An Englishman In New York... again: Part 1

Day 87 (Saturday Dec 18th)  

"Mrs Claus has positively identified the kidnappers as Martians"

I got a couple of hours sleep and was woken by my alarm at 5.15am. Vanessa drove me to the airport and I got my flight at 7.30am. I had a four hour layover in Denver and other than having a cheap burrito I did absolutely nothing. I arrived at LaGuardia in New York at about 8pm and got a bus through Queens, across to Manhattan and got off at 125th St. where I got the subway down to 86th. I grabbed some food at Subway and then walked to Suzy and Mike's apartment. I'd planned on surprising them but I couldn't remember which one their apartment was so I called Mike who said they were actually at a restaurant around the corner. I walked there, they introduced me to some of the staff (including a pretty waitress called Sarah) and then bought me a beer. We were there for less than an hour catching up and then we went back to the apartment where I fell asleep watching the 'Santa Claus Conquers The Martians' episode of MST3K.

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Day 88 (Sunday Dec 19th)
"The Bitchin'mobile made it all the way to Manhattan and then died"

I woke up around midday and spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out what was going on with Lacey. She was driving from Pittsburgh with a few friends to spend a couple of days in New York but I couldn't get a clear idea of where she was or when she was arriving. Eventually I got a call from her saying that her car had broken down and she needed rescuing. I went down to where they were parked to help them figure out what to do. I really wasn't much help because I've got no idea what to do when a car breaks down, let alone a car breaking down in Manhattan. They managed to find a company to tow the car to a repair shop but when the guy turned up things seemed generally odd. Once he'd taken the car he just said they'd call the next day. Lacey was very worried and thought she'd never seen her car again.

Everyone was hungry and I sort of remembered where there was a Chipotle so we spent half an hour finding that. I had my usual lovely veggie burrito but Lacey's friend Ally wasn't happy with the quality of the chicken... I've never eaten their meat so I'm taking no responsibility for suggesting Chipotle. Nobody was really in a good mood so we decided to find their hotel in Queens. We got to Queens with no problem but it turned out the station was about a half hour walk from the hotel. I stayed with them at the hotel for a little bit and then headed back to Manahattan before midnight.

I'd decided to pop my head into the Irish pub called Gael's that I'd been to three months previous and that if there was someone there I knew then I'd stay for one drink. It turned out Aiden, the bearded Scotsman, was working there now, he'd been working at the Scottish bar when I was last in New York but had been fired in strange circumstances a couple of days after I'd met him. We chatted for a while about what had happened three months, how all the other bar staff that I'd met were doing and we were also chatting with an NYC cop about various current affairs. Six pints of Belhaven IPA later and I stumbled back to the apartment but forgot how to use keys so I had to wake Mike up to help me. Sorry about that...