Friday, July 24, 2009

Departure

  • I am always amazed at how despite planning for hours, days, or months leading up to a trip, it seems like we always find ourselves running late and scrambling at the last minute. We were planning to take a 3:00pm bus out of Port Authority to Scranton, PA (more on that later.) The bus company advised being there 30 minutes before and we still had to buy tickets, so I figured it made sense to leave no later than 2:00pm. At 1:50pm, Butch was in my apartment, saying he was going to just “run back home and take a quick shower” and then he would be ready to go. Wonderful. At 2:02pm, I received a text from Ushi, saying “running a little late, can we do 2:10 instead?” More wonderful. We ended up getting a ride to the bus station with Ushi’s lovely wife and made it to our bus with minutes to spare, Butch running through the streets of Manhattan with a cooler propped up on top of his rolling suitcase and Ushi laughing like a drunken hyena, for the home stretch.
  • The area where tracks 1-50 in the Port Authority Bus Terminal is located looks less like New York than any other part of New York
  • Butch brought a “deck” of cards for the trip. It was missing 3 cards.
  • Right before we departed, I noticed that we were on bus # 815. All I’ll say is that if we disappear for 3 months and they claim they found us at the bottom of a trench in the ocean, don’t believe it for a second.
  • Butch ended up seated right behind me next to a girl from Stroudsburg, who engaged him in a long conversation as soon as she sat down. I only heard bits and pieces of what they were discussion but to me, she seemed extremely dumb. (Butch later confirmed her dumbness.) 43 minutes into the trip (how do I know it was exactly 43 minutes? You’ll find out soon…) a man a few rows behind us begins shouting at Butch and his lady friend that he was trying to sleep and that he didn’t “care where you went on vacation or when you went to Papa John’s.” (For the record, I also didn’t care about these things, I’m not just not mentally unstable.) He said that he had been up since 5 in the morning and that the last thing he needed was to hear her “yakkity yak for 43 minutes.” When the girl replied that she had been up since 3am and was just fine, the man suggested that perhaps this was because of her cocaine use. Many profanities were exchanged back and forth, much to the enjoyment of the rest of the bus passengers.
  • Several minutes later, the emergency exit window that spanned the rows Butch and I (and the girl) were sitting in, flung open as we made a wide turn. We suspect the involvement of the crazy man from the previous bullet point.
  • Oh ya, why were we on a bus instead of driving? For some reason, renting a car from Scranton is about $600 cheaper than renting one from NY.
  • When we got to the car rental place, Ushi tried to pay for it unsuccessfully with two different credit cards, both of which were declined. We can expect many jokes over the next couple of weeks about Ushi being poor and unable to pay for things.
  • In Scranton, we visited a couple landmarks from the hit TV show, The Office. One of these was the “Scranton Welcomes You” sign that is seen in the opening credits. Surprisingly, this sign is located not on the side of the road but in a mall. Apparently, this is because too many people were getting into accidents as they attempted to take pictures of the sign as they drove by, so the town moved the sign to a mall. Apparently, Scrantonians are idiots. I really hope when I get back to NY, the Empire State Building hasn’t been moved to inside a mall.
  • Last road trip, it was not until a few days in that we got pulled over by law enforcement. This time, it took the better part of the day. The worst part of it is that we were about a mile from our final destination, about to exit the highway, when it happened. The asshole cop even took the time to point out the irony of this situation. Were we speeding? Probably. Did the officer have to be a total douchebag about it, though? Certainly not. The worser part of it, is that after giving us a citation, he made it seem like if we had merely owned up to speeding and shown some contrition, he would have let us go, but since we made excuses and said we didn’t realize how fast we were going, he had no choice. In my opinion, this man was an asshole. (Butch’s note: This was in fact my first ticket ever. The one other time I had been pulled over for speeding I acted real dumb and pretended to be lost and the guy felt bad and let me off with a warning. Tickets were the one exception to me extreme disbelief in superstitions, I never ever mentioned the fact that I had not yet gotten a ticket because I was sure that if I did I would get one that very day.)

Argument of the Day
This is the 1st in what I hope will be a recurring series on this trip, entitled “argument of the day,” in which we will share the best argument that occurred that day on the trip. As road trips naturally lend themselves to lively debate and discussion, we expect to have much material to include in this segment. We would love this opportunity to take our arguments to the web and let our readers weigh in.

Was Elaine a slut?

Points to consider: She is not as bad as Jerry, but she does seem to have a revolving door of men in her life. How long, on average, are we supposed to assume she has been “dating” these men that we are introduced to? On a larger scale, how long of a period of time is the show purporting to represent? Is she in relationships with most of these men or are any of these “flings?” Does the facts that she “yada yadas” sex tell us anything about her attitude towards it? To what extent can we assume sex is taking place off screen when we don’t see it or are told about it? What should we make of Jerry’s offhanded remark about her, when he says “who are any of her guys?” to George? What about her co-worker’s labeling of her as a “floozy?” (Just so you know, this argument lasted close to two hours and who knows how much longer it would have lasted had we not been pulled over.)

5 comments:

NarshBed said...

You guys should have moved your Elaine discussion to a mall. Too many people are getting tickets when it happens on the road.

Unknown said...

I read this, and moments later Julia Louis-Dreyfus was the answer on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Foddy? Perhaps. Enjoy the trip, boys.

Deranged GOT Fan said...

Elaine: Being a woman, I only really have access to the equipment, what, 30-45 minutes a week, and that's on a good week. How can I be expected to have the same expertise as people who own this equipment and have access to it 24 hours a day their entire lives?

abie said...

I guess this proves that jinxing really doesn't exist. On the other hand, I knew Butch had never gotten a ticket before because he told me he hadn't. So i guess this doesn't prove anything and we just have to rely on common sense to tell us that anyone who believes in jinxes is retarted. And anyone who goes as far as to act on a jinx and not watch the Giants beat the Patriots in the Superbowl is a complete and utter moron. (Yes you, Ushi).

Elaine is a slut.

matt said...

I am watching S.9 E.1 "The Butter Shave" and the following exchange takes place:

Jerry (nods): Look, postcard from Elaine from Europe.

Kramer: Don't tell me she's dragging another poor guy across Europe.

Jerry: Remember David Puddy?

Kramer: She's dating him again, huh?

Jerry: Well, I guess she's batted around and she's back at the top of the order.