The Road Trip begins

Upstate New York

For the past few weeks, the members of the Hawketc Team had been living in spacious comfort in the family-friendly suburb of Park Slope, Brooklyn. The weather has been kind to us during our time here, and as Angry Dave and myself readied to leave for the last time what had been our home away from home, we expected today to be no different from any other.

Awkwardly balancing backpacks and our daypacks, we stepped outside into what we later realized was a result of New York being on the outer fringes of a hurricane which had been bashing the Caribbean for the past few days. Within seconds we were saturated through, with another ten blocks to walk to the subway. Walking in the rain is fun enough by itself, but when it’s windy, you’re carrying all your possessions on your back, and you cleverly chose to wear shorts and thongs, it makes the experience all the more special.

I collapsed into a seat between two typically thin Americans on the F train, and sat back expecting to get some rest in before we got off at Penn Station to catch the train to Buffalo, which is up near Niagara Falls. Amazingly, we were right on schedule, and were going to make it to Penn Station in plenty of time to get out tickets, buy and snack and get a good seat for the eight hour train ride to Upstate New York. And that’s when the subway train we were on stopped.

It turned out that the train ahead had some minor break problems. I turned to Angry Dave, who had replaced one of the Americans at the last stop in the seat beside me, and questioned whether there was ever such a thing as a ‘minor break problem’. That was when a Subway official came into our carriage and said that we’re better off getting off the train and catching another.

We arrived at Penn Station half an hour late, with little idea of where to head. Of course, the first person I ask for directions was from Sydney, and was looking for the station himself. We actually didn’t end up wasting much time, and found it pretty quickly. As we hurried to our platform, Angry Dave was true to form, and wondered why I was walking so slow. Unfortunately, thongs, slippery sidewalks and wet weather don’t go together so well. With only the occasional controlled slide, we jumped on the train, the last people to get on.

And so now, with Angry Dave gently snoring next to me, I’m writing the latest installment of Hawketc. Angry Dave, frustrated with the leisurely posting-style of the Hawketc Team, has started his own blog, after promises to let him post a guest blog failed to be fulfilled. We’ll put a link somewhere on our site, it seems only fair.

Now being on the, the regularity of new blog postings to Hawketc may be affected somewhat. I’ll try to update where we’re at along the way.

Angry Dave and Corey are outsmarted by the UN

In the past week, I’ve been seeing the sights of New York that I haven’t got around to seeing in the past few weeks I’ve been here. Top on the list includes the Empire State Building, which wasn’t too bad, except that I was in the grip of a terrible cold, and the batteries on my camera were mysteriously flat after having let Hawkins use it the day before. Angry Dave and I also checked out a few other famous sites, Central Park, the New York Public Library and the headquarters of the United Nations.

I was confident after going through security at the UN that checking the place out was going to be a breeze. The line had been short, and the checks well organized (unlike the Statute of Liberty, for example). I should have known better. The only way to see the inside of the UN was in a tour, which I wasn’t really interested in, and of course the line to buy tickets for the tour was huge. Angry Dave and I had been waiting in the line for about 15 minutes when we heard an announcement from the ticket desk, “last call for the Japanese Tour”. There was no line for that. With no hesitation from myself, and some from Angry Dave, we had our Japanese tour tickets in hand, and were waiting at the UN tour entrance. It was then I realized that another non-Japanese tour was waiting at the same place, and we lined up in that tour instead. By now the Japanese tour had left, and it was looking like our plan was even more brilliant than I’d first hoped. But the UN is cleverer than that, and we were caught out as we tried to get in. We feigned ignorance, and the Japanese tour was called back for us to join on the back of. Despite not understanding anything said, the tour wasn’t too bad. Our tour guide spoke better English than Japanese, and during photo breaks, answered any questions Angry Dave and I had. As we finished the hour long tour, another group was just starting. I recognized a number of people in the new tour who had been standing in the line in front of us, and I regretted nothing.

One last thing…

You may have noticed that Hawkins didn’t make much of an appearance in the latest adventures. He did most of the New York tourist stuff when he was here this time last year. Hawkins has also decided to head to Miami, rather than coming to Buffalo, New York. We’ll all be joining back up, most likely, in a weeks time in Maine, where we’ll organize a car for the next step of the Exaggerated Adventures of Hawkins and Corey.