Wednesday, June 2 to Wednesday June 15, 2005:

Middle Grove and New York City, New York

I wasn't expecting to be writing about life back home in the USA again, after the first few pre-departure entries I posted back in September, 2004. However, a few brief notes on my enjoyable but slothful two week break are probably in order as a way of bridging the gap between the first "half" of the trip and the "second" (in quotes because I can't yet say if I'll be back in four months, eight months or twelve). I'm also thrilled to fill in two weeks worth of time with one entry!

A Sort of Sleep-deprived Homecoming

I reached Madrid early in the morning on June 2 and spent about six hours wandering in circles around the shops and confectionaries with one grave task on my mind: Figuring out and then purchasing the limit of how much smoked and/or cured Spanish pork-product I could cram into my luggage without being busted by US Customs. In the end a big log of chorizo seemed the most I could risk, but I managed to fit in some saffron and a few cans of foie gras. With barely an hour left before boarding I lost steam and fell dead asleep in one of the lounge chairs. I hadn't slept in over 24 hours.

And but for that 30-minute nap, I still couldn't sleep on the flight back to New York. Two babies took turns screaming and the girl sitting next to me stole my blanket when I wasn't looking. I wasn't that bothered, however, as I was having a lot of fun staring at a sight I had never seen before: a view of the airplane in motion being broadcast on the TV screen, transmitted from a camera mounted on the tail. I didn't even need to look out the window to see the distant outline of the New York skyline appear on the horizon some seven hours later.

In JFK I had the easiest time passing security I'd had in eight months. The officials just didn't seem to care and waved me and my disintegrating passport through with barely a glance. Of course I didn't mind so much, considering my secret stash of chorizo, but I found the procedure disturbingly lax. Egypt had seemed more concerned about my potential to be a terrorist than the United States did (noting the state of my passport and Tanzania stamp, I'd been questioned by two very serious officials before being let on the plane to Madrid).

I caught a cab into Manhattan in order to catch the next available train leaving Penn Station for Albany. Staring out the window at the wide highways, gleaming gas-guzzling automobiles and massive apartment buildings, billboard signs and overhead passes, I had my first bout of reverse culture-shock: America is RICH, I thought. Not that everybody in it is rich, of course, but the infrastructure and above all else the cleanliness, maintenance and orderliness of its highways, tunnels, bridges, buildings, all teeming with big shiny cars, goes far beyond what I'd seen in the previous eight months. This is a no-brainer, really, but it didn' sink in fully until I'd made the transition from Cairo to New York --- and I wasn't even in Manhattan yet; I was still in Queens on a stretch of highway I'd always previously considered a run-down eye sore. When the Manhattan skyline did spring into view, it looked as though it had been carved in silver and recently polished. Yes, everything seemed pristine, meticulous, perfect.

But then I got to Penn Station. Had I ever left New York City? I wondered, elbowing my way through suits and deranged people (about a 50/50 split, plus a lot of overlap). Reaching one of the automatic ticket machines I found that I was just in time to catch a train leaving for Albany at 5:35 PM --- this was at about 5:20. I booked a seat and dialed my parents to let them know I was just a few hours away. But there was a catch and the catch was that I was back to riding on Amtrak, now my absolute top pick for the worst public transportation service in the world on a dollar per dollar basis. At least in Honduras, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Tanzania, Egypt, etc... they tell you the truth about when your cheaply-priced 3-wheeled car/cokehead-driven bus/other random exploding death-trap on wheels will depart (late and possibly never, not to mention the no-promises-on-actually-getting-there-at-all-or-alive factor). Amtrak is consistently late and knows its going to be late, but doesn't give you any details. It also frequently oversells the train so that half the passengers in a given car are standing for an hour, usually with their asses stuck in your face if you were lucky enough (or so you thought) to get a seat. But you still pay about $50 one-way for this privilege.

There were no exceptions here. We didn't leave Penn until about 7 PM and then the train lolled along at an inexplicable, tedious 20 MPH for most of the first hour. I noticed that the cars seemed to be tilting noticeably to the right, something they hadn't done the last time I'd been on Amtrak. Not a good sign, if you ask me. When that de-railing finally happens, I'll be pointing to this entry.

Anyway, when I did get into Albany my father was waiting there patiently. We got back to my parents' house sometime after 11 and I caught up with mother as well my dog and contingent of assorted cats. Asked for impressions on being back I could really only emphasize how CLEAN everything was but that Amtrak still sucked.
I then ate half the contents of the refrigerator and zombied out on TV until 3 AM.

Sloth

In short I did nothing, lots and lots of nothing. Seinfeld reruns, walking the dog, eating lots of microwaveable food, the greasier the better. I was a useless burden on my family and it was great. On the first weekend back I went with my brother and mother to see the Broadway production of "Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail." That was about as high-brow as I got. On another short visit to the city, crashing on my sister's couch (competing for space there with her deranged, homicidal cat), I reaped the rewards of my unemployment by getting treated to alcohol and/or Japanese food no less than four times by friends, despite my protests that I was not broke yet. "You can stay on the road for another 4-6 weeks with this," was the general response (for which me and my stomach are grateful). In my last few days at home I finally caved to parental pressure and watched a disturbing number of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episodes on HBO-On-Demand. I'd never really been able to get into the show before because I was to embarrassed for Larry David to watch it. But this time around I didn't seem to have any problem getting through 18 episodes in about 48 hours.

That's about it. It was great to be back, see people (though not nearly as many as I would have liked) and fatten up. About the only productive thing I did was look into the possibility of taking a language course someplace in Europe, possibly Italian in Italy, possibly Spanish in Spain, maybe both, maybe neither.

...I didn't even touch the blog. It just seemed like too much effort.