’t nearly bad enough to heckle, especially with the ruthless company of hecklers that I keep.

It was your typical dingy redneck bar: low lighting to disguise the poor sanitary conditions, a whole two kinds of beer on tap (Bud and Not Bud), waitresses with big hair and smoky voices who call everyone “hon” and brush past every male in the place with just a bit too much familiarity. And then there’s your typical redneck bar patrons, complete with mullets slicked back with Crisco, surly expressions and maybe a full set of 32 teeth between the dozen or so of them. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the old lady behind the bar — easily in her seventies, hovering near the far corner of the bar away from most of the customers, dutifully performing the usual busy work of a barmaid. I suspect this was the “Rose” spoken of on the sign outside.

The women? Yes, a bit older than most you’d expect to find in a strip club, but certainly not the septu- and octogenarians we’d been primed to witness. Each one was probably 20-30 pounds overweight, but probably had a pretty decent body ten years and six children ago. They were skanky and sleazy, sure, but this was a strip club in southern Maryland. I grew up here, and this is about what I’d have expected.

There was one black stripper who called herself “Precious” who saw fit to come over to our table and chat us up for a few minutes. I was impressed that she was the only one out of the five dancers we saw that took the time, but the whole time she was there, I couldn’t help thinking about the little poodle in Silence of the Lambs that the girl down the well takes hostage.

Yeah, we were actually kind of bored. At one point, we got into a lengthy discussion about what the most unsuitable song to strip to would be. That was good for some big laughs, but it was also a clear indication that it was time to leave.

What a disappointment. If I can’t even count on the local Haunted Whore House for a dismal time, I guess I’m really going to have to haul out the big guns. I smell a trip to New Jersey on the horizon.

“You’re going to a baseball game. In Baltimore.”

“Yes dear,” I respond. She just doesn’t get it. I’m not even sure I get it entirely.

When I came up with the concept of “Cruel Summer” — several months of deliberate travel misery for the purpose of generating more interesting writing — I thought I’d struck comic gold. But that was on paper. As my first scheduled event loomed, I began to doubt what I once believed to be a brilliant plan. My wife did have a point, after all: I hate Baltimore, and I hate baseball. Why, then, would I go to my least favorite city for a day of watching one of my bottom-five least favorite activities? And would “because it might prove entertaining” really suffice as an answer to that question?

Waking up that morning (after a night of distraught tossing and turning) to the sound of torrential downpours didn’t help matters. I wasn’t crazy about seeing a baseball game on a sunny day — I sure as hell didn’t want to get soaked while I did it, or get all the way to Baltimore only to find that the game had been cancelled. I may not have much of a life, but I certainly could produce about a dozen better things to do with a Sunday, and that’s just off the top of my head.

But I gave my word (not to mention $50 for a ticket), and being a semi-responsible adult (at least pretending really hard), I made it to the predesignated meeting area at precisely 8:30 that morning. Already waiting, or just arriving, were my travel companions: five men in their early forties with whom I work. All are married or divorced, with at least one child. Four of these men are former active-duty Marines; the other is retired from the Navy. And then there’s me. Twenty-eight. No kids, no military experience and no real desire for either. To paraphrase the old Sesame Street song, “five of these things belong together…”

But, believe it or not, I have a lot of fun with these guys at work. Mind you, they’re not drunk when this happens. So you can imagine my surprise upon discovering two large containers in the minivan that was taking us out to the ballgame. Each container was about two liters in capacity — one contained pre-mixed margaritas and the other contained pre-mixed Bloody Marys. And everyone — the driver of the vehicle included — had poured themselves a cup from one or the other.

I know I tend to repeat myself sometimes, but I really think you need to understand what I’m getting at here. These men are drinking hard liquor at 8:30 in the morning, at the start of what will likely be a very long day in the sun (assuming the rain clears). One of them is driving a minivan with five passengers in heavy rainfall for about two hours, into territory that is unfamiliar to him. And this particular person, who has only gotten about two hours of sleep since going out drinking the night before, will eventually suck down four or five of these drinks before we make it to Baltimore. I offered to drive, but was immediately accused of belonging to “the church” and promptly handed a margarita, which I set to the side.

On the one hand, this was beginning to feel like an incredibly stupid, almost suicidal, choice on my part. But adventure is what I was after with this whole “Cruel Summer” thing, and I got exactly that. If nothing else, though, at least now you can understand why I’m choosing to be vague in the descriptions of my running crew, and why I’m not dropping any solid clues as to who committed which illegal act.

Somehow we made it to Baltimore in one piece — and I determined this only by reassuring myself that I would not be in Baltimore if I were dead as I don’t actually believe in Hell. We left the van in a parking garage and I stepped out into the rainy Inner Harbor area with five guys old enough to be my dad. We had no real destination in mind — we were just out to kill the approximately ninety-six hours until game time. Don’t ask me why we set out on a two-hour car trip five hours before we needed to be there. I just did what I was told.

