New York City, Part 2

Who has 2 thumbs and is in Times Square? This guy!

The next day Jessica and I went to go see some of the major attractions of New York City. First off we wandered up to Times Square to get a glimpse of it during the day (obviously night time is the best time to see Times Square). It kind of looks as you'd expect, what with hundreds of screens up the side of the buildings advertising various gaudy products. Time Square is more of a strip with many touristy closeby.

There were multiple performers in costumes who ask for a tip if you take a photo of them (this was a pretty common practice in many USA places with heavy tourist traffic - e.g. Hollywood Boulevard). There was also a Ripley's, M&Ms World and Hershey's Chocolate World nearby. We spent a fair amount of time in M&M World mainly due to the sheer ridiculousness of it. It was massive! So many M&M products for everything imaginable, from clothes and souvenirs to cookware and leather jackets worth thousands of dollars. It also had a machine that could 'guess your mood' and pick out an M&M colour right for you. I'm guessing that machine's bleeding-edge mind reading technology was a random number generator.

I look like I'm doing more of a Hitler salute.

Morgan Freeman says hi.

We then headed through a park and up to the the New York City public library which we stumbled upon almost completely accidentally. The library had two large lions at the front, which Jessica assured me were famous. Inside it also had Lego replicas of the lions and an exhibit on NYC food. The best part was that it was free!

Jessica in NYC park.

NYC Library.

Lego sculpture of the NYC library lions.

Next up we headed down to Grand Central Station. Nothing super interesting going on, lots of people milling around and a very high ceiling like a cathedral. It did have an Apple store at one end which I thought was a little odd. Quite a spectacular places nonetheless.

Outside Grand Central Station.

Inside Grand Central Station.

The famous clock inside Grand Central Station.

No visit to NYC would be complete without a visit to the Empire State Building! So Jess and I joined the end of the very long line and waited for about 20 minutes. The security guards confiscated my tiny pocket knife off me! The view was spectacular from the top, NYC looks surreal from high up. It is such a mass of tall buildings, and you can definitely make out all the features and attractions. The audio guide was quite informative as well, pointing out interesting facts about buildings that I wouldn't have normally noticed.

Looking out towards the financial district.

Closeup of some of the buildings in midtown.

Not always attractive, but still interesting!

Financial district from a wider angle.

Pigeon on top of the Empire State. 

Jess and I on the top of Empire State.

I wanted to see "that weird triangle building" next - it was one of those times where I knew what it looked like and knew it was famous - but had no idea why. It's shown a lot in TV shows set in NYC including Friends and Spin City. Turns out it's called the "Flatiron Building", which was once one of NYC's tallest buildings.

The Flatiron building and I.

After getting some classic NYC pizza and calzones, I had to go and do the exciting task of my laundry. Later that night Jess and I went out to a bar I'd heard about a long time ago. The gimmick is that prices of alcohol are controlled like a stock market, so that the more people buy of the drink the prices go up. Conversely, less-popular drinks go down in price. Every now and then there would be a "stock market crash" where all drinks would be super cheap!

New York City, Part 1

I have no photos of Jersey City - Here is a NYC cab!

I left Boston in the early evening. Even though the Boston mechanics did an amazing job of my bike they didn't finish until around 6:30 PM. This meant that by the time I picked up my bike, packed up all my stuff and left Boston it was already getting dark.

This was not my intention, I didn't really want to navigate the Jersey Turnpike during darkness, but I now had no choice in the matter. At least it seemed I was mostly over my cold (I drank a litre of cranberry juice every day in Boston, in the hopes to get over it as quickly as possible).

The ride out wasn't too bad and my GPS did a fantastic job. About 3 hours in I started to get very weary and the traffic started to build. It was in the middle of the night and there was a traffic jam on the freeway!

It's hard to describe the surreal scenery I experienced as I passed through Jersey City and the surrounding areas during the night. Even if I had attached my GoPro the photos wouldn't have come out, but I remember riding on these huge flyovers through massive, dense metropolises  It almost felt like something out of Blade Runner. It was certainly different to the wide open spaces I experienced in the West.

And a cop car!

On the motorcycle it was cold, and I had all my clothing on again in order to keep warm. By this stage in my journey my music had started to bore me - I had something like 30GB of music, each track I felt like I'd heard 100 times. These days I was relying on podcasts to keep up my attention.

So on the cold lonely highway I had nothing but The Joe Rogan Experience and bright GPS map too keep me awake and entertained. The GPS map would periodically show a massive tangle of interconnecting highways and freeways. I felt very lucky that I had the luxury of the GPS as I would not want to be navigating this quagmire on my wits alone.

