Superbly Natural

Getting to New York was not an adventure but for the sake of completeness, I will relate it. I woke at the grim time of half four (a time construction that appears to amuse Australians as much as Americans). Through some miracle I managed to breakfast and dress and make it to SLAC five minutes early to meet the shuttle to the airport. As I turned into site entrance I remembered. My digital camera was lying at the foot of my bed. I wavered over going back to chezbob, only a twenty minute round trip as there was no traffic. But I decided it was not worth the risk of missing the shuttle.

The shuttle was over half an hour late. I stood shivering in the pre-dawn. I discovered why it was late- the driver was an idiot. There were more people to pick up after me. The driver demonstrated his lack of knowledge of the area by departing SLAC (cunningly situated in Menlo Park) and going to Palo Alto, home of traffic lights every ten metres, before picking up the next customer. In Menlo Park.

Despite the circuitous route, we made it to the airport with some time to spare. Not as much as I hoped, I wanted to sit and have a huge fry-up before boarding on my “we love to watch people starve” United flight. But given that I didn’t have to join the check-in queue (I simply walked up to a desk and dumped my suitcase thanks to online check-in) it was plenty. I do have to wonder at how the other people in my ride coped if they didn’t check-in online. In my spare minutes I wandered around the shops looking at the plane related merchandise. Oddly enough, domestic terminal shops always seem better than the international terminal ones even though if you are flying international you generally have more time to kill at the terminal and want to buy more things.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the plane was premium service meaning that there were no bog-standard economy seats. Economy class had a good extra inch to it meaning that I could actually cross my legs in my seat without hitting the one in front. Unfortunately this didn’t mean that we got any food or better movies (Nacho Libre and Poseidon *shudder*). Also unfortunately I was seated next to a rather large and sprawling gentleman who didn’t pick up on the fact that I was pressed up against the side of the plane for the entire flight.

Five and a half hours later, we flew across Manhattan and made a wide arc over to land at JFK terminal 7. I was relieved to hear that it was terminal 7 as that was where Q and Amy were to land. I have to wonder at the chances of all our flights coming into the same terminal. Unless of course there is only a terminal 7, which isn’t that unlikely as I was never able to find terminal D at Logan airport though E was very much in existence.

I had to wait for a few hours to meet Q and Amy flying from Australia and the UK respectively. I wiled away the time text messaging Hobblings and reading a comic book. It was kind of dull but I was oddly happy. Not nervous or excited, just a pleasant state of knowing that there was a weekend of friendship ahead of me as opposed to my usual week which is centred on the intimate relationship between me and my television. When I finally saw Q walk through the gate, it wasn’t quite the beautiful moment of running towards each other in slow motion that she requested, but it was a pretty good feeling of elements coming together, of something going to plan. As always with me and meeting people, there was some hesitancy on how to talk which was solved by letting Q do all the nattering. I found it impressive how the flight hadn’t sapped her will to live.

Amy joined us and we herded our luggage towards the ground transportation desk. The woman there advised us that it was worth getting a taxi as splitting the cost between three made it the most cost and time effective way to get to Harlem. The cab ride was uneventful. Once we got into Manhattan it was really fast to get to the apartment (46 West 130th). There was a nice moment when Amy handed over $50 for a $49 trip and waited for her change so I stuffed a few more bills into the cab driver’s paw and we all got out. Careering down the street towards us were sus, biped and Em fresh from a trip to the grocery store to buy me milk for my breakfast cuppa. There may have been hugs and introductions but if so I have blocked such awkward social moments from my mind.

The apartment was like Fort Knox. Two dozen keys later, we were in. For some reason I had thought that we had the penthouse suite in a huge block of flats, not the ground and basement floors of a house. It was gorgeous though. I get a vision of warm browns when I think of it; wooden floors and brick walls and quite sparse furnishings but more than adequate for the seven of us.

There was a suitable amount of chatter, failure to fix the cable and then some Hobblings settled to watch Veronica Mars while Amy and I drank tea and played cards. Out of desparation, I ate a slice of the pepperoni pizza the others had bought and heated it up in the microwave using the essential "pizza" button (there was also a button for popcorn and did someone mention that the toaster had a poptarts setting?). As the evening drifted on, some drifted to bed. Em and Q nabbed the king with private bathroom. Amy stole a bed in the room with two singles. Biped swiped the futon. Sus and I made up the sofa-bed and cobbled together something with a spare mattress in the living room and then sat down to watch Scrubs with the backing tune of biped’s snoring. Soon the noises became much more malevolent and we heard banging and hacking from upstairs. Worried that biped was the first victim to Hobblingocide, Sus and I did nothing except continue to watch Scrubs. Finally moved by curiosity, we went upstairs to find that biped had had an argument and finally slayed the bad futon. Forsaking the frame, she moved the mattress onto the floor and settled to attempt sleep yet again.

Around this time in the middle of the night, daisy appeared. There had been much fussing about how to make life easier for her so biped had affixed a “we’re here” sign to the door. I guess it helped because she didn’t look like she had been roaming Harlem scared and alone. I said my hellos to daisy before slinking off to bed feeling rather jammy that I had the single alongside Amy (which worked out for the best as every other night of the week I seemed to be the second to go to bed).

I woke many times during the night and listened to the odd quiet of this Harlem street. No shouting. No gun-fire. No signs of murder at all. In fact, the loudest noise I could hear was the sound of the wind-chimes outside house 44. It wasn’t scary being there. It was natural.