I figured my return from two weeks of traveling on the East Coast is the best opportunity to resume keeping a blog. Once the LiveJournal fad died along with the end of high school (well, I clang to it through the first year of college, let's be honest), I didn't really see a need to write down the more memorable events happening in my life. But now I sort of regret it because I've done so much over the course of the last four years, traveled so many places -- and even though I still remember the bulk, dates, people or places are starting to escape my memory. This unsettles me for a reason I cannot yet explain. It will also be a good opportunity to tackle creative writing again, after some puerile attempts at sounding sophisticated during LiveJournal. Thankfully, those have long been deleted, along with the rest of the journal. Here's to a new start.
I wished to write about most of these experiences as or right after they happened, but since internet access was hard to find (particularly in Montreal), the reader will have to take it in in several posts. Good luck, and if you get through all of them, I will be impressed. Without further ado...
I set out for a Oakland Airport on a gloomy morning that was totally uncharacteristic of the middle of the summer - it was July 1st, after all, shouldn't it have been sunny and warm? After dragging the biggest suitcase I could find down the streets of Berkeley to the Bart station, I realized my windbreaking vest was making me hot, even though the outside temperature was hovering around 60F. The suitcase was also giving me reason for concern, as the two week's worth of clean clothes I had packed was not complementing well the things I was taking to Andi in Montreal. It was feeling a little on the heavy side, but I kept reassuring myself that it was just a bad intuition and that it'd be right around the 50 lb limit. I decided to bring enough clothes in the eventuality I wouldn't be able to do laundry during the trip - a strategy that proved unwise, as it shall be seen.
After checking it at United's counter, I heaved the suitcase on the scale to see the red digital display laugh a big 6-0 at me. Well shit, I thought, not a good start. It was time for fast decisions, and the first one came in no time: I sure as hell wasn't going to pay an extra 100 bucks for going 10 lbs over the weight limit. The next step was to figure out what to take out and where to put it; my backpack was already almost full. There's a saying in Romanian that can be paraphrased as good vision helps you get over the unexpected, so in that spirit I pulled out a plastic bag I had stuffed in my backpack for emergency situations and proceeded to load it with all the books our courier here was entrusted to delivering in Canada. Since Andi goes to med school at McGill, his brother Matei asked me if I could take along four volumes...of the medical kind. I had cheerfully agreed, without realizing how heavy they were. Their removal from the suitcase lightened the load by about 8 or 9 pounds, but it was still not enough as the woman at the counter gave a brusque denial when asked if they could let an extra pound or two slide by. Took out brush, toothpaste, comb and deodorant out of the toiletries bag and rammed them into the backpack, then reshuffled some clothes; miraculously, the suitcase now stood at an even 50 and I waved it away in frustration as I made for the security check.
The first leg of the flight was to LAX. Kind of counterintuitive flying back, I thought to myself, as I had just returned from Altair's wedding in Arcadia the day before... I was also thinking of how to give Matei a hard time over burdening me with a handle of Ballentine's that was single-handedly the heaviest thing in my luggage. However, when I did talk to Matei during my layover, he ended up helping me to decide on taking Greyhound from Washington to Montreal instead of driving. It should be noted at this point that I was flying to DC and had planned a roadtrip to Canada - which I would have had to undertake alone, my companion having bailed. Called up my sister and had her buy me a ticket for Greyhound over the internet, departure date July 2nd 11:45 pm from Washington.
During the flight to Dulles there was not much to do except take it in small doses of Cartarescu's last volume from his Orbitor epic (it's impossible, at least for me, to be able to read more than a couple of pages of Orbitor without stopping to digest them -- the writing is so rich and complex, the meaning so heavy, the metaphor so lyrical). About a third of the way through the flight I found myself distracted by the cleavage of the Japanese girl in the middle seat. I was sitting to her right and as such had a clear view of her left breast, which was contouring itself shamelessly in my field of vision. Every time I looked up from the book, the perky intruder was becoming more and more insistent. Eventually I decided the game wasn't worth my time, so I sneaked full views several times. The breast wasn't anything special, just a nice regular part of the female body. Satisfied with this conclusion, the breast stopped distracting me thereafter. When Cartarescu became unbearable, I stared at my plane ticket; the discovery of flying into IAD - Dulles' aiport code - made me wonder if this trip was going to be auspicious (in Romanian, "iad" means hell).
After getting into Dulles with a short delay and plus three hours time difference (essentially, three lost hours), hopping into the shuttle was almost a blessing. There was only one other person in there, a blonde that was quiet, but you could feel she was angry about something. I casually started a conversation which quickly turned lopsided, as I listened to her bitch about how she had to fight with the shuttle company in order to get in the van; "it was all their fault, they misspelled my name and wouldn't allow me to get on even though I showed the credit card I used to purchase, what a bunch of incompetents, I am never taking this again" etc etc. The bash-fest was interrupted when a skinny, scared-looking girl entered and asked us in a broken English if we knew of a hotel around a specific park in Alexandria (both me and the blonde were going to Alexandria). Upon questioning through slowly spoken sentences and hand gestures, we were able to find out the girl was a Russian who had come to work in the U.S. for the summer (at least that's what her work contract said, the only document she had). Unfortunately, we could not figure out why her employer hadn't sent someone to meet her or why he had instructed her to go to this park in Alexandria at that hour of the night. Naturally, the phone number provided on her papers was working only during business hours, so we couldn't get a hold of anyone. There was nothing to do but instruct the driver (himself a young African man who barely understood the language) to drop the Russian off at the first hotel in Alexandria.