The Jersey Turnpike eventually spit me out onto some backroad of Jersey City, where I realised that this wasn't the nicest neighbourhood or prettiest city I'd seen in America. Unfortunately my GPS thought I could arrive at my destination on one side of a highway where my hotel was on the other, however a giant divider between the lanes would make things difficult. I had to continue on in order to get my GPS to re-route and get me coming into the hotel from the other direction so I'd be on the right side.

And a building!

Even following GPS directions can be difficult in roads as complicated as these, and with so much traffic. However I was glad I was on a motorcycle as could be nimble enough to weave through cars and make turnoffs quickly. Luckily for me I had already purchased an EZ-Pass (electronic toll bridge pass for East America) and put it in my tail bag, so toll bridges were super fast and painless.

I eventually arrived at my hotel in Jersey City, where the plan was to stay for a few nights and use the public transport travel between Jersey and NYC. However upon arrival, I noted that the front-desk staff were behind a very thick glass window and the whole place smelt of stale cigarette smoke. At first I thought this was tolerable, but after a few hours it started to make me a little nauseous. NYC was supposed to be a bit of a blow-out for me anyway, a chance to spend some money that I'd been saving through couch-surfing, so I booked a nice boutique hotel in the middle of Manhattan called "Hotel Indigo" for the next few nights.

The next day I was a little nervous, as this would finally be the moment where I'd face the infamous NYC traffic. I ate some dried-out hotel muffins, drank a weak coffee, attached the GoPro and set off at around about 10:00 AM. After going under the Holland Tunnel which connects New Jersey to NYC via the Hudson River, I popped out in Manhattan. In the end the traffic wasn't particularly bad, the GPS did lose signal for the first time ever due to the surrounding building heights, but it was easy to remember what its original plan was due to the NYC grid system.

My bike sits outside my hotel in Manhattan.

When I arrived at my hotel I had no idea where to park, so I just put my bike in some loading zone accidentally. Lucky for me I was able to move my bike to the correct spot before the draconian NYC parking inspectors found out.

I checked in and then moved my bike up to a hotel-partnered parking garage. The guy really didn't want to take my bike. As I pulled up he said "No motorbike! No motorbike!". And I'm all like "Hey dude, I'm staying in the hotel up the road, you have to take me in". Reluctantly he gave me a spot... squeezed underneath a staircase. At first I was a little miffed why I didn't get a spot since I'd still be paying the $35 a day any car would. But after further thought I guess there was no way for them to really move my bike, I can imagine a busy NYC garage would be in a constant car juggling act.

Jessica arrived later that morning so we could both head down to the New York Comic Con. Jessica put on her "Abbey from NCIS" outfit and we walked down to the convention centre. Now, I'm not knowledgeable at all in the world of comics - I think I've read about two in my entire life back when I got them in a show-bag from the the Canberra show - but I couldn't miss the opportunity for this massive nerd event!

The event was pretty crazy (although, allegedly, not as large as the San Diego Comic Con), there were tons of people and exhibitions there. We first headed down to Artists Alley, where there were tons of fantastic artwork on display. Some artists were extremely talented, and I managed to get some business cards of a select few so I could possibly order some prints when I got back to Australia.

So. Much. Joker. Artwork.

Harder Better Faster Stronger. No doubt costume is not
Daft Punk related.

Me!

Jessica and I then headed down to the collector halls where there was all kinds of t-shirts, models and exhibitions. There was even Marvel Avengers cologne for sale! Heaps of people were dressed up, but apparently to to the extent of Dragon Con - an event that Jessica regularly attends.

Ah, no more nerd stank.

Minecraft guy.

My favourite costume.

Lego Hulk Smash!

There were some great costumes on display, and I did want to get photos of a lot of them. However I was a little shy about approaching people to get their photograph - especially the more 'racy' ones. I know that in a lot of cases the cos player loves being photographed, but I couldn't get over how creepy that felt. Plus the place was so packed, to get a photo you need to clear a space and make a giant scene, an even larger one if you want a photo next to them. So I just took photos where I could of people in the crowds.

I love the guy's expression on the left.

George Lucas's prequels all make sense now.

Jessica and I attended two sessions as that seemed like a 'con' thing to do, one was about how to get into the comic book industry and the other was about the history of comic book movies. The first was fairly interesting, there seemed to be a whole lot of artists, writers, colourers and marketing people trying to break into a company such as Marvel.

The second session just seemed to be an advertisement for these guy's webseries on facts you should know, they didn't have much of a background in comic book movies. They pretty much just speiled off a list of comic book movies, when they were made with a short background of each. All of which would have taken a quick Wikipedia search. The audience would then cheer for movies like The Avengers or The Dark Knight and boo for movies such as Ghost Rider or The Green Lantern.

All-in-all a fantastic experience! More New-York-ey stuff to follow!