Naturally, the primary goal of any drunk at 10:30 in the morning (or anytime really) is to be someplace where he can acquire more alcohol. But this was Sunday morning at the Inner Harbor, an area known for its family-and-tourist-friendly attractions. Believe it or not, the paddle boat rental stand doesn’t carry beer. Nor does the aquarium, the sunglass shack or the three-story Barnes and Noble. And that tells you just how much of a geek I really am: I would have been happy hanging there till they closed at midnight.

Someone — our inebriated chauffer, I believe — got it into their heads that they wanted hot wings from Hooters, so we began combing the area. After a short stumble, we located the restaurant of choice, but (surprise!) it wasn’t actually open yet. So I grabbed a cheap, but dependable, burger from the local Johnny Rockets and continued secretly hoping for rain.

The weather was actually starting to clear at this point, so we took our stuff (they with beers they’d located from an indeterminate source, and me with my burger big enough to choke a moose) to an outside table for a little male bonding. By “male bonding,” I mean mostly listening to one particular drunken soul ramble on and on about work-related stuff. And not even good work-related stuff either — this was stuff like “how do we get everyone [the other departments outside ours] to love us?” It really was more than just a little pathetic.

Then again, it was nothing compared to the conduct displayed by this person and another in our group upon entering Hooters. Now, I have no illusions of maintaining complete dignity in this particular establishment — the servers are young, busty women in revealing outfits. Naturally, a group of heterosexual men are going to do a fair amount of ogling and perhaps a little harmless flirting. But I’d classify the behavior of the drunkest two of our group as “over the line,” to say the least. I’ve never seen the line, but I know it exists, and I’m positive ass pattery crosses it. So do inquiries into when the waitress’ shift is over, especially when they come from a middle-aged, married man. Our waitress did her best to ignore the clumsy advances, and it probably wasn’t very difficult, considering the increasingly incomprehensible speech emanating from the lips of these two.

Around this time — as the opening pitch grew near — the two gentlemen in question became pretty much the only ones continuing to drink themselves into a stupor. My remaining three cohorts seemed clear-headed and reasonable, as witnessed by the constant eye rolling that was being done in reaction to these other two. And it only got worse as we entered the stadium.

It turns out that one of them is an incredible Yankees fan, and he proceeded to tell us and the 10,000 or so other people who had gathered to watch Baltimore play Tampa Bay that every team but the Yankees could bite his intoxicated ass. At least, I think that’s what he said. Whatever the exact words were, I found myself finally developing my first strongly-held opinion of baseball: I can’t stand the Yankees now. I love New York, and you can’t argue against a team that continues to achieve the ultimate goal of their sport, but if all their fans are even 5% this obnoxious… wow. That’s still really obnoxious.

Somehow, in spite of the continuing drunken antics of 33.3% of our group (one of them, no kidding,got thrown out of a concession stand), I actually managed to have a good time. The game itself turned out to be much more interesting in person than it appears to be on television, thanks in no small part to the club-level seats we’d purchased with our fitty bucks. There was a lot more action, apparently, than one typically expects in a baseball game — 16 runs, three or four homers, and a dramatic coach with a short temper. They always make sporting events more entertaining.

So despite my incredible negative attitude, despite all my prejudices and the embarrassing conduct of a couple of cohorts, I still found myself wrapped up in nine innings of a damned close baseball game. I can’t say the game made me a fan, but I definitely have more respect for the sport than I had starting out. By the end of the game (which, unfortunately, the Orioles ended up losing), I was actually cheering good plays, singing along with some of the stadium songs and just all-around having a good time. I drew the line at singing “God Bless America” at the seventh inning stretch, though — I thought it was supposed to be “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” so that’s what I sang.

So the game ends, and we all start meandering toward the parking garage. All of us, that is, save one of our two drunkards. I’ll spare you the details — and believe me, there are many — but the gist of the story involves about an hour on cell phones, a search party and the insistence that we find another bar. Thankfully, I volunteered to make the drive home, and if nothing else ever convinced me not to have children, driving a minivan with two stupid-drunk guys babbling incoherently did the trick.

Bottom line time. What did I learn? Baseball’s not so bad. It’s the Baltimore Orioles, not the Oreos. Hooters girls are easy on the eyes, but, like in a strip club, it’s better if you keep your hands off. And, perhaps most importantly of all, it’s Shirley Temples and Cokes for me from here on out.