During the ride from Dulles, Anna (the blonde) and I continued our conversation, this time on a more relaxed tone. I found out she's from Palo Alto, went to UC Santa Barbara, had just quit her job in SF and was coming to DC to visit her boyfriend. She even went to Berkeley for a year before deciding she didn't like it. I told her about myself and my travel plans. Meanwhile, the Russian didn't utter a sound and the traffic turned nightmarish about 2 miles from Alexandria. I was getting impatient: after spending the whole day traveling, the last thing I needed was being stuck in a I-405 morning-type of bottleneck at 10 p.m. Thankfully the highway exit came and was soon unloaded in front of Oana's building, the long-coveted resting place. Oana came and let me in, then fixed me some eggs which I must say were utterly delicious after the kind of day I had had. Since this was the first time we met, we talked for a while, then watched an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm before calling it a night. I passed out as soon as I lay on the living room couch.
By the time I awoke the next day, both Oana and her roommate were gone. This meant I could take my time getting ready without having to dash for the bathroom to not expose the dreary eyes, dry mouth and mangled hair. Oana left me her own set of keys and gave me instructions on how to get to downtown by metro, so upon having a breakfast out of her cereal and catching a few games from one of Federer's matches at Wimbledon, I headed out to our nation's capital. On the walk to the metro I made the full acquaintance of DC summer weather, which for someone coming out of dry, cool Bay Area is like a kick to the head. I found myself sweating even before getting on the train. Over the next few days I learned what humidity means, the hard way... Initially, I was going to visit the Library of Congress that day, but after wandering the hallways of its buildings, I decided a map was necessary for any future endeavors in our nation's capital. Armed with the ubiquitous simplified tourist map of Capitol Hill (which two docile old docents provided me with upon leaving the LOC), I made my way to Union Station. Found a bookshop there; in typical Romanian tradition, I decided against buying guides after looking at the prices, only to have to come back a few hours later and happily drop $35 bucks on Fodor's Washington DC and Montreal 2008.
Since I was supposed to meet Oana back at her place around 6 pm to let her in, the best use of my time was to walk the streets of Capitol Hill. It was not my first time there - six years ago the NYLC had flown me to DC and we had gotten thorough tours of the Capitol building, the Senate buildings, most of the monuments and the Mall. What was glossed over then was the White House, so finding a destination now proved easy. Touring the White House was out of the question, as you can only get in with a group and you have to make a reservation 6 months in advance through your Senator or Rep's office. I therefore had to be content with walking the perimeter of the building and gawking with the rest of the tourists through the grates of the outer fence. You can't even see the door from that distance. Well, whatever.
Back to Union Station, I walked into the bookstore without hesitation and purchased the guides. Dehydrated, hot and tired, the ride back to Alexandria felt like a well-deserved rest. My bus was leaving that night, so Oana and I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out. We went to the neighborhood grocery store to buy, among others, the things which Oana later gracefully turned into sandwiches for the road. I rearranged my baggage, but the weight problem persisted; to save some headaches (and muscle exertion), I left my suit and shoes in Oana's closet, with the intention of retrieving them upon return from Montreal. At this point I was taking Greyhound's baggage policy seriously (the same 50-lb limit) when in fact no one there gives a flying fuck. All in all, I got the show on the road with enough time to get to the station one good hour ahead of the departure time - another pointless maneuver since seats are not guaranteed unless you are in line.
The metro ride was common sense, but once I got off at the station which I thought was closest to the Greyhound station finding my way turned into an adventure. The station is rarely marked on maps and there are no signs pointing even to the street it's on. Incidentally, the metro station was Union Station, the hub of DC's rail and vehicle transportation; surely I can find someone in a place like this who can point me in the right direction?... Inside, all the information desks were closed, shops locked up and one or two human figures scurrying along toward the train terminals. A hepatic yellow light was bathing the bleary tiled floor, where a bored janitor was pretending to empty the trash cans. For the lack of anyone else, I approached this solitary figure, expecting a morose and hostile answer. To my surprise, the woman patiently gave me directions that were reasonably understandable: go out this door, turn right, walk down, turn left...
I took a side street that seemed to be descending for a long time, flanked on the right by a rock wall that kept getting bigger and bigger the further down I went. At this point I had become pressed for time and started cursing in Romanian at whoever had decided to put the bus the station at its unfindable location. After coming out on the other side, I stood at the intersection of two empty streets (which thankfully had signs) without any idea which one to take. The janitor's directions had suddenly stopped making sense. With a few dark silhouettes checking me out from across the street, I dialed up Oana and asked for help, to which she told me there's nothing she could as she didn't know where I was and didn't have a map. Just as I was thinking what a swell situation I had gotten myself in, I saw a bus pull into a building one block away. I made my way to what was indeed the Greyhound station, where many desolate, bleary characters of the African-American persuasion were waiting to take a bus to nowhere or were simply loitering around. Waiting in a slow-moving ticket line was irritating enough, but the true surprise came while standing in the boarding line: an indifferent attendant informed us we might not be able to get on the scheduled bus because passengers from an earlier delayed run were getting priority. Eventually though, everyone got on board, baggage and all. It was close to midnight as the bus finally started its journey. Destination: New York.
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