Boston, Massachusetts 2

Main courtyard in Harvard (Harvard Yard).

What makes Boston fascinating to me is that it has this real blue-collar attitude, but also contains some of the most famous and well respected Universities in the world - namely Harvard and MIT. Well technically Harvard isn't really in Boston, but in a town just outside called Cambridge.

However my trip to Boston could not be complete without a tour of Harvard, so I caught the train down to Cambridge and joined a tour group headed by a very excitable freshman student.

She explained the history and background to a lot of the buildings and facilities of Harvard. The most surprising thing for me is that Harvard could be considered one of the cheaper universities to attend due to the scholarships they offer. I also imagined Harvard to be larger, but guess there wasn't much room for expansion being in the middle of Cambridge. She also showed us where the Final clubs existed made famous by the movie Social Network. I didn't think Harvard was as pretty as the Chicago University, just a lot of red-brick buildings.

Old man Harvard.

Inside one of Harvard's buildings.

Our very excitable tour guide is on the left.

Next I thought I should go see MIT, as this is probably the most prestigious university in the world for my particular field. It was much less pretty than Harvard. I guess this could be expected for a technical university? Mind you, I did catch it on a pretty miserable day.

I did get lunch at a really awesome food van though, it was a mass of curry and rice obviously made for poor University students. It was so good though, and something like $6!

Sculpture in MIT.

Such a pretty campus...

Kick-ass outdoor bench seat though.

Crazy looking buildings in MIT.

Close-up of one of the structures.

After buying the obligatory MIT and Harvard t-shirts, I caught the train into downtown Boston. I just wandered around downtown, it's such an interesting looking city. The streets feel very cavernous, and with the clouds very low, it looked pretty awesome.

I randomly came across a statue of Samuel Adams - who I only knew for being the name of a very popular beer in America. In fact, Sam Adams beer is the largest US-owed brewery currently operating in the US - Coors, Miller and Budweiser are all owned by corporations outside America. Turns out he was also founding father of America! Thanks Sambo!

Next I tried to get a beer at traditional "Irish" pub as that seemed like a very Bostonian thing to do. However much to my dismay they wouldn't take my Australian licence as ID and required my passport. Yeah I guess I should just carry that everywhere, not like it's a super important document or anything. I did get to finally hear some good stereotypical Boston accents though!

The girls and I all went out for dinner that night at a local bar. I remember the serving sizes being absolutely massive.

The next day I had to go drop off my bike for a service. I took it to a fantastic garage near Union Square. After catching the bus back to the house, I met up with Natalya, Blair and Christina for lunch at a Greek food truck in their University. Once they went back to class I walked back to the house and waited for my bike to be ready. I had to ride all the way to Jersey City that night and I was hoping I could get there before nightfall. However as the hours dragged on I realised that this would not be happening.

Natalya gave me a lift back to the Garage at around 4 PM. They did an excellent job, and found packing material inside my fairing. This meant that either in my last major service the mechanics didn't take off my fairing (thus not really doing a major service) or decided to leave it in (thus being idiots). This packing material would have probably been used when they shipped the bike from Japan. Nevermind, it was out now.

I rode back to the house and packed all my stuff up. I said my goodbyes to these fantastic hosts and set off for Jersey City.

Boston, Massachusetts 1

For most people when you lose your "khakis" you've lost your pants. When you're from Boston and lose your "khakis" you can't start your car.

Heidi's grand old house in Concord.

Holy shit I was looking forward to Boston, I loved the accent and was grateful to spend some extended time in one place. First I had to leave New Hampshire, so after saying goodbye to Heidi, I jumped on my bike and headed into downtown Concord. I was hoping to see some covered bridges, this is apparently what New Hampshire is famous for. That and the most crazy licence plate slogan yet: "Live Free or Die".

However the the closest "good" covered bridges were a bit of a distance away and in the wrong direction. So I just bought a few souvenirs and ate breakfast at chain very similar to IHOP (pancake place for those playing back in Australia). There was a stunning capital building in Concord too, but motivation was waning that day.

From left to right, top to bottom:
Christina, Jessica, Anjali, Natalya, myself and Blair.
Taken from the steps of their house.

In all honesty I was feeling a little under the weather; it seemed as though I had somehow caught a cold. Who thought that eating bad food, getting little sleep, drinking heavily and riding around in the cold could make a person ill?

My phone had run out of credit so I had to ring up T-Mobile to recharge it. After 15 minutes of being on hold, the operator picked up and told me the system was down and I'd have to call back later. Luckily through a open WiFi connection I was able to send Christina (my Boston couch surfing host) a brief message through the magic of Apple iMessage. Lucky for me she had an iPhone too. I said I'd be leaving Concord soon and would be in Boston in 2 hours or so.