Okay, here’s the thing: my last few vacations have been almost entirely disaster-free. Great for me, but not much in the “fascinating reading” department. I think the problem is that my early adventures happened to me when I wasn’t prepared for travelling great distances. That, and I was young and too stupid to remember things like my airline tickets, or how to handle awkward sports cars on wet roads. I once fancied myself quite the travel writer, on account of the incredible stories I was able to tell after each major expedition. It turns out, though, that a story is only as good as the events contained within it, so short of lying about things, I’m not going to hold anyone’s interest with a report on just how pleasant it is to relax for a week in the California sun.

Hence, this little experiment. Since my writing is only really good when I suffer (all comedy, it is said, comes from conflict and suffering), and I actually have the hang of the whole “point-A-to-point-B” thing these days, the only way I’m going to generate some readable material is to actively seek out the suffering. Or, to put it another way, like some people’s parents always said, I’m going to give myself something to cry about.

Throughout the summer of 2003, I’m going to be actively seeking out things I would normally never do — things that will very likely make me absolutely miserable. You can call me an idiot (you wouldn’t be the first), but I like to think of it as “suffering for my art.” You people only seem happy when I’m not, so this is really all your faults. So watch this space in the months ahead to examine the fallout of your selfishness. And have a great summer!!

 

I used to really want to be a travel writer. Those of you who have followed my exploits across the country know that I had a rather long string of bad luck for awhile there — cars dying on the way home from Florida, endless circles in New Jersey, nauseous marital engagements in Las Vegas and the like. So while I only ventured out occasionally and then only to do things of moderate interest, the fact that every journey was a disaster, and consequently made for a hell of a story, really helped compensate for the innate dullness of any particular vacation.

But some time in the last few years, things started leveling out. I can’t pinpoint it to an exact time, but it seems to have coincided with a number of other events in my life: getting married, taking my day job more seriously, thinking about things like retirement and interest rates and paying the bills on time. I’d always feared that “growing up” would equate to a decrease in adventure in my life, and it turns out I was right.

But the thing is, “adventure,” by my definition, entails a lot of horrible experiences that end up making a great story. So while I may have compromised the entertainment value of my occasional outside world expeditions, the upshot is that I end up having a pleasant, and very rarely catastrophic, time. I’ve always been willing to suffer for the sake of my writing, but it’s never anything I’ve wanted to do deliberately. What I’m trying to say, in my usual rambling (yet somehow endearing, don’t you think?) way, is that the following account isn’t particularly exciting in the usual dramatic sense. Part of me apologizes, but the larger part of me — the part that’s happy to have an incident-free vacation — just can’t manage feeling sorry for enjoying itself. Happiness and relaxation follow; you have been warned.

The destination in question this time was southern California — last seen by me five years ago (see my epic account in my book, The Sarcastic Verses, for the full story), and never before seen by my wife. A number of factors made this trip possible: our fourth anniversary being a couple, a desire to take an extended vacation instead of our usual quick weekends away, the fact that we actually have more friends in the San Diego area than on the entire east coast. And then there’s the possibility that we might be moving there in a couple of years — a possibility of which I had not even been aware until I’d asked my boss for the time off a couple of months ago.

“Yeah,” he said casually, as if we’d discussed it a thousand times before, “that’s where your job is going when this program is over [2005]. You might want to start taking a look at the area.”

Bear in mind that, until this point, the only possible options presented to me by my employer following the termination of this particular government contract have been horridly uninhabitable southern wastelands like North Carolina or Texas. No one ever once mentioned the possibility of California to me. But now that the notion was on the table, the entire scope and purpose of this vacation was transformed. Now we were motivated not only by the desire to kick back and ignore our responsibilities for seven days, but also to investigate the idea of kicking back and ignoring our responsibilities for a couple of years. Call it another nail in the “growing up” coffin, but long-term house hunting somehow made this trip that much more exciting to us.

We left Maryland on Saturday, the first of March, dodging the melting remnants of a recent blizzard that had deposited nearly two feet of white stuff on the ground. I derived a sort of sick pleasure in rubbing in the details of our impending vacation to whomever I encountered — we’d be spending a week in the land of perpetual 72 degree days, we planned to visit friends who lived at the beach and oh-by-the-way, we’d rented a convertible. I may have grown up in a lot of ways over the last few years, but I think I’ll always derive a little pleasure out of a good old fashioned “nanny nanny boo boo” every now and then.

