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I apologize for my shoddy blog-keeping. I moved all of my stuff to Ed's (now "our") apartment this weekend and, as you can imagine, have been frantically trying to get everything put away before his cats cover it with hair/shred it/knock it off ledges to its doom below/etc. In the interest of posting something, though, here is a nice picture of Central Park I took on Sunday morning:

It's absolutely lovely this time of year. I showed up at the park early, before it got too crowded, to volunteer for a New York Road Runners (NYRR) race on Sunday. As some of you know, to automatically gain entry into the marathon, one must run 9 NYRR races in a calendar year and volunteer for one, too. This was my one, as I've already got my sights set on getting into the 2013 marathon. I enjoyed this volunteering session much more than my last one. Last time, it was cold and rainy and I had to move metal barriers. This time it was sunny and I was issued a bull horn with which I got to help control the flow of traffic both before and after the race in imperious tones. When one is shepherding 10,000 runners, imperious tones are called for.

Play It Again, Ed

One year ago today, I met my boyfriend Ed for the first time. (I know this because I flipped through my  calendar from last year, not because I really made note of it at the time. Record keeping = useful.) We were  supposed to go out just for a glass of wine; this is a very safe first date option, because if the person is awful you're committing to 45 minutes with them, max. We ended up drinking two glasses, however, then deciding to go somewhere for dinner, then going to another wine bar for yet more wine, and finally sharing our first kiss outside the 81st Street subway station, right next to the Natural History Museum. Ah, memories.

While neither of us is terrible sentimental, we did decide to mark this occasion by retracing our steps from a year ago. We had to do this last night, a day before we met, because Ed flew to Vegas this morning for his brother's bachelor party. (Priorities.) Although it was a bit tricky to find the wine bar - there are tons on the Upper West Side - we managed to, and actually got to sit in the same seats as the first time! Then we walked down the street for dinner at the same sushi place. Since Ed had to be up so early this morning, we decided post-dinner drinks were not necessary, though we did walk back to the 81st St. subway station for a kiss before calling it a night. 

It's amazing how time flies. In some ways, it feels I've known him much longer than a year, but in others I can't believe it's already been that long. I think this is a fairly common phenomenon, really, particularly in relationships. It certainly has been a fantastic year, though, and I have Ed to thank for much of it! 

Blackwing: Bogus?

There is an art display space next door to my office building, and today I decided to go in for the first time. Through the window, I spotted some interesting looking pencils, seemingly up for grabs, and decided to go see if I could score a free one. Little did I know I was about to learn volumes about a part of our culture I knew nothing about, nor knew even existed when I woke up this morning.

The show was being sponsored by a company called Palomino, which has taken over production of the Cadillac of pencils, the Blackwing. Blackwing, according to many, is the best pencil that has ever been made. It claims to require just half the pressure and therefore to allow one to write or draw at twice the speed they would with an ordinary pencil. (This claim is actually printed on the pencil in gold letters.) I had no idea there was even a difference between pencils - though I'd noticed that some had sort of crappy erasers - and so the notion that these were selling for $40 a piece for a while was pretty shocking. The brochure I collected as I entered the exhibit informed me that Duke Ellington, E.B. White, Eugene O'Neill, J.D. Salinger, Leonard Bernstein, Faye Dunaway, Steven King, Stephen Sondheim, Thomas Wolfe, Truman Capote, and Vladmir Nabokov, among others, would use nothing else. Apparently John Steinbeck went through 60 of them a day. (This was before they were $40 a pop.) The pencils have a unique, cramped metal eraser bracket at the top, and this was apparently the cause of their downfall; the machine that made this part broke, and so few of the pencils were being sold that the company's owner deemed the cost of repair an unwise expenditure. So the company couldn't make any more pencils and went belly up, and the pencils became scarce enough to be marked up to astronomical heights on eBay. Palomino, however, has taken over, and pencils.com is selling 12-pencil boxes of Blackwings again, this time for $19.95. As I wandered around the exhibit, I wondered whether even this was too much. That's $1.66 per pencil. On Amazon, a box of 12 Dixon Ticonderogas goes for $4.09, ($0.34 per pencil). After enjoying some cool drawings and a 40 foot timeline of the Blackwing, done, obviously, all in pencil, I headed back to my office to do some very unscientific testing of my own.

First, a physical examination. The paint was thick and smooth, and the wood felt almost satiny. No splinter risk here. The eraser was a flat, thin, black rectangle instead of the pink cylinder I was used to. Interesting. It was certainly more stylish than a Dixon, and felt really good in my hand. It was the difference between holding a plastic fork and a freshly polished silver one.

I then wrote a sentence with the Blackwing, then one with the Dixon. Hmmm. Not too much of a difference, really. I guess I did have to press a bit harder with the Dixon to make my letters as dark as those that came out of the Blackwing, but the difference wasn't really noticeable.