It was raining that day and I was already cold from my sickness, so I put as many clothes on as I could and lethargically set off for Boston. Luckily I already had the address of the house so I was able to just follow my GPS's directions.

The street which the girl's lived.

When I arrived at the house I met Anjali, and not long after the rest of the girls started to slowly arrive one-by-one. Blair then Natalya then Jessica and finally Christina came home. We all chatted about my trip, what each of them were studying and their plans for the future. It was a little weird for a person like myself to be the centre of attention from so many people, but they all seemed really excited to meet me. I guess there might have been some nervousness there too, I was their first couch surfer, a very large motorcyclist from a country on the other side of the world!

The girls all studied at Tufts University which is a very well respected educational institution located Medford - a town just outside Boston. All were final-year undergraduate students (called "seniors" in America? Have I got that right?), except for Jessica who I think was a post-grad. I loved the diverse mix of the group in terms of race (Caucasian, Indian and Asian), background and personality. Each person was interesting in their own right. The girls had known each other for a long time - it was like living in some sort of college sitcom! Plus the house itself was really awesome, it was very old with an interesting layout, situated on the most classically American suburban street. The only thing I can liken the inside to was a cubbyhouse, but bigger. It was awesome.

Everybody loves Halloween!

I stayed up in the loft, which I guess was essentially a converted attic. Pretty comfortable since I got my own bed, but standing at 6'4 I had to be careful near the edges of the room not to hit my head!

That night most of the girls and I headed down to a local pub. Unfortunately I was still feeling a bit under the weather from my cold and they were all studying for midterms, so we couldn't have too much of a big one.

All the girls had pumpkin beers where the bartender would line the edge of the glass with sugar and cinnamon mix margarita-style. These girls loved pumpkin, and as it was approaching Halloween there was plenty of pumpkin goods to be had.

Taken near Tuft's University.

This obsession with annual flavours - especially pumpkin around Halloween - was a pretty foreign concept to me. I'm pretty sure we don't have anything like it in Australia. Around this time in America you can get pumpkin beer, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies (which were later baked by Christina), pumpkin hot chocolate and almost every food retailer or restaurant will have some food containing pumpkin. Even the big chains like Starbucks will join in.

Pumpkin is also especially interesting as an Australian as it is mostly served in a sweet manner (like pumpkin pie), which I guess makes sense as it is a sweet vegetable. It was met with much surprise when I told Americans that we only tend to have pumpkin savoury style in Australia - like baked pumpkin in a roast, in a risotto or in a salad.

Christina and I get lunch.

I found the obsession with pumpkin quite endearing to the American people. A feeling that I'm sure many would take offence to - coming from a foreigner who lives in such a small country. The all powerful and mighty US being endearing!?

But I loved how everyone got so excited about holidays and themed food in the States. Every year it seems that some Australians try and get us involved in Halloween, which is either met by stereotypical Aussie apathy or annoyance due to the way an American holiday is forced on us by the retailers.

Not to say that I think Halloween really belongs in Australia - I won't be celebrating it back home - but it sure is fun in the country where it originated. It feels more genuine rather than just retailers trying to make a quick buck before Christmas. Americans have been encouraged to embrace and celebrate it since they were very young, and it is consequently a bit more "grass-roots" than just ploy to sell shit - even thought that's obviously still taking place.

Tree within Tufts University.

I've got to point out that pumpkin beer is not considered to be some sort of girly drink either. Plenty of guys I met in America were drinking pumpkin flavoured stouts, ales and porters. I had one up in Fargo but it wasn't really my sort of thing. So that night I just got a regular local beer - which was fantastic by the way.

Oh and it also must be said that many of the girls I'd meet in America have an outstanding taste in beer. I don't think drinking it - or maybe being a beer snob like me - is as confined to one sex as it is back home.

The next day Christina invited me out for lunch and a walk around her University. We went to a sandwich shop with an adjoining café. The coffee and food was great despite the hipstery nature of the place (I don't mind hipsters by the way, they make for great baristas!).

We then wandered around Tufts University, where I tried to get some photos of some good fall foliage. Apparently I'd come a bit too late, as the tree she was intending was looking a bit scraggly now (see above), but still the colours were amazing! I walked back to Christina's house as she had classes to attend.

Anjali, Blair and Natalya put up with me during study.

That night the girls (plus Anjali's boyfriend) all gathered around for a study session. I tried to leave them alone so they could concentrate, the last thing I wanted was to disturb their studies during midterms! So I bought a few beers and put in some couch surfing requests from the attic.

After a while I realised that there was not much studying going on so I came and joined them. It was like being in University again! Except without all the exams, stress and drama - I was glad I could relive my university years vicariously.

The next day, to the Boston Universities!