An Englishman In New York... again: Part 2

Day 89 (Monday Dec 20th) 
"I do believe you almost collided with that vehicle"

As per usual I got up at midday and again I tried figuring out what was going on with the Pittsburgh posse. I wasn't sure when I'd be meeting them so I headed downtown and went for Korean food at a place that Suzy had found online. I actually had to wait ten minutes before I could be seated because it was that busy, I suppose it was lunchtime. I ordered something which I thought was vegetarian but the woman brought me a fish as a starter. I told her I was vegetarian and she exchanged the fish for some vegetable things. On the table was a bubbling bowl of tofu soup and lots of little bowls containing different vegetables and rice. For $10 it was a lot of food and I didn't manage to eat it all, I think the hangover had something to do with that too.

After a quick chat with a stranger in the queue for the toilet I headed to the New York Public Library. I'd been here before but I hadn't ventured inside, mainly because I simply didn't have the confidence to enter a building where my only reason was to take photos and videos of where Ghostbusters was filmed. I spent about an hour walking around the building, getting lost, getting found and taking photos in rooms that had signs saying "no photography allowed". When I came out of the library I was greeted by a homeless looking guy standing on the steps singing 'Time Of My Life'.

I walked up 5th Avenue and checked out Rockafeller Plaza, it was heaving because they now had the Christmas tree up. When I reached Central Park I got some photos of the bridge where the pigeon lady was in Home Alone 2. There was a bloke dressed as Big Bird wandering around the south end of the park and taking photos with people, then asking them for money. I got a text from Lacey saying they were on their way into Manhattan so I headed to Grand Central to meet up with them. There was a group of women in Grand Central singing Christmas songs with satirical lyrics, there was a guy trying to move them on but he was failing miserably. Lacey texted saying they were still quite far away so I headed back to the Plaza Hotel which was also used as a filming location in Home Alone 2. I decided to go inside, again something I didn't have the confidence to do the first time I was in New York. There were lots of people wandering around inside so I wasn't too worried about seeming out of place. I was hanging around near reception for about an hour and then I wandered down to the lower floors where they had some shops and some really nice restrooms. At one point I overheard a family asking one of the staff about Home Alone and he led them into another room to show them exactly where some of it was filmed.... I followed. Something I noticed at the hotel was an unusual amount of handshaking and tipping. Those porters must be making a fortune!

It was about 8pm when the Pittsburgh people arrived. They'd had quite a day chasing after Lacey's car which had seen them venture to Harlem and Jersey. It was all kind of sorted out except Lacey had to stay an extra day but my cousin was kind enough to agree to Lacey staying the night at their apartment. Lacey's friends needed to get home that night and Lacey actually had a friend on his way to New York to drive the guys home. After a quick visit to Times Square we headed to the Port Authority in the hope they might be able to get a free bus ticket, something they sometimes offer to stranded travellers. Unfortunately there was no way we could have got that sorted in such a short space of time so Lacey told her friend to keep driving. We went for food in a weird fast food place where the food was slow but the music was amazing. We had a few hours to kill so around midnight we headed south and had a walk around Wall Street, then we decided to do the Staten Island ferry round trip. We didn't get back to Manhattan until about 3am and we immediately got the subway back up to midtown to meet Lacey's friend. It was his first time driving in New York but he agreed to drive Lacey and I up to my cousin's place........ big mistake.

I tried to direct him but the one way system confused us a bit and some roadworks totally three us off and caused us to run a red light and almost get crashed into. A few seconds later we heard a police siren and we were pulled over. The cop said "You almost got f%ckin' ploughed!" and he wasn't happy with the fact there was one too many people in the car. He took a long time back at his car and then proceeded to give Lacey's friend a ticket for almost $200 for having too many people in the car. He let us off with running the red light otherwise it would have been a total fine of about $400.

