East coast adventures
The alarm clock went off at midnight California time this morning. I'd dozed off less than an hour before. Deja vu. My flight left four hours later, at 7 am eastern. My handwritten boarding pass (jetblue's check-in system had crashed or something, leaving a small amount of chaos at the terminal) was marked "SSSS", meaning, apparently, that I must look like a terrorist and must be searched thoroughly in that the-magnetic-wand-beeps-on-the-rivets-in-my-jeans-so-they-look-at-me-warily and the-attendant-makes-small-talk-about-how-beat-up-my-wallet-is sort of way. These searches seem to be mostly for the psychological effect.
If this keeps happening, I'm almost tempted to pack something totally inappropriate (weird-looking sex toy, gigantic bong, etc.) in my bag just to see what they'd do.
In reverse chronological order...
Spent an afternoon with some of Christophe's friends, a very nice and geeky (juggling, mountain climbing) French couple. Ran through the streets of Princeton barefoot in the rain to find a baking sheet so I could make pizza, managed to drop one pizza and burn another to a crisp.
Before that, took the train back to Princeton from New York in the morning after spending an evening with Jason and Juliana and crashing at the apartment they are also crashing. Never met the actual owners. A St. (or something) is apparently where it's at on a Friday night. We went to a "milk bar" from A Clockwork Orange, reference I don't get, ran around looking for chocolate cake in the wee hours of the morning. Stories from the world of "pro-domming", which are far too interesting to repeat here.
Friday was actually sunny, so we went to the Jersey shore. (The road signs say "shore points".) There is apparently some complicated system of badges to access the beach in the summer, but few people were there, and no badges or enforcement in sight. We got sunburned and watched four policemen
pick up four girls in bikinis.
The day before, wandered around New York. A lot of people-watching.
A woman in black shepherding four small girls dressed in identical hideous pink and green dresses.
A man in dress clothes sitting in the trunk of a car.
Two woman, one acting as a personal trainer, doing a round of odd exercises in Central Park.
A man who has set up a telescope attached to a TV monitor to watch a bird sitting on the roof of a faraway building.
Something being filmed on the side of an entirely random road. There were no signs, and nobody seemed to recognize the actors (whose task seemed to consist only of making out with each other on cue in front of a green screen), so it's probably a commercial. No idea what it might be selling.
Before that, spent a day wandering around Philadelphia in dreary weather. There was an immense amount of security around the Liberty Bell, police and park rangers and airport-style screenings. We decided it wasn't worth waiting in line with all the huge groups of kids apparently on school trips. In the evening, dinner at a jazz club. The crowd was young, successful, and black, something I don't know if I've ever seen here.
Happy trip, another good dose of randomness. Happy French, too.
And just because it was on the side of the road...
