Maxigumee

I had to force myself to write this entry. It’s interesting that whenever I have something worth blogging about, besides mysterious rashes and magazines, I tend to just put it off and put it off. After being put off for a certain amount of time, a subject becomes too irrelevant and not urgent enough to write about. I have waited far too long to write about my trip to New York City. Even though five days might not seem like much, it totally is…. much. Who knows, maybe if I had put this off another day, I’d just say, “eh, who cares about my trip to New York?” Well, after having to rewrite the entire first half of this entry after deleting it accidently (stupid web browser), you better care. I have put off big events in my life before. Things that definitely should have been posted here. Like the time a van drove into our fence, destroying our back yard. Yes, over the summer break, a van drove into our back yard. It happened at like one in the morning and it was FREAKY. But since I was lazy and stupid, I didn’t write a proper account of it on my blog and you’re reading about it here. So. I’m writing this post about my trip to New York City because one, this blog is getting way too cluttered with Illustration Fridays and I just should. You want to read about my trip to New York, don’t you? Yeah, I thought so.

So, I’m not going to write a whole big long account of my trip in this entry, it’s already long enough, and that’s just me talking about the two colleges I visited and the atrocity that is the New York City public transportation system. I’m just going to skim through our trip, elaborating a bit about the beginning, the end, some of the middle, and pretty much skipping completely the bulk of it. So. Here goes.

We left for the airport Wednesday morning after my sister left for school. Before that, my father and I got into a little argument over how large my bag was. My father hadn’t informed me that he wanted to avoid baggage claim like Black Death and as a result, I had found the biggest bag in the entire attic and packed all of my stuff into it. I am an over-packer. For this particular trip, though, I felt kind of good that I hadn’t packed much else other than the necessities. You know, stuff like enough clothing for three days, extra clothing in case that clothing was uncomfortable or got damaged, facial moisturizer, hand moisturizer, night time moisturizing gloves, shampoo, hair gel, exfoliating scrub, two toothbrushes, toothpaste, and two sleep masks. Seriously, I have packed a lot more than that in the past. I mean, you NEVER KNOW if you might need tarot cards on your trip! My father thought it was too much.

After I clunked my bag down the steps and my father saw the size of it, his head almost exploded (the actual head explosion comes later). He had me go back upstairs, pick out a carry on friendly bag, and jam all of my many, many things into it. I managed it, but barely.

Once the itinerary for the trip began to unravel, began to realize how poorly this trip was planned. As soon as we landed, we would have to go straight to my first collegic visit, FIT. Then, our flight back home was for ELEVEN O’CLOCK (AT NIGHT) on Friday.

After a flight of about fifteen minutes (thanks, JetBlue!), we got to the airport. Once in the airport, we met up with a friend of my mother’s (who was also on our flight) who had offered us a ride. We got into the van at about 10:30ish, expecting to have plenty of time to grab something to eat before our 12:00 orientation at FIT. Ooooh, no. This was the first of many transportation nightmares we would experience in our three days in New York. It turns out that driving anywhere in New York is absolute torture. We arrived at FIT right on time. That’s like an hour and a half in the car!

After breathing all of that recycled air and not having eaten since the small biscotti on the plane, I had a horrible headache and was STARVING. I could hardly pay attention during the uninformative powerpoint presentation. My father almost fell asleep and I had to nudge him back awake. Since we were both hungry and in much need of a bathroom, we decided to skip the tour of the dorm rooms and head for the cafeteria at Macy’s.

In a city as big as New York that is so obviously full of restaurants, it is near impossible to find one. At least with my family. My sister and I are very picky eaters. My father is picky, too, but more about prices. My mother is maybe not picky enough. With just my father and I there, it was still pretty bad. I was in the mood for a nice place with nice lighting and good atmosphere. He was more in the mood for a local joint/pub/bar/diner type place. The first real restaurant we went to was kind of nice atmospherically (kind of like a rugged old fashioned french cafe), but it was a little overpriced for what we got. We paid like ten dollars for a “pizza” made from cheese sprinkled on top of a tortilla. The rest of the places we ate at were much more cafeteria style.