Here, now, is my travel journal for the week that followed:

Saturday, March 1
We arrived at BWI airport several hours early, not knowing what to expect in regards to the ever-changing climate of heightened airport security. Apart from an extra ten-minute delay at the metal detector and regular ID checks, it really wasn’t very different. We got on our plane, sat for a bit, then were informed that we’d be delayed due to the failure of a part that could not easily be replaced. (I thought about piping up at this point, seeing as I order aircraft parts for a living, but I’m never sure what level of joking will now be construed as a terrorist threat, so I just kept my mouth shut.) We were eventually herded out of the plane and told that we’d be making the trip on a different plane that would be arriving in a few minutes hence. Much hilarity ensued as the location of this alternate aircraft changed approximately fifteen times in eight minutes, resulting in a large mob of people tackling one another for a good spot in line. (Did I mention the first-come-first-serve seating policy of this particular airline?) There was also, apparently, a little confusion as to how to get the door to the plane open, but they eventually worked it all out.

The resulting delay only meant less time for us to wait for our connecting flight in Chicago — a good thing, considering O’Hare Airport looks, according to Lauri, like a giant dorm room, filth and all. We arrived in San Diego about fifteen minutes early — time enough to confuse our friend Dave, who was still on his way to pick us up. Dave has a tendency to wear shirts that would give MC Escher a headache, and I was hoping I’d be able to step off the plane, sporting my own hideous shirt (bought for me as a gift, especially for this trip) and make his jaw drop. Unfortunately, the accursed efficiency of Southwest Airlines made that wacky site gag impossible. I swear, even when the world is trying to be helpful, it just manages to get in my way.

After much confused circling — pretty much the only way Dave knows how to travel, I’ve realized — we found the rental car agency. We encountered a kooky character that — get this — made this great joke about my last name (“Watt”) sounding like the word “what?.” I’ve only heard this joke about forty bazillion times in my short life, but he actually managed to “zing” me with it. Blame the jetlag and circling if you must — I’m willing to fess up to just being an idiot who wasn’t paying attention.

The car was everything for which we’d hoped: a Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder, with the requisite convertible top. The extra expense was absolutely worth it. I could not imagine a more appropriate vehicle for our visit.

 

Me, possibly unconsciously compensating for some perceived deficiency in the genital department. “Vroom!!”

Dave took us out for authentic Mexican food, prepared by authentic Mexicans. I didn’t tell him this, but I wasn’t all that impressed. It may be true that “real” tacos contain shredded beef instead of ground beef, but I guess I’m just a casualty of Taco Bell hypnosis. I like the Americanized version better.

We parted company relatively early (bearing in mind that it was 3 hours later to us, and that Dave had to work that night), and checked in to our hotel in nearby Carlsbad. As we trudge up to our room, I notice the California state flag for the first time. It’s a hodgepodge of communist symbols — a bear, a red star, the word “republic.” I am probably more amused than I should be by this.

Sunday, March 2
The first of many exciting days that just don’t translate well in writing. We spent most of the day driving around the vicinity with the top down, soaking in the weather, the architecture and the meticulously kept local flora. Gave Dave enough time to sleep, and then hooked up for lunch. For the first of many times, Dave turns to his sister for directions to someplace right around the corner. This is much funnier in person, trust me. Plus, his sister’s hot. Dave blathers endlessly about his recent trip to Maui, but somehow it doesn’t diminish from the sunny paradise that we’re experiencing now. In SAT terms, Maryland :: San Diego as San Diego :: Maui.

 

 

The view outside Dave’s back door. Yeah, I can see why he wants to move away from California.

 

Ate lunch, wandered a cool used CD store, played mini-golf. Really, as I mentioned, nothing that makes for an exciting travelogue — just quality time with a friend that we only see once or twice a year. Plus, stuff like this really gives us a feel for what weekends would be like if we lived here: lots of hot girls (where do they keep the ugly people here?), an abundance of entertaining things to do and several cool people with which to do them. For the first of what will be many times, we consider not returning home. The only thing that keeps us from doing this is our pets and the slight technicality that we don’t have jobs here.

Monday, March 3
Woke up at 6AM, pretty much recovered from any jetlag. However, it turns out that I’m apparently allergic to the entire state of California, and I spend the rest of the trip with a gallon or so of ectoplasmic goo lodged in the cavity behind my face. As a result, I end up making lots of noise when I sleep, making sleep for Lauri pretty much impossible. I slip out of the room very early for breakfast and a workout in the hotel’s exercise room, giving her the opportunity to catch up from her loss.

This is the only cold (well, below 60) and rainy day of the trip, which sort of drains our desire to do very much. We check out a Spanish mission (San Luis Del Rey), which I had originally considered something of a compromise to Lauri, but actually ended up being really interesting. The craftsmanship of the religious artifacts and the garden impress the hell out of me, though I can’t help wondering what all this creative energy and skill could have done had it not been in the service of forcing indigenous “heathens” to accept what I believe to be an ill-informed belief.

 

 

I’m even more impressed than I look.

 

 

Whenever I step into a church, all I ever seem to think is “what a great apartment this would make!”

