So here I am in New York, New York. Yes, over the border in the land of the free and the home of the brave - where the subways are patrolled by men with shiny boots and dull metal guns. But let me begin this story from the beginning.

I left my home on Friday afternoon to find traffic much lighter than usual - I practically sailed all the way to Hamilton where I said goodbye to Kevin even though he wasn’t home (obsessive workaholic!). I would have said goodbye to more people, but hey, I’m not superman. So if I die, let this post be me saying goodbye. If I don’t die, let it be me saying “see you soon”.

I got to Nick’s house and we packed our stuff away in the car - my one tiny little bag and Nick’s three sacks of crap. At that point I was like “you’re not taking that all with you, are you?” and he was like, yeeeaaaaah. So I pretty much told him he was crazy. He pooh-poohed me. I was, however, right - but we’ll get to that later.

We crossed the border at some little tiny bridge. The American border guard was a little brisk, firing off some questions like, “Do you have anything that is going to stay in the trunk?” and we were like, “Just a small amount of uranium, but don’t you worry your pretty little head about that!” So he waved us through.

The I-90 is a very long and scenic highway - I’m sure it would be better in the daytime - and we stayed on it for the longest time. I eventually took over driving for Nick who was looking like he’d just smoked a pound of hash. I hasten to say that Nick had smoked no hash whatsoever, nor has he to my knowledge ever smoked hash. Or pot. Or tea leaves.

I drove all through the night until about 4:00 AM, when stuff started looking like things they weren’t and optical illusions started poking out of any and everywhere. I pulled over into what the Americans so quaintly call a “rest stop” and me and Nick rested.

BUT ONLY FOR TWO HOURS when he decided to wake up with a loud snort and wake me up too. I had a delightfully horrible cup of vending machine coffee which upset my stomach - and then the last leg of the little adventure I call “getting lost all the time on the way to New York. Okay - it wasn’t that bad, but it was bad enough that I can say with all sorts of certainty that Nick is horrible with reading roadsigns, and I am horrible at following directions. Plus those roadsigns in New York are so darn hard to see! I don’t know what they make them out of, but Ontario could teach them a thing or two about what exactly it means to create a visible sign.

So it was that we arrived at the airport where we parked our car (and where I will eventually sell my soul to get it out of hock), took the “AirTrain” to a certain Newark train station, which took us directly into the subways of NY.

From there we proceeded to take every wrong subway in the city - although we finally got it right and arrived at Jazz in the Park with the help of a friendly bum. I mean homeless person. I’m so PC. Oh so PC.

We check in which takes approximately a billion and five minutes while the lone desk clerk is interrupted by about seventeen phone calls. He’s a quiet guy and says only what’s absolutely necessary. He takes our money, gives us an invoice, and tells us to come back at 1:00 PM. Which of course we are more than happy to do; we are going to go warwalking for open hotspots - if you happen to read this before something like Tuesday, you know we found someone with an unprotected wireless network.

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