We finally made it back to the apartment at about 4am and said our good byes. I was pretty hungry so we stopped at the 7/11 and I got some veggie tofu noodles. Once again I struggled to remember which apartment it was and when we finally got up there Lacey realised she'd lost her phone. We hoped she'd left it in the car and after eating we went to bed.

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...

The Adventures of El Gringo & El Vandita

Day 85 (Thursday Dec 16th)
"I'm at an almost Mexican grill with an almost Mexican girl!"

I woke up feeling the worst I've ever felt on my trip, I blame the cinnamon whisky that was too easy to drink. Somehow I managed not to puke but I think I would have if I'd gone out to have breakfast with the other guys. I chose to stay behind and get a bit more sleep, Coop kept me company. When they returned, Vanessa and I went back to her place, she very wisely said we should both sleep for a bit. I got up at around 7.30pm and we were looking for somewhere to eat. I thought it would be very fitting for us to go to a Chipotle because Vanessa is a bit Mexican and it's one of my favourite food places. We ended up going to one in Vancouver, Washington because the website said it was the nearest one. It wasn't too far and it meant I got to visit another state. When we got back to Portland we watched Operation Endgame and I had some vanilla ice cream that it had taken me at least five minutes to decide upon when we were at the store. Before going to bed I realised that my laptop had actually died and wouldn't even boot up. Not good news but rather good timing.

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Day 86 (Friday Dec 17th)
"That's not harmonising!"

I had a cold and uncomfortable night's sleep but managed to get up by midday, today was supposed to be our day of doing stuff in or around Portland. We went to a house on a hill called Pittock Mansion, with a lovely view of Portland and Mt Hood. By English standards it was more just a big house but it was interesting walking around inside and seeing how it might have looked 100 years ago. My favourite part was the kitchen area where they had lots of pretend food laid out. I wanted to do a little bit of nature so we walked five minutes down a trail before we realised it was getting too dark and we needed to go see Jeff anyway. Jeff was having some problems with his electricity and was waiting for the electric man to call but we had time to pop out and have some Italian food at The Spaghetti Factory, I had veggie lasagne with some amazingly chewy bread which Jeff failed to cut. As usual in America we had a cool waitress, I think I have a thing for waitresses, they bring me food and they have to be nice to me. When we'd finished eating Jeff realised he had a couple of missed calls so we went back to the house just in time for the electric man. He said the whole electric box thing needed replacing and it would take him at least eight hours. While he was sorting out what parts he needed we went to Fred Meyer to play with scary singing children's toys. By this point I was absolutely knackered so when we got back to Jeff's we said our goodbyes and headed back to Vanessa's. We were tempted to watch 'Beavis & Butthead Do America' because we'd been talking about it earlier... but I sensibly decided that getting some sleep would probably be a better idea. Vanessa insisted that I sleep in her bed and she'd take the sofa so I could get some better rest than the previous night, I refused for at least two minutes... then set my alarm for 5.15am and lay my head down on her pillow.

Wheeler: Exhibit D (plus one night in Beaverton)

Day 83 (Tuesday Dec 14th)
"Thomas is a miserable bastard of a train."

I was awoken at 10am by the cats crawling on me so I'd assumed Martin had let them into my room as a "funny joke." It turned out that Martin and Natalie had no idea about it so the cats must have figured out how to open doors, it's like Jurassic Park! It was early so not much was going on and Martin had the Wii Fit out, he asked if I wanted to have a go on it and we discovered that I was 2lbs underweight. I played on the Fit games for at least an hour. Natalie was catching up with some work for most of the day so Martin and I played some Mario Kart and watched some Family Guy. For dinner I had the last of the potato soup because nobody could be bothered to cook. We then watched Married With Children and because I couldn't decide on a movie we ended up watching a Thomas The Tank Engine compilation, it was the old UK episodes narrated by George Carlin, very odd indeed. We finished my last night in Wheeler by watching Giuseppe's Rooney Never Says Die DVD. Natalie laughed the most at my 'making of my song' bit... I'm not sure if it was more a laugh of pity...