 

We drove around a bit more, and eventually found ourselves inadvertently at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base where my job is supposed to be in a couple of years. There were no signs or warnings, mind you — we were just driving along and suddenly, there’s an armed Marine asking us for ID. He was the best kind, too: the kind that enjoys messing with people’s heads. “No turnarounds, sir,” he said with a completely straight face. Then he proceeded to try to sell me on enlisting. I tried explaining to him that I was already (sort of) serving, in that I was supporting helicopters flown by Marines, but he wasn’t all that impressed. It was just as well — I was out here to forget about work anyway.

After a bit more wandering, we located Roberto’s, a sort-of-fast-food establishment that came with glowing recommendations from coworkers of mine that had been stationed out here. These recommendations were well founded: for just over $2, I got a burrito that you could fit a newborn baby inside. I still would have preferred ground beef, but such is life.

Tuesday, March 4
My mother’s birthday. She and my dad, as well as my aunt and uncle, were celebrating the occasion in Las Vegas, and we thought it might be fun to “pop over” for a surprise visit. This took about five really boring hours (following a speeding ticket before I even got out of San Diego county), but the end result was highly worth it — I haven’t seen mom so pleasantly surprised in a long time.

That was pretty much the whole point of the trip, though we did soak in a little of Vegas while we were there. This being our third trip, however, it just seemed… un-magic, somehow. The gambling wasn’t all that exciting (I broke even), the buffet was okay and the lap dance I got (come on, we were in Vegas) just didn’t do anything for me. Call it the ADD if you must, but Las Vegas just bores me now. I’m glad I made my mom happy, but I can’t imagine coming back here again. Anyway, we still have lots of California left to see.

Lauri and Dave took turns driving the car back, this being probably my worst day of allergies, and I squeezed my 6’ frame into the 2’ container that was the Spyder’s back seat. We spent almost this entire day in the car — but at least there’s only a single straight road that goes through the desert. This makes it difficult for Dave to take us in circles. So at least we had that going for us.

Wednesday, March 5
Woke up feeling a bit better, though I apparently snored as loudly as ever. I again allowed Lauri to sleep in, this time going out for a drive to kill the time.

I spent a few hours cruising the coastal highway, admiring the beach, the mountains, the ocean… and, naturally, the hot women. (I’m assured that my wife doesn’t mind.) Eventually we hooked up with a number of old high school friends of mine who all migrated out here and now live in the same apartment complex about a block off the beach.

This, without question, is where I’d want to live when/if we move. Not only is it jam-packed with old friends (and new friends of theirs, all of whom seem equally cool), but there’s this incredible little town with shops and restaurants and stuff. Oh yeah, and the ocean. I waded into the Pacific about to my knees, and though it was cold, I contemplated risking the pneumonia anyway. The only thing that stopped me, really, was the fact that I had half a dozen small electronic devices in my pocket. Which, all things considered, was probably for the best anyway.

 

 

The Pacific Ocean.

 

We traipsed to Balboa Park, the central hub of culture and education in the San Diego area. I was a bit put off by the fact that the surrounding museums expect you to pay to get in (I guess I’ve been spoiled by the Smithsonian), but the actual park was pretty damned interesting. The famed San Diego Zoo also makes you pay (unlike its counterpart in Washington, DC), but they apparently have pandas here too. Did you know this? I’d always been led to believe that our east coast pandas were the only ones. Breaching the subject with my west coast pals seemed tantamount to risking some kind of panda warfare, so I just let it drop. I’m certain our pandas are better, though.

 

 

One of the buildings in Balboa Park. I guess I should have done less frolicking and more note-taking.

 

Anyway, the park. We saw a cactus garden, containing about a hundred variations on the “narrow spiky plant” motif. We checked out some pretty buildings, the requisite artsy sculptures and fountains, and I learned that the park was apparently not named for the explorer Balboa. A large plaque at the entrance claimed it was erected in honor of someone else entirely — whose name wasn’t even Balboa. I’m still trying to work this one out.

 

 

Me, my friend Adam and some water. There were a number of hot chicks just outside the borders of this picture as well. Honestly.

 

 

Clockwise from left: Jenn, Lauri, me, Adam and some large rhinestone-studded snake/crocodile thing whose name I never got. (Does this picture make me look fat, or is it my big honkin’ pot belly?)

 

Another great day of sightseeing and hanging out with friends, but once again lacking in the fascinating anecdote department.

That evening, we hooked up with Roman and his wife, Carrie. My relationship with Roman is a very peculiar one. Prior to this trip, we’d met in person exactly once, about twelve years ago, and then only for a few hours. But Roman grew up in the same town as I did, about 6 houses up the same street. The big thing we had in common was Mark, a very close friend to both of us earlier in life. Through Mark’s fascinating tales, I felt like I knew Roman better than just about anyone, despite that whole pesky “not having spent a whole lot of time with him” thing.

