'3 things I learned today, 1. It is unacceptable to use your blinker in New Jersey. 2. The road/signs here suck, and 3. I hate New Jersey.'
'Additional lessons learned yesterday: 4. Do not get on a bus, just because it stops for you at a bus stop. 5. I miss MN nice...'
I'm going to tell a little story about the second of the two statuses... :) Actually, I'll have David tell it...
So, Rachel asked me to blog about our adventures of getting to
New York. I’m not sure if it’s because
she thinks I know the story better, or if it’s because she thinks her blog
needs a change of writing style or if
she is just lazy (if you know Rachel…or any Gunderson for that matter…you know
that last one obviously isn’t true). But
regardless of the reasoning, I’ll take the opportunity to make my ignorant
traveling self look less foolish.
First
of all, let me start by painting a picture for you. Pretend for a
moment you are in communist
Russia during the height of the cold war.
You are walking down the street, on the cold cloudy day, and all you see
is grey concrete buildings, the few walls of the buildings not crumbling
apart
have graffiti tattooed all over them. As you start to think about it,
you can’t
tell if the sky is actually cloudy or if it only appears that way
because of
the thick layer of smog covering the entire city. You cross the street
narrowly
avoiding a speeding car, driven by a person who seems numb to the
world. The individual’s eyes are glossed over as the
depressing surrounding of living in such a lifeless concrete tomb has
been
wearing on them. As they drive, they don’t
have any regard for any living being, including themselves. You take in
a deep breath, relieved you
avoided the speeding death trap, and instead of the normal exhaust and
rotting
garbage smell that your nostrils have become accustomed to on your walk,
you
get a whiff of sewer. It’s not better by
any means, but at least it’s a change in this monotone environment.
This is what your life has become, enjoying
the smell of sewer because of the outlet it provides. Your relief
quickly vanishes as a taxi cab flies
by, hit a puddle and soaks the bottom two feet of your legs in what this
strange
land calls “water” but by the look of it, It makes the Mississippi look
like
purified drinking water. As you are
walking down the street, you think to yourself “This must be what it
would have
been like to live in the book “1984” or in the hell that C.S. Lewis
described
in The Great Divorce.” Now what if I
told you that you weren’t actually in communist Russia? What if I told
you that it was worse? What if I told you that you were, in fact in…New
Jersey? Friends, this is in fact, what
New Jersey actually is. Communist
Russia.
Now
that I have set up the location of this exciting adventure, you’ll at least
understand my mindset and why my lack of good decision making was evident. Actually…thinking about it, the actual story
is way shorter than my intro, but after writing numerous papers in college, I’ve
perfected the art of fluffing a paper with nonsense. Maybe this is why I failed college writing as
a freshman? Or perhaps it was because my
professor was a confused, bitter old man on loan from the local community
college, looking for ways to torture young adolescents. And…it probably didn’t help that stopped
attending class half way through the semester….but that is a different conversation
for a different time.
We checked
into the hotel around 12:30. Before we went up to our room, we explained
that we were new to the area and were looking to go into New York City (little
did I know this was a mistake in itself).
The hotel concierge handed us an entire ream of paper which included
maps of NYC and New Jersey, bus routes and times, lists of local restaurants, subway
maps, our hotel reservations and about 985723534 other unneeded pieces of
information. He explains how easy it is
to get to New York City “You head out of the hotel, go through the parking ramp
to the grass pass (which turned out to just be an area trees were planted in
grass, there was no path involved) to the service road. From the service road, you want to head left,
avoiding the cars since there is no longer any path, until you pass the home
depot. After the home depot, you need to
cross the highway to the bus shelter.
You can’t miss it.” As he was
telling me this, I laughed to myself thinking “You can’t miss it? You have no idea who you are dealing with…I
like to think I’ve mastered the art of “missing it”.” He goes on to tell us “the bus’s come every
15 minutes and you can take any bus that says “New York City” on the front as
they all go to the Port Authority. The
round trip cost per person is $6.40.
