Stranded in New Jersey

Last weekend was a long-weekend to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. At the last minute Brandon, Osman, and I decided to make the most of the extra day off work and head to New York City, the city that never sleeps. The weekend was full of site-seeing, getting lost, shopping, seeing famous people, and hurting my knee...

On Saturday morning we left the UCDC Center and headed to China Town to catch the $35 return trip bus to New York City. As you can imagaine, for $17.50 one way, the bus wasn't all that luxurious. But hey, it did the trick. The bus ride was fine, despite two things. 1) the fact that the thermus was broken inconveniently on like 100 degrees making it extremely hott and stuffy and 2) the fact that the bus left the 3 of us, along with 5 other people, stranded at the rest stop somewhere in New Jersey.

Yes, that's right... we were left behind at the petrol station in New Jersey. It wasn't out fault, for serious. The bus driver was a dickhead. He said we had 15 minutes at the stop and to our dismay, when coming out after 10 minutes to get back on the bus, we found another passenger furious after she had tried to chase after the bus as it pulled away. 8 of us were left, standing in the rain and cold, all thinking the same thing... "What The Fuck?!" We tried everything to get the bus back to the stop - Brandon tried calling the bus company, a nice asian man called his friend to get in touch with the bus company, and another lady called THE F*CKIN STATE POLICE! After about an hour with no luck getting a response from the bus company, the State Ranger arrived and we told him the story. Since it wasn't a criminal matter, he really couldnt do anything for us except drive us to the nearest train station. Not happy Jan. My shit was on the bus, so i needed to find that bus!


Finally, the nice Asian man (Francis) got a call from the company who, after speaking to the bus driver, reported back that apparently the bus driver had waited half an hour for us to get back to the bus and it just so happened that all EIGHT of us were late. Uhmmm.. no. Dickhead. ANYways, after anouther hour or so, the bus finally came back for us and dropped us off at Penn Station NYC. I had my shit and I was in New York (finally) so I was happy.

Driving into the city I couldn't help but drop my jaw. It's been a long time since I've seen a real city with skyscrapers and the like, and to be seeing the Empire State and Chrysler buildings in the mix was amazing. "We're in New York! Brandon! Osman! We're in New York!" was all I could say...