Roman found me a couple of years ago, while doing a web search for Mark. (I try to give credit where it’s due, and Mark’s name probably turned up a few times in reference to the creative collaborations we’d done.) So Roman and I began e-mailing, and I’m sure he was more than a little put off by the fact that I knew enough about his past to qualify as a stalker. Nevertheless, we managed to hit it off fairly well, thanks to an abundance of shared experiences and interests, and this visit was the final culmination of this bizarre phantom friendship.

Roman and Carrie (who, it turns out, is equally cool and interesting) fed us, then regaled us with the other half of the stories I’d been hearing from Mark all these years. It must have been really odd for Lauri to watch inside jokes whizzing over her head, since I was exchanging them with a guy I was only meeting for the second time. It certainly was for me.

Oh yeah, we also brought Mark’s brother, Adam — who had lived a couple of miles away from Roman for about nine months now, but hadn’t managed to call to this point. Just call me The Great Uniter. Or AAl. It really doesn’t matter.

Thursday, March 6
More driving around, a bit of lounging by the hotel’s pool. At some point, we made it to Los Angeles, but it was surprisingly unremarkable. This may have something to do with the fact that we visited a comic store and a bookstore — both enormous and easily capable of accepting large amounts of money from me — and hightailed it back out of town again. We just didn’t see anything that remotely interested us, apart from the aforementioned shops.

Plus there’s the whole driving thing. LA has this reputation for traffic congestion, and I can now personally vouch for the veracity of that reputation. However, I cannot provide an explanation for it — as far as I can tell, people just don’t go. It’s like there’s four cars — one in each lane — that want to go about 20 mph, and they end up backing up the whole damned city. We’d never stand for this on the east coast — certainly not on DC’s beltway, and absolutely not in New York City. I know the “New York and Los Angeles are so different!” thing is played into the ground, but I just had to make a note of this. I’ll take NYC’s pushy assertiveness over LA’s… whatever the hell this was, any day.

Oh yeah: four years ago today, Lauri and I met in person for the first time after getting to know one another fairly well online and on the phone. We both officially consider this the beginning of our relationship. And now, here we were four years later: happily married, jetsetting to LA to buy comic books and heckle the freaks. Yay, us!

Friday, March 7
Very little to report. By this point, we were just completely overcome by the prevailing laid-back San Diego attitude. Also, we were doing way-too-responsible grown-up things, like packing early and doing our laundry. Didn’t I tell you we’d gotten really boring?

Eventually, Dave showed up. We ate lunch, drove around… then, fell asleep. That’s right — we actually went back to the hotel room, watched a little TV, and fell asleep at about 5 in the evening. Mind you, we’re talking about a group whose average age is 27. It’s not that we’re old, or even that we had been overdoing it. I think southern California just does that to you. This wasn’t laziness — it was comfort. And as pathetic as it sounds, I really like it.

That evening, we attempted to locate Dave and Buster’s, a sort of grown-up arcade that also serves liquor. We probably would have had better luck driving to the one in Maryland, since we let Dave navigate, but we eventually found the place, after three or four calls to Dave’s sister. (“You’re retarded!” she exclaimed upon realizing why he’d called. ‘nuff said.)

The driving actually wasn’t that bad — considering that we’d voluntarily spent the rest of the trip doing pretty much the same thing — it’s just a lot of fun to harass Dave. I’d expect no less from him if our roles were reversed.

Saturday, March 8
An incident free return, apart from the difficulty in getting my suitcase — which contained a quadrillion newly purchased books and a large gift coconut that Dave had brought back from Maui — closed. Everyone we met along the way was super-pleasant, and apart from the unavoidable claustrophobia that closes in after 7 hours on a plane, it could not have gone better. We got home about an hour ahead of our expected time, happy to see the pets but otherwise missing everything else about southern California. We’re both completely ready to move as soon as my job gives the word. End of vacation.

I told you it wasn’t a very interesting story. Still, given the choice between enjoying a relaxing week in the sun and being tortured for your amusement, I hope you won’t blame me too much for choosing the former. I always have that “nanny nanny boo boo” to fall back on, if nothing else.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Jen approached me and a handful of other close acquaintances with the idea of purchasing tickets to see Blue Man Group in New York City. I’d attempted to talk most of the same people into seeing them when we visited Las Vegas together last year, but the ticket prices ended up being a little over everyone’s heads. Jen managed to secure us a fairly substantial discount through her place of employment, however, and thought it would be great fun to reunite that same group about a year later.

The occasion of that trip had been my recent marriage to Mrs. Sarcasm, and Jen’s to her husband, Ben. This, she reasoned, would serve as a sort of joint anniversary trip. That excuse made the offer that much more enticing, but it really doesn’t take a lot to talk me into visiting one of my favorite places in the country.

