Brooklyn!!

Friday July 17th, 2009

When I got to my friend's house yesterday there was a package waiting for me. What could this be? None other than my long lost GPS!!! I just might be able to find out where I'm going from now on.

I spent the afternoon setting it up and, to my complete dismay, started having the same problems as with the old unit. I called Garmin and emailed them and the only time it worked was with the small, 64MB microSD card that came with it. This card had enough space to fit one state's worth of maps on it which wouldn't really help me on a multi-state trip like the one I'm currently on...

I ventured into the city later that night to meet Glenn (Urban Guerrilla), working GPS or not. Traffic getting into the city was miserable as was the humidity so I spent a good portion of time cursing the city under my breath. The traffic that I hit was fortunately not the normal status quo (at least for that time of day) and was the result of a fender bender or some other minor situation that backed things up for miles. Once moving I became much happier even with the ever present humidity. Getting from New Jersey to Manhattan had the potential to be very confusing when I crossed the George Washington bridge as lanes were funneling in from every direction and there was the choice for the upper or lower bridge and finding the correct toll booth and finally surviving the traffic jam there. quite the experience. Past the bridge the directions became very simple by just going straight on the FDR expressway which took me straight to the Brooklyn bridge. I've seen this bridge in person before, seen it in movies and pictures but driving over it was really a cool thing to do. The cross beams coursing overhead and the view of the city and the plethora of cabs was very neat. THIS is New York.

I safely made it to Glenn's and we set off for to walk around the bridge that I just came across. Standing at the base of the bridge gave a whole new view of it and greater appreciation. Down at the base we were amid loads of people there for the same reason and there were restaurants and the like there too. We wandered up through Brooklyn Heights before venturing off towards DUMBO and a good mexican food place called Pedro's. We had great timing as the rain really picked up just as we got inside. Apparently they used to have an outdoor seating area that was pretty nice, at least until a neighbor called the police on them... Oh well, it's not like we were going to sit outside anyways. We had some really good food and some even better conversation, so much so that we were there until they closed. Not too bad for a Friday night. Getting back to Glenn's place was a bit trickier then getting here due to a series of one way streets and dead ends but we made it back alright.

Getting out of the city I took the Holland tunnel to avoid taking the same roads back and I had a lot of fun. I know that it's simple but driving in a tunnel that long I was enjoying the reverberations of my exhaust the entire way. Once out of the tunnel and into New Jersey the pleasantness of the road changed. Driving at night with a headlight designed in the 80's doesn't make for great visibility and that meant that I couldn't see the gigantic bumps in the pavement before being on top of them. Some of these bumps were large enough to bonce me clear off the seat and I got air several times. All a bit freaky when you don't know it's coming.

I got back to the house about 1am and found my friend Danica already there. When I got upstairs she greeted me with "Hi, I'm drunk" (or something to that effect) as she was laying down eating ice cream from the container. Oh, the things I've missed with her moving across the country! lol

Pictures!