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Day 84 (Wednesday Dec 15th)
"Did you just fall out of the bathroom?" "...Yes."

Martin wanted to leave at 9am so we all got up around 8am. I discovered that Tony's laptop had finally died on me, it had various errors and took about ten minutes to load Firefox. We ended up leaving at about 10am and The Reeds managed to squeeze in an argument about Fred Meyer gas before we drove to Hillsboro. I slept about an hour of the way so I missed the snowy part of the journey. We dropped the car at the garage so they could fix "the rattle that's very annoying, it's a very annoying rattle" and went to Joanne Fabrics for a bit of boredom.

When the garage called Martin, we both went back to pick up the car and Martin was rather happy about the curing of the very annoying rattle. We collected Natalie, I had my second Starbucks experience and then we drove to Jeff's place in Beaverton. He showed us his cool robots built from photocopier parts and we met his cool little dog Coop. After about an hour Vanessa arrived and we went to Big Al's for some bowling, drinking and fooding. It was a pretty cool place, they had lots of areas for bowling and lots of massive TV screens showing Safety Dance when we arrived. I had a veggie burger and the waitress joked about putting extra bacon on my burger, I gave her an evil look. We had a couple of games of bowling and I think I might have won one of them while Martin and Natalie were both fighting for last place. On the second floor they had lots of arcade games and Martin managed to win 999 tickets on one game. The best I did was 225 on some sort of Tetris game and I gave most of my tickets to Jeff because I'm nice like that. I also gave some to Martin so he could get an iTunes gift card... for himself. We went back to Jeff's for some party games, broken fuse-boxes, heavy drinking, comedy Martins, sleepy Vanessas, and apparently Natalie was trying to touch me all night. Vanessa had claimed the sofa but she fell asleep in the chair... so I did the honourable thing and didn't let the sofa go to waste.

Wheeler: Exhibit C

Day 81 (Sunday Dec 12th)
"Why did he only eat one pigeon egg?!"

I woke up at my usual time and we went to Tillamook cheese factory to do their "self-guided tour" and we got to see the production line. Martin was most intrigued by the guys who put the off-cuts on the bits of cheese that don't weight enough, I was most intrigued by the beard masks. There were some free samples of the most popular cheeses and Martin decided to buy some off-cuts of the garlic chili cheese. We went grocery shopping at Fred Meyer in Tillamook and then headed home. Natalie made a salad with cous-cous and then later on she made some delicious yakisoba. While Natalie was cooking, Martin and I watched Bear Grylls trying to survive in an abandoned factory. We then watched Legend Of The Bog which I really regretted watching for a second time.

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Day 82 (Monday Dec 13th)
"You've been stuffed!"

I planned to get up early but that obviously didn't happen. We headed up the coast and briefly stopped at Cannon Beach before we got to Astoria. We went to the shop from The Goonies, which is now a coffee shop, and I had a hot chocolate. Then we walked down to the docks and saw a few sea lions. Natalie wanted to check out an art gallery so we drove into town but both galleries were closed. Martin and Natalie were all out of ideas so I suggested we go to the Fort George Brewery where they served us beer in jam jars which confused me for a bit. The Reeds had a sausage platter but I refused to eat anything because I wanted to continue the tradition of not eating out while I was staying with them. We headed home at around 5pm and Martin made some burritos, he only cooked six so I filled myself up with some leftover chili. Max had recommended a film to us but other than starring Napoleon from Bill & Ted it was almost unwatchable so we ended up watching the wonderful Thankskilling. Before bed-time Martin played with the cats for about an hour. It was strangely fascinating just watching them chase a shoelace.