Make sure you pay for round trip up front because coming home they don’t
make change for you” Oh yes, the good old port authority. Assuming that was in New York City we smiled,
grabbed our luggage and ream of paper and headed to our room. After dropping off our luggage and making a plethora
of paper airplanes and paper football (ok, that last part didn’t happen) Rachel
and I headed downstairs.
Ready for
our adventure in the big city (you can never be ready for this…) we
headed
through the hotel lobby, through the parking garage, through the “grass
path…”,
along the frontage road, past the home depot, and across the highway.
Excited and surprised that we made it to the
bus stop, I looked at my watch and saw that it was 1: 14. As we waited,
Rachel stayed back from the
road about 15 feet, attempting to stay away from the spray of the giant
puddles
all of the motorists insisted on hitting.
I’m at least 65% sure at least a few of them swerved to hit them. After
waiting what felt like an eternity I
glanced at my watch seeing it was 1:27.
Annoyed that we obviously had just missed one of the buses that come
every 15 minutes, I glanced up the street and what do you know, I saw a
bus! As it turns out it was more of a
shuttle bus…but it was a bus none the less.
On the front it said “New York City” and it was right on the 14 minute
mark. Our bus finally arrived. As we step on to the bus…er…shuttle I
tell
the driver I’d like to purchase two round trip bus tickets and hand him
the
exact change. The next few minutes fly past and felt like they only took
about
15 seconds. He stares at me and mumbles
something in Spanish and hands me some money back. I mumble something
in English. It gets quiet. We stare at each other and he hands me some
more money back. Confused but thinking
that this is normal (Because I don’t know what normal is in communist
Russia…I
mean New Jersey) I walk back to my seat. Rachel stares at me from the
front of
the shuttle and then comes back and sits next to me. It’s at this point
that I take in my
surroundings. The first thing my ears
pick up is the Latino music blasting over the the speakers. Next thing I
notice is that the bus is
fairly empty, with about 7-8 other people on the entire bus. As the bus
pulls away from the stop I notice
two more things. First thing, everyone
on the bus is speaking Spanish. Second thing,
Rachel is not happy. I watch her quietly
as she takes out her phone and punches in “Port Authority” into the GPS
and
follows our route to make sure we are going the right direction and
don’t end
up getting murdered in some back alley. At
this point I realize that I’ve most likely made a huge mistake.
I
realize that I probably screwed up and got on the wrong bus at this
point. But as the husband, I do my manly duty and
try and cheer her up pretending like nothing is wrong. No go.
I’m being ignored by a very unhappy wife. There are 3 or 4
conversations in Spanish going
on, and then me basically talking to myself in English. As we continue
on our route two things become
obvious. No one else is falling for this
fake shuttle trying to trick people into getting on the wrong bus. Our
shuttle pulls up to multiple stops
attempting to get more passengers, but everyone ignores him. I’m
feeling more foolish at this point. The second thing that is obvious is
that
Rachel isn’t going to acknowledge my existence until we make it to New
York. Still following the GPS, we can
see we are at least heading in the right direction. After about another
20 minutes of very
uncomfortable silence from my wife and thinking about the possible ways
we
could get murdered, we pull into a big
city. As we are waiting at a stop light,
one of the passengers in the very front argues with the driver in
Spanish. There is really no way to know what was being
said, but he angrily opened the door for her in the middle of traffic,
in the
middle lane. She jumps out and Rachel
and I decide it’s a good time to make a run for it. As soon as we get
off the busy, the silent
treatment is over and I hear about how dumb that was. At least the
silent treatment was over! And to be honest, I couldn’t argue because I
was pretty dumb to get on and not even realize how sketchy it was.
In
hindsight, would I do it again? Yes…not
really, but we did save 40 cents on our ticket fair, we ended up in New York
and we didn’t die. So I’d say all in all
it was a win-win.
Oh David...I laugh every time I relive the experience :) Here are some pictures of our first day in the city. We walked to Times Square, Rockefeller Plaza (where they were setting up for a concert to kickoff the first night of the NFL season), and Central Park.
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