grillin' usa: a recap of day 3
yesterday, i received collect call from new york and i accepted the charges. fate had it that we would only have one group to demo to yesterday and finished up around 9am. to drive the point home of how awesome it is finishing up early on work days for this company, let me remind everyone that regardless of how much time i spend at each location, i still get paid $200 for one hour of work (also, free dunkin donuts).
this is long, sorry.
being that it's only a 15 minute train ride from newark, we made a snap decision to go to the city--a snap decision that required 10 additional minutes to figure out if he was being passive aggressive about wanting to go to new york or heading straight to philadelphia. naturally, we split up as soon as we got to manhattan. apparently he walked from downtown to uptown, which time was probably cut in half for him as he covers a lot more footage with his pace.
i think i saw maybe 10 feet of new york from the subway to the moma, which is probably one of the more expensive museums i've ever been to. good thing i still have my youthful looks and a student i.d. that will not expire until for a few more years so i could still experience the mind blowing savings of spending $12 as opposed to $20. i took lots of photos of art, being that i felt lame trying to take a picture of myself in front of a picture and also didn't trust anyone else to take a good photo of me. vanity has certainly taken hold of me the past few years, let me tell you.
we left around 3pm to get on the road. things ran smoothly for awhile until we hit camden, new jersey. for some reason, camden has always been the shit turn around point of getting lost. always, of course, meaning twice: the first time with maryam on the way back to bethesda and now. sometimes you'll come across a city and you'll wonder how it manages to be a city. perfect example of this is harvey, illinois, anywhere trailing cottage grove road in chicago--or the quintessential example of failure: detroit. they'll have some sign indicating who the mayor is and you wonder how someone is getting paid to maintain a city when it's not even functioning. beautiful.
fortunately, we found our way back to philadelphia and checked into our king suite at the hampton inn. i'm still trying to figure out why this room was over $250, but i'm sure it has something to do with the fact there are only a handful of hotels in center city unless you want to go out 30 minutes to cherry hills. there's some kind of asthma convention in town right now, so every hotel was sold out and this was our last resort in the "budget" area. not a bad breakfast though.
met up with kyle and had malaysian for the first time, then proceeded to whine to him for 5 hours about a variety of topics ranging from how fat i've gotten to irritating aspects of this trip and so forth. he's such a good sport. we split a bottle of bordeaux his parents gave him for his birthday, which was really good and drinkable considering it's on the darker end of reds (note: despite doing several wine tastings for my job last month, i still know jack about wine. though i've noticed i'm definitely better at distinguishing flavors in whites as opposed to reds). then proceeded to walk around town for a bit until landing in an upgraded murphy's-esque bar that offered a handful of microbrews for some beer week they're having here. i pretty much became a deadweight and boring around 10 when i started falling asleep at the bar due to exhaustion. sorry, kyle. i really did try to keep it together.
i would have had a semi-perfect night of sleep had it not been for the fact it was freezing in the front room and that the fire alarm went off at 8:30am. i quickly threw on some pants and grabbed my jacket and purse and ran downstairs only to see people in the lobby eating breakfast. i decided since i was down there, i might as well have breakfast too, except that when i finished, the elevators were locked and there was no internal door to re-enter the stairwell (i.e. i had to be let in by someone already in the hotel from an exterior side door). jesus. don't worry though, guys. i obviously made it back in one piece and the hotel survived. the breakfast was alright as well.
today, we head to columbus, ohio. i don't know what's in columbus, but i doubt we'll see anything given that we're due to arrive around 8 and leave the next day for memphis. sorry i have no photos as of yet, but i also haven't done anything except grill, drive and look at art. when i see the remnants of a life i can only touch in my dreams at the elvis museum, i'll try to get some quality pics.
this is long, sorry.
being that it's only a 15 minute train ride from newark, we made a snap decision to go to the city--a snap decision that required 10 additional minutes to figure out if he was being passive aggressive about wanting to go to new york or heading straight to philadelphia. naturally, we split up as soon as we got to manhattan. apparently he walked from downtown to uptown, which time was probably cut in half for him as he covers a lot more footage with his pace.
i think i saw maybe 10 feet of new york from the subway to the moma, which is probably one of the more expensive museums i've ever been to. good thing i still have my youthful looks and a student i.d. that will not expire until for a few more years so i could still experience the mind blowing savings of spending $12 as opposed to $20. i took lots of photos of art, being that i felt lame trying to take a picture of myself in front of a picture and also didn't trust anyone else to take a good photo of me. vanity has certainly taken hold of me the past few years, let me tell you.
we left around 3pm to get on the road. things ran smoothly for awhile until we hit camden, new jersey. for some reason, camden has always been the shit turn around point of getting lost. always, of course, meaning twice: the first time with maryam on the way back to bethesda and now. sometimes you'll come across a city and you'll wonder how it manages to be a city. perfect example of this is harvey, illinois, anywhere trailing cottage grove road in chicago--or the quintessential example of failure: detroit. they'll have some sign indicating who the mayor is and you wonder how someone is getting paid to maintain a city when it's not even functioning. beautiful.
fortunately, we found our way back to philadelphia and checked into our king suite at the hampton inn. i'm still trying to figure out why this room was over $250, but i'm sure it has something to do with the fact there are only a handful of hotels in center city unless you want to go out 30 minutes to cherry hills. there's some kind of asthma convention in town right now, so every hotel was sold out and this was our last resort in the "budget" area. not a bad breakfast though.
met up with kyle and had malaysian for the first time, then proceeded to whine to him for 5 hours about a variety of topics ranging from how fat i've gotten to irritating aspects of this trip and so forth. he's such a good sport. we split a bottle of bordeaux his parents gave him for his birthday, which was really good and drinkable considering it's on the darker end of reds (note: despite doing several wine tastings for my job last month, i still know jack about wine. though i've noticed i'm definitely better at distinguishing flavors in whites as opposed to reds). then proceeded to walk around town for a bit until landing in an upgraded murphy's-esque bar that offered a handful of microbrews for some beer week they're having here. i pretty much became a deadweight and boring around 10 when i started falling asleep at the bar due to exhaustion. sorry, kyle. i really did try to keep it together.
i would have had a semi-perfect night of sleep had it not been for the fact it was freezing in the front room and that the fire alarm went off at 8:30am. i quickly threw on some pants and grabbed my jacket and purse and ran downstairs only to see people in the lobby eating breakfast. i decided since i was down there, i might as well have breakfast too, except that when i finished, the elevators were locked and there was no internal door to re-enter the stairwell (i.e. i had to be let in by someone already in the hotel from an exterior side door). jesus. don't worry though, guys. i obviously made it back in one piece and the hotel survived. the breakfast was alright as well.
today, we head to columbus, ohio. i don't know what's in columbus, but i doubt we'll see anything given that we're due to arrive around 8 and leave the next day for memphis. sorry i have no photos as of yet, but i also haven't done anything except grill, drive and look at art. when i see the remnants of a life i can only touch in my dreams at the elvis museum, i'll try to get some quality pics.