There’s no logical explanation for why I enjoy New York City quite so much. By rights, I certainly shouldn’t — I hate crowds, I can’t stand people getting in my way and I have a difficult time focusing when I’m forced to absorb large amounts of sensory input. But something happens when these elements come together in New York — somehow, they just manage to throw it all together in exactly the right combinations.

Actually, it’s not all that hard to figure out why I get along so well up there. This is a city constantly on the move; a city that smiles upon the impatient and the easily irritated. It was the backdrop for a very successful sitcom involving four incredibly selfish and petty people, and remains the undisputed cultural epicenter of American sarcasm. Also, they make a mean pizza pie. I can’t imagine a place better suited to my specific personality and needs.

Here’s the really scary thing, though: I love driving in New York City. I have no rational explanation for this — I just enjoy the otherwise largely absent self-confidence that surfaces as I cut off taxi cabs and make left turns from the right lane. The real trick is, as with pretty much anything in life, to act like you know what you’re doing, even (especially!) if you don’t. I think everyone involved in our recent expedition was a bit skeptical when I began bragging about my vehicular proficiency within the confines of America’s largest city, but I think I’ve since proved my point. But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

Mrs. Sarcasm and I got an early start Saturday morning, making it to our friend Bob’s house by about 10 AM. There was a minor directional setback involving a sloppy bit of guesswork on my part (maps are our friends; next time I’ll check one), but we were finally headed in the right direction by about 11. Not long after that, we met up with Vicki.

Let’s make a little side trip here for a moment so I can explain Vicki. Vicki’s a coworker of mine. Actually, technically, I’m Vicki’s supervisor, but I don’t think either of us really sees it that way. (When I got the job, I remarked that I could now tell her what to do, to which she snappily replied, “yeah, then I’ll tell you what to do!”) Anyway, I’ve known her about a year, and in that time she’s easily assumed the role of “only local person worth going out with” for either my wife or me. She’s the only southern person whose company doesn’t irritate the piss out of me, and she has the greatest way of saying “goodbye” — she just abruptly becomes obviously bored with you and walks away with an “okay, see you later!”

Best of all, she has this uniquely contagious impulsiveness. In short, Vicki’s exactly the person you want to bring with you to New York City — she’d be the one making sure you’re having a proper adventure, instead of just milling about like some skittish old fogey. It didn’t take an awful lot of coaxing to get her to come along for the trip, though she could only stay for the first day. One of us had to report back to work on Monday, and I’d beaten her to asking for the day off.

Somehow, not that we timed it this way (we had planned to meet up in the Meadowlands, where we’d be setting up camp), both vehicles managed to cross paths about halfway up I-95. So by the time we were into Delaware (which, from what I can determine, exists only for residents of Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to cross through into one another’s states), we had formed a little two-car caravan with Vicki. The Jersey Turnpike can be a little tedious at times, but it’s ever so much more fun if you’re in constant cel phone contact with the next car ahead of you. We were like kids at a slumber party with a pair of walkie-talkies. Anything’s more enjoyable when friends are along, but it’s a real credit to my friends that I scarcely noticed all the smells and tollbooths that typically make passing through New Jersey such a drag.

After a minor detour around some rather Soprano-esque scenery, we eventually decided to ditch the hotel’s internet-provided directions and find the damned place on our own — which we did, in short order. We deposited our things in our respective rooms (separate rooms, aside from me and the Missus, thanks — it wasn’t that kind of a trip) and were city bound by mid-afternoon. My hands practically trembled in anticipation of the myriad lewd gestures that lay ahead.

But first, as my friend Dave from California would say, you have to pay to get out of Jersey. (Apparently California roads have no toll collection system, so Dave was rather perplexed by the whole concept when he visited our coast half a decade ago.) This particular toll ($6!) was requested of us prior to passing through the Lincoln Tunnel, and let me just say that I had every intention of paying it at the time.

The thing is, there’s this whole EZ Pass system, which allows a sort of toll subscription service for people who don’t want to be bothered with producing cash every time they go into the city. Some EZ Pass are more clearly marked than others, and some of the not-so-clearly-marked ones have no system to prevent you just driving on through without paying. Simple country rube that I am, I had no way of knowing I was in the wrong lane until I noticed the absence of a toll collector, and I wasn’t about to back into the impatiently honking car behind me. My only other choice was to jump the automotive turnstile, which I did.

The way I see it, this means one of two things: either the city of New York will employ sophisticated tracking devices to hunt me down and collect their six bucks, or else I passed some sort of New Yorker initiation rite by charging on through without paying. I suppose both could happen, but I’d rather just think the latter. I suppose I’ll find out when I’m ready to buy a house or a car and I discover a lingering six dollar stain on my credit record.

