Brunch at Ovelia in Astoria, NY.
I have to jump in the shower and head out of NY to PA, so I’m posting the one photo I’ve converted and putting the weekend thus far into point form. I’ve been posting short updates to Twitter (it shows the latest five on the sidebar) as texts from my phone as well.
- 8pm – left home, car broke down on the QEW highway less than 20 mins later
- 10:15pm – waited on the shoulder more than 2 hours for a CAA tow truck because they couldn’t find me
- car towed to a 24-hr garage in my neighbourhood; they’d call me in the morning after diagnosis
- 11:30pm – schlepped my stuff from my car to the nearest subway station, reached Kipling (end of the line), caught LAST 192 Airport Rocket bus to Pearson at midnight
- called two rental car companies on the bus to negotiate a discount for a car while crazy woman screaming gibberish
- 12:45am – reached car rental desk at airport minutes before they closed, got stuck in garage due to non-working exit system
- 1:30am – finally hit the road 5.5 hours after I tried to leave the first time
- 4:30am – hit a (figurative) wall near Rochester, NY, snoozed for two solid hours roadside before resuming drive
- 9:45am – reached Helma’s in Scranton, showered, ate, felt like a human again
- 11:15am – hit the road again for New York City (to everyone’s amazement, I stuck with the original plan to meet up for brunch in Astoria for 1pm!)
- 1:30pm – arrived and parked in Astoria (amazing feat in itself)
- 1:45pm – brunch at Ovelia (that’s my omelette in the photo) with Gene, Eric, and Harris (a longtime Flickr contact I was meeting for the first time)
- with Harris acting as tour guide, photo-walked around Astoria — Harris calculated we’d walked six miles!
- 9:30pm – drove south to meet up with Gene’s girlfriend at a local watering hole full of Irish punters
- 12:30am – across the street was a White Castle, so of course we had to stop by for my first visit ever to try out their sliders…
- 1:30am – spotted raging inferno in the street in Astoria on our way to pick up my rental car from where I left it near the restaurant; after flames put out by fire department, it turned out to be a stretch SUV limo
- 3:10am – at the house totally knackered and ready for real sleep — in a bed, not by the side of the road!
I have scads of photos, even a couple of the charred limo, which I’ll upload after I get home. It’s Sunday afternoon on Long Island and I still have some weekend left!
Possibly related posts:
- Waterpark Adventures It’s a Civic Holiday today, and it’s HOT. So what do we do? Hit the local waterpark! Allan and...
- The Lowdown on the Weekend in Seattle Back from a weekend mostly in Seattle. I booked tickets to see Janeane Garofalo on Saturday and dragged Erich down...
- Hey! Do You Know What Time It Is?!?! The phone rang at 5:45am. Perchance, I was awake and on the computer sending out a report, but by the...
- Jalopies and a Half-Frame of Daisies The recent climate havoc on the West Coast and the resulting brown churn of tap water reminded me of my...
- Introducing Dida and the Back Half of Oscar Hailing from Venezuela, the elegant Dida has her own throne, as you can see. View On Black A black and...
- Time Flies… When You’re on Dial-Up I’ve exiled myself to my parents’ house for the Thanksgiving weekend. I’m supposed to be studying, but I’ve been setting...
- (Mis)Adventures In Plumbing A couple of trips to Home Depot later, I have one working hot tap (formerly a hyper-leaker), and vise grips...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Adventures, Half-Time Edition){kind=link}
Oh, sit for the car… and the whole crazy story! I bet it took some will to stick with your plans!
Everyone thought I would bail after the engine failure… nope, not me! I’m not easily discouraged.
I know lots of better photographers, but I don’t know of anyone who would go to the lengths that I do for travel. On Saturday, my friends in New York were laughing at me when I told them the story of taking a 4th class train from Malaysia through Thailand for 18 hours. 4th class rail has no guaranteed seats, the toilet is a hole in the train floor, and for obvious reasons there are very few foreigners — if any — in these train cars!
You sure do pack the activities in!
I have a very limited number of “free”, i.e., non-working weekends in the year, so I make the most of them!
I just read this and I’m speechless. Totally speechless.
[...] it will be more than four months before my next call to CAA. *rushes off to find some wood to [...]
[...] been quite the adventure getting here (remember my trip to New York in November? it’s been kinda like that), but I’m here safe and sound in the Motor City and enjoying [...]