Along with driving in New York being horrible, walking in New York is also horrible. I have a new found respect for New Yorkers, especially pedestrian New Yorkers. The weather there was what Fox 5 News referred to as “FATAL!” I wasn’t quite dying, but I was pretty close. Along with my fingers and legs practically falling off from the cold, I had also lost my fancy earmuffs a few weeks ago. I had to put up with my father nearly on his hands and knees begging me to buy earmuffs from street vendors. There is NO WAY that I would purchase clothing (or anything, for that matter) from street vendors. Maybe if the fate of the entire planet depended on it. Maybe. But not just because the temperatures were “FATAL!” Ew.

I had to suffer the fatal temperatures and subways (don’t even get me started on the safety in the subway) to get all the way to Brooklyn, where Pratt is located. Out of all the college-y places that we visited (two), Pratt was probably my favorite. The floors in its library are made of glass. GLASS! Like, you can see people walking above and below you! You wouldn’t go to a school because their floors are made of glass? What’s wrong with you?! – Well, there were a few other things that made the school REALLY, REALLY cool, as well. Like how its campus (like the only college campus in the entire city) is totally GORGEOUS and its buildings have this whole rugged, industrial chic thing going on. And how it has a whole library of stock pictures that you can use for your designs (drool). And how it has this SUPER OLD generator that powers the school and how because of that generator, the school can be self sufficient for up to three weeks! AND! AND! The school has cats! In the buildings! Pratt Cats! Haha! (Whee!) See how much more informative that tour was than the thing at FIT? I mean who cares that Pratt is like thirty times more expensive than FIT? It’s COOL!

Swooshing forward a bit to our last night there. Deciding that we were too tired to do anything else (we had just spent like FIVE HOURS at the Met and I had a horrible headache), we figured we might as well get our bags from the hotel and wait four hours at the airport or perhaps try to get an earlier flight. We spent about ten minutes in the hotel lobby resting after all of the walking. I checked my e-mail and read a few blogs. THANK GOODNESS for wireless internet. Seriously. If there’s one GREAT thing about New York, it’s that you can basically go anywhere and there’ll be wifi.

After doing all that, we got up, walked a few blocks, and got onto the A Train that would take us to the airport. This is where my rant about the New York City transportation system starts. No offense, New York City Transportation System, I’m sure you’re not usually that horrible. Maybe it was just our luck. The train ride shouldn’t have been too long. Maybe half and hour. A few things made the little subway trip unbearable: the fact that it was a Friday during rush hour, the fact that there were NO seats and that my back was about to snap in half from the weight of my backpack, the fact that somebody was complaining rather loudly about how they had left their pocket book at McDonalds, the fact that somebody FAINTED on the train due to lack of air or something, and then the fact that the train had to stop TWICE. I mean, not just stop as in your average subway stop. Due to technical problems or WHATEVER, the train had to STOP in the middle of the track TWICE for like forty minutes. That’s a long time. STANDING UP.

Towards the end of the subway trip when the crowd of people began to thin out, I finally got to sit down. This, however does not end my rant against the New York City Public Transportation System. From that train, we had to get out and run to catch the “AirTrain.” It turns out that we didn’t have to run at all. Once we got on the train, we had to wait an extra ten minutes or so, once again to some sort of technical issue. I was beginning to get sick of the term “we will be off shortly.” How the heck long is shortly?!

After making a few stops of equal length or longer, we finally got off at what my father thought was our stop. Unfortunately, it was not what we thought what our stop was supposed to be. Am I getting confusing? Just wait.

Insanely infuriated by now, my father marched off of the train spitting out profanity every few seconds. And in front of little kids, too! Because my father didn’t want to wait another forty minutes for the next AirTrain thingy, we had to WALK ACROSS THE EXPRESS WAY (stupid airport) to get to the other terminal. When we got there, my father still uttering tense curse words under his breath, we began to look for JetBlue.

JetBlue, JetBlue? Where are you? Egypt Air, Virgin Atlantic, but JetBlue…. Where the HECK was JetBlue? My father, growing even angrier and full of air, grabbed his cell phone and pounded the number for the airline. It turned out that while my father thought that we were supposed to get off at terminal four, we were actually supposed to get off at five, the one that we had gotten off at originally.

After storming back across the express way and after shouting at my father to CALM DOWN, we finally made it to the correct terminal. Unfortunately, we were too late to get an earlier flight. We ended up waiting for about an hour and a half until our 10:40 plane arrived at about 10:10. Once again, THANK GOODNESS for wireless internet.