We wandered the city on a sort of car tour (pretty much as planned) for about an hour — three of us live in a city in which the highest building has four floors, so just staring at skyscrapers was actually a fairly engrossing activity. Plus, I got my chance to shine as an official New York driver, engaging in all the aforementioned illegal activities and emphatic vulgarities to (I think) the astonishment of everyone else in the car. Frankly, I don’t think I was acting so much out of character, but if I got to provide some entertainment as I enjoyed myself, that’s just wonderful.

Gradually, in no real hurry, we made our way to one end of Manhattan (downtown? Uptown? Funkytown? I’m not up on the lingo, sorry) and continued our dazed and nomadic shuffle on foot.

It took us awhile to figure out where to eat (not even suburb-dwelling Bob was quite prepared for all the choices, I think), but we ended up in some moderately-priced outdoor café down by the docks. Not the seedy “down by the docks” area, mind you — the part where they put all the shops and moderately-priced cafés. After dinner, we continued wandering, and if you were watching Telemundo that night, there’s a chance you caught a glimpse of the backs of our heads. (There was some kind of Spanish concert going on near Battery Park, but it wasn’t Ricky Martin or Menudo, so I had no idea what it was all about.)

As darkness approached and the parking meter ran out of quarters (we were only able to produce about thirty between us, which scored us about two and a half hours’ parking time), we climbed back into the car in search of a new destination. That was the intent, anyway. Clearly, the phone company had other ideas.

I won’t get into my long-standing theories about the phone company trying to take over the world, but there can be no denying that Verizon didn’t want us to leave a certain 5-block radius of Manhattan. Several blocks had been cordoned off for some Verizon-sponsored street basketball something-or-other, leading to a very circuitous and repetitive ride to nowhere. I’m not entirely sure how we finally made our way out an hour or so later, but I think it had something to do with my giving up trying to actually think about it and driving on some sort of instinct that I can only assume was The Force.

I was doing this because I was talking on my cell phone at the same time. A very old and very dear friend of mine who happens to live in New York was now home, and was returning the call I’d placed to him earlier. Talking to him not only secured our plans for the remainder of the evening, but also provided the necessary distraction for us to finally break free of the phone company’s sinister plot. (Never mind that I have a Verizon cell phone. That doesn’t disprove my theory so much as it provides ironic counterpoint or something.)

Oh, I guess I should mention this: not long after we’d broken free of the Battery Park vicinity, we found ourselves somewhat inadvertently in front of the World Trade Center site. There had been some debate among our group in the early stages of trip planning as to whether or not we actually wanted to visit that area, and the consensus had eventually arrived at a very firm “no.” (I was the only one who had actually wanted to go — not to gawk, but just to help actualize something I had only otherwise seen on television.)

There’s really nothing there to see at this point anyway, but that’s actually pretty creepy in and of itself. New York — especially that area of New York — is a very densely packed area, and the effect of one large, empty lot amid a slew of towering skyscrapers is pretty disturbing. I think we all had a year of denial to help protect us though, so the only noticeable effect was about a thirty second gap in the otherwise perpetually running smartass commentary.

But we didn’t come to New York to get depressed (hell, we could have stayed home for that) — we came to have fun. Fortunately, my friend Jason and his longtime girlfriend (with whom I have also been previously acquainted) proved quite adept at providing for our needs. We hung at their apartment for a short while, then adjourned to a nearby bar. That proved only moderately entertaining, however, so Jason pushed forth a bizarre suggestion that didn’t sound nearly as fun as it ended up being: karaoke in Korea Town.

Apparently, New York is such a staggeringly cosmopolitan city that every country in the world is represented with its own small community. There’s Uzbekistan-burg, Luxemborg-town and Little Borneo, among many others. And there’s Korea Town — home to (follow my logic here) lots of Korean people, and karaoke establishment that allow one to rent a room by the hour.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and so were we. But I remind you — it wasn’t that kind of a trip. The rooms involved a wrap-around couch, a decent large-screen TV and a karaoke machine featuring an assortment of American and Korean standards. The room in which we started was, I’m told, one of the nicer ones, but we didn’t stay long. Two or three songs in (I was in the middle of “Mmm-Bop,” as I recall), a Korean gentleman took Jason aside and informed him that this particular Saturday was, in fact, Korean Thanksgiving. Further, a contingent of persons with substantially more money than we had requested our room, and would we mind moving to a different room down the hall for a 50% discount? Being the festive and culturally respectful lot that we are, we said we didn’t mind a bit.

I’ve been trying for the last several days to explain exactly why Korean karaoke among six friends of varying acquaintance was quite the enjoyable experience it was. I’m really at a loss here — just trust me when I say we