February 28, 2003 - Packing my clothes and whatnot the night before was a godsend because I would not have been capable of picking out things to wear and socks that match in time to make it to work. On the way to the car I grabbed my clothes bag and camera bag and took off. Work was pretty crazy during the morning because I had to cram a full days worth of work into 3 hours. At noon I arrived at KONI where my friend Gordon works. He will be using my car for the weekend to test fit some adjustable struts that his company makes. Because of this he drove me to the airport. My destination is NYC, the most amazing city on Earth. To get to NYC I flew to Chicago, walked about 3 miles inside the Chicago airport to get to the gate that I would fly out of, and then flew to LaGuardia Airport. Both flights were seamless and on time. The only downside was a man cannot live on peanuts and soda alone. In NYC it was around 6:30 when I got out to the bus stop. My mission was to ride the M60 to Lexington Avenue. From there I hop on the subway up to Scott Hands exit, and meet Scott. To enable this whole situation I was in constant communication with Scott on AOL Instant Messenger via my wireless enabled Palm i705 PDA. It was the ultimate in geekiness. Now, perhaps it would have been easier to just use a cell phone, but I think having the added ability to check my email, play games, and surf the internet was worth the hassle of using AIM rather than talking to Scott. Scott was waiting for me outside the subway station when I exited. We walked to his apartment. I thought overall it was quite nice, compared to the image I have heard of apartments in NYC. Then again, he is pretty far out, in Queens, near the last subway stop. Scott and I neither had eaten so we rode the subway into Manhattan to find "NYC Pizza". Everyone talks about pizza in NYC similar to pizza in Chicago, so I thought I would give it a try. We walked around for a while and couldn't find a single pizza place! It was unreal, I figured there would be one on every street corner. We were just about to give up hope of eating when we discovered a restaurant bearing the sign "NYC's best hamburgers". It appealed to our interest in eating so we went in. I must confess that the cheddar burger I had was quite good. The French fries were curly, and appeared to be the exact same ones that they serve at Hooters. It was alright because I was hungry. Our next goal for the night was to walk around and take some photos. Our walking put us in Times Square (every time I go to NYC I end up in Times Square some how, there might be a few Times Squares and they all look the same, since NYC is so huge there is no chance that I could possibly randomly end up in the same place each time). I took photos and we walked around the Virgin Records store. Our final goal for the night was to see some live music. The first idea was to check out Birdland. When we got there I inquired what the cover was. The woman nonchalantly replied "$40, it includes 1 drink". Alrighty then! We of course left. The music playing was just a guitar player, bass and drums, and it was not impressing me at all. Onward we walked to a place called Swing 46. The cover was a much more reasonable $12, but there was a 2 drink minimum for sitting at a table. Most people go there to swing dance, apparently. We were there to see live music and although the group was decent it wasn't worth the drink prices we had to pay. Scott ended up with a $12 martini and a $8 rum and coke, I had two $8 drinks as well. I was unimpressed with the midtown way of draining your wallet. At least the hamburgers for dinner weren't expensive. A long subway ride home ended the day.