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October 20, 2008
new york was a blast (except for two bad, bad things)
We (Nbh, Bridget and myself) headed down to New Jersey/New York to help celebrate our awesome friend Elke's 40th Birthday. Elke arranged to do a scavenger hunt through Grand Central Station. We arrived Friday evening in time to have dinner with Elke and crash at her place. Elke had flown in on Thursday from Basel and still was willing to let us stay at her house and have dinner with us (delivery) despite wacky jet lag. We adjourned for the night early.
We had originally talked about driving to Hoboken, catching the PATH into the city and then going to see Burn After Reading before meeting up with folks at 4. But we woke up to a beautiful day and decided that walking/wandering through Central Park was the way to go. I was the DD so that Elke could drink to her hearts desire. On our way into the city we stopped off at a bakery to pick up some mini-stuffed cupcakes. We decided to try one of the larger stuffed cupcakes and have a cup of coffee. The girl came over, put the coffee cup in front of me. When I reached for it I promptly knocked it onto my jeans (also managed to get some on the nbh). That coffee was HOT. HOT. And because I only brought one pair of jeans the choices were: let it dry and smell like coffee, buy a new pair of jeans or head back to the apartment, wash out what we could and throw in the dryer. Everyone was very kind and was OK with us returning to the apartment. Although, I would have been up for shopping…;-) I did not have any burns, so that turned out well.
While we waited for the jeans to dry it became clear that taking PATH into the city was no longer an option. So we decided to drive in, park at the port authority and take public transit to Grand Central. After we hit mucho traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel, the plan changed to drive straight to Grand Central and park. We got to the rendezvous point with 20 minutes to spare. Whew. I was worried we'd make the birthday girl late for her own event, but at least that part worked as planned. As did the rest of the evening (well, except for one thing I'll get to later).
The scavenger hunt was AWESOME. There were two teams of five and one team of four. We wandered (worked off the cupcakes) all through grand central and some nearby buildings finding clues and learning a bit of history. We had to answer 26 out of 32 questions (no extra points beyond the 26). Some of them were hard and so we'd skip if it became apparent that we were wasting time. Nbh and I were on the birthday girl's team and we kicked booty. But we didn't win. In order to break a tie a team could win an extra point if they came up with a cool name. We tied with the winning team but apparently our team name (Grand Central Intelligency Agency) was not as funny as "Could you please leave the building?" Since you had to go into some other buildings to look for clues the security guards were um, surly. And apparently one team got asked to leave. Nbh won a free public scavenger hunt and the winning team won free team's on a public scavenger hunt. They have them up in Boston……hmmm…….
Dinner was at Hill Country BBQ. Iwan, ChrisM, Joe and I drunk texted across the tables. We also faced-booked with Poz. Word to your mother, dudes. And thanks to ChrisM: "Moist is the new black."
Our final stop was at a friend of a friend's joint called Sweet Revenge. We headed home around 12:30ish.
We got home around 4p.m. on Sunday and chillaxed for the evening.
It was a great weekend and it was great seeing everyone. Elke sure knows how to throw a good time and now I've got to figure out what I'm doing for my fortieth…..
Other really bad thing (besides the coffee spill) that happened: I left our $$$$ camera in a taxi. This is the one nbh bought for our NZ trip. The good news is that NYC's cabs all belong to the same organization and so you can call and report something missing and it's connected to every cab in NYC. The bad news is that it's a sweet camera and unless there's a good samaritan who got into the car after us we probably won't see it again. We didn't lose any photos (except the few taken earlier in the day), but it was expensive. Nbh took it in stride. I think I have been more upset about it than him. I'm mostly OK now.
Posted by jennj at October 20, 2008 11:03 AM
Clue-ments:
Bummer-- I was hoping that you'd get the camera back. For the record, our team was "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave now." :) (We also considered "No photos!")
Posted by: rv at October 20, 2008 11:49 AM
Hey, CF, glad to hear you were not burned by the coffee, but so sorry about the camera. I hope you get it back.
Sorry we missed the festivities, it sounds great. I did have a great evening with the Fabulous Birthday Girl in Basel though. :)
Posted by: Donna at October 20, 2008 12:51 PM
You might want to keep an eye on this site:
http://ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com/
Maybe whoever has your camera will decide to do the right thing and try to get it back to you.
Posted by: Donna at October 21, 2008 09:26 AM
Donna - thanks for that website!!
Posted by: cf at October 22, 2008 08:16 AM