Wheeler: Exhibit B

Day 80 (Saturday Dec 11th)
"You look like the kind of people that would enjoy karaoke"

We didn't do much for the first part of the day, just a bit of Mario on the Wii. Natalie was going to make pizza tonight but she asked me to make the pizza dough. I'll admit that I had a little bit of help from the bread maker but it was mostly me. While the dough was mixing and doing whatever else it does in the break maker (okay, all I did was put the ingredients into the bread maker, I had to measure them though!) we went to the local bar, The Sea Shack (Natalie calls it Sea Sack because she can't speak) for a couple of beers and for Martin's biography. Just before we were about to leave the bar the barmaid said we looked like the kind of people that would be up for tonight's karaoke. We joked about returning later on but I don't think any of us thought we actually would.

Back at the house Natalie prepared the toppings and got Martin and I to roll out the dough, then commenced the cooking of one big veggie tofu pizza with two little meat ones. While the pizzas were cooking we watched my Goonies 25th anniversary videos including the black & white Natalie montage...... awkward but arousing.

One of the little pizzas turned out a big doughy, I assumed Martin had made that one, my one was perfect. The pizza was lovely and I washed it down with some boxed wine because we'd run out of beer. Natalie and I attempted an intellectual chat about vegetarianism but the wine didn't help with that. We then decided we should go out to the karaoke because we were just about tipsy enough for some singing.

It was about 11.30pm when we went out so we weren't sure if the karaoke would still be going on but as we got nearer to the bar we could hear some awful noises coming from within. When I got to the top of the stairs I saw a very large woman hanging off a stripper pole, it was going to be a fun night. Natalie wanted me to sing Walk Like An Egyptian and We Built This City On Rock And Roll with her and I did Hit Me With Your Best Shot on my own. There were a couple having a domestic for most of the night and I even got a little bit of it on video when the guy was singing and pushed his drunk wife off the stage. As we were about to leave the karaoke DJ came up and spoke to us, upon hearing I was leaving the next day he asked us to sit down because he was going to sing a song for me. So the night was ended by an old, bearded, white haired, fisherman-looking Oregonian man singing a Roger Whittacker song about sailing home to England.

Wheeler: Exhibit A

Day 78 (Thursday Dec 9th)
"Which position would you rather be in a human centipede?"

I got up at midday after not a great night's sleep, I assumed it was because it was the first night in a new bed. Natalie sorted me out with toast and jam and put some BBC Radio on to make me feel at home. Martin went out to test his snow chains and then realised he'd bought the wrong size. Luckily there's probably no more snow until next year, eh Martin? Martin played some of his annoying war game and Natalie made me noodles with vegetables for lunch. The men (me and Martin) went to the buy groceries in Mohler and Manzanita because you need more than shop to get everything, every shop is a local shop around here. The Wii dance game had arrived so we played that until we were too tired to stand and then Natalie made some Ecuadorian potato soup with homemade bread. On the TV schedule for that night was new Peep Show, Human Centipede and Satan's Little Helper with some beer to help those movies go down a little easier. The kitties seemed to be getting used to me but maybe it was just me getting used to them. That night it was too hot in my room because Martin had the new heater on in there. I turned it off and opened to window for an hour before it was cool enough to sleep.

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Day 79 (Friday Dec 10th)
"1 - 0 to Mrs. Reed."

Again I got up at midday and I tried oatmeal for the first time, it was okay with some jam. We went for a hike along a beach at Nehalem Bay and played football with some sort of spherical thing. We got the obligatory stupidly posed photos with various bits of dead trees along the beach and then turned left at a jetty. There were surfers and seals out in this part of the bay. The beach along the other side was impossible to navigate so Martin took us inland into uncharted territory... and fortunately we made it back to the car before nightfall. When we got home Natalie made me a burnt cheese sandwich and then we watched lots of episodes of Family Guy. Martin made "the best vegetarian chili in the world" which could have very well been the best vegetarian chili in the world.... if it wasn't so darn spicy. That's 1 - 0 to Mrs Reed on the dinner cooking front for the potato soup. We watched a dodgy movie called Centurion and at some point that night I know Natalie said "Mark's stroking my pussy" because I made a sexy mental note of those words for later.... (I was stroking one of the cats of course)