I decided I needed numbers. Setting a timer for one minute, I wrote my name with the Blackwing as many times as I could. The result: 31.25 times. After giving my arm a rest for a few minutes, I repeated this exercise with the Dixon. That's when I began to notice some differences. First, I found myself pressing harder almost immediately to get the same kind of letters. I should state that this was a completely subconscious move, but one I noticed after my experience with the Blackwing. By the end of the minute, my forearm felt downright fatigued. Second, the lead wasn't wearing evenly. After every few names, I found myself rotating the pencil slightly to access the sharper edge of the lead as I wore away the other side. I hadn't had to do this once with the Blackwing, but it didn't occur to me until I started doing it with the Dixon. Very interesting. The most interesting thing of all, though, is that despite these two handicaps, I actually wrote my name more times (33) with the Dixon. Part of me wants to write this off as practice effects, but since I chose to write my name, I don't think an extra minute of practice is likely to have improved my speed at shaping the letters I've written more times than any others throughout my life.

Despite these mixed results, I find myself drawn to the Blackwing. Maybe it's because I'd love to consider myself in league with E.B. White and company, but it certainly is an elegant writing utensil. Maybe I should invest in a box. At the rate at which I go through pencils in our age of computers, my $20 investment may end up lasting me the rest of my life.

I Love Paris in the Springtime, III

Our plan for Easter Sunday, our last day in Paris, was to go early to Musee D'Orsay, one of Ed's favorite art museums. It's right on the Seine and we'd walked by it a few times already. I was looking forward to a less chaotic museum scene than that Louvre, and to squeezing in one more cool Paris experience before we had to go to the airport. 

Musee d'Orsay

But Sunday ended up being one of those days when nothing seems to line up quite right. For one, we'd gotten back so late the night before that we couldn't seem to get out of bed for quite a while. Our plan had been to go back to the hotel for our bags before going to the airport, but I thought that would be an unnecessary, time-consuming trip, and suggested we bring our bags to the museum and check them while we walked around. So we took the Metro to the museum, much later than we'd anticipated, and found that there was one of the longest lines I've ever see in front. It made the line for Louvre tickets seem laughably short. We regretted not purchasing the pass we'd seen advertised the day before, which would have let us into both the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay; with it, we could have simply entered from the side, where the wait looked to be only about five minutes long. I stood in line while Ed wandered around to see if there was another option for ticket-buying, but there didn't seem to be one. We figured it would take us at least 45 minutes to get through the line, and we had only about two hours to spend in the first place. The museum did not seem like a good option. So we had time to fill, and we were stuck carrying our suitcases around. Blast. Ed suggested a leisurely brunch, though I was still rather full from the night before. We walked away from the museum to try to find a place that wasn't too touristy and settled on yet another bistro with a red awning and tiny tables. This one, however, wasn't great. The waiter was rude, the food was mediocre and expensive, and I heard every language but French coming from the surrounding tables. Oh well. We hadn't had one of those experiences in Paris yet, and I'd heard they were the norm, so I guess we lucked out more often than not. 

Area near the Musee d'Orsay

The restaurant was in a pretty neighborhood at least, and so after eating we walked around a bit and ended up next to the Seine for a while. We walked out onto one of the bridges and sat for a bit, enjoying our last view of the city. Then we went underground to catch a train to the airport. This ended up being a bit of a confusing endeavor, but we did figure it out in the end and arrived at the airport intact. Because of our tickets, we got to sit in the Admiral's Club while we waited for the plane. Unfortunately, we ended up right next to a family with a very loud teenage son, and it was difficulty to concentrate on the book I was trying to read. Then a couple with three children all under the age of 5 came in. I muttered to Ed that I hoped they weren't on our flight. Not only were they, they were seated right in front of us, and the oldest kid was pretty loud and annoying. The stewardess was rude, and because we were on a different airplane model, the seats weren't as spacious (though they still reclined and were a million times better than a coach seat would have been). On the way to Paris, I hardly wanted get off the plane when we arrived. The way home was still nice, but less so.

Coming back from Europe is great, though, because the time difference really works in your favor. Our plane left Paris at 5:10 P.M. and we were back at Ed's apartment at 8:30! It was great to get in at a decent hour, and I got plenty of sleep that night before having to go back to work on Monday. 

All in all, it was a pretty spectacular trip. We packed a lot of things into a very short time, but still managed to make it feel like a relaxing vacation. I absolutely loved visiting Paris with Ed, and am already looking forward to going back someday!

I Love Paris in the Springtime, Part II

With Conor

My friend Conor and I have known each other for a long time. We went to high school at Cate together, though he was in the class below me, and were in the same class at Vanderbilt. We became close and met up here and there during the years after graduation until he finally decided to follow his passion for food to Paris, where he attended culinary school and then got a job at a restaurant. He's still there, working as a chef, and I was very excited about the possibility of seeing him and meeting his French girlfriend, Charlotte. In the days leading up to our trip, I asked Conor about good areas to go running in Paris, and he said that Charlotte had offered to take me on a run around the city during our visit. So on Saturday morning, she arrived at our hotel and took Ed and me on a looping route through Paris. We put in about 6 miles and saw many of the things we'd seen the day before, as well as some new sights. I thought she was fantastic, and it was very fun to chat with her about life in Paris and learn about the history of various parts of town.

After a shower and breakfast at the hotel (in an underground room with vaulted stone ceilings, which we accessed via one of the steepest spiral staircases I have ever seen), Ed and I were off to the Louvre. We took the Metro instead of walking and were impressed by how clean it was, though my time in New York has led me to be mightily impressed by the cleanliness of every mode of transportation I have seen that is not our subway. The Louvre has an underground entrance linked to the Metro stop, and we were dismayed to see a massive, snaking line for tickets to the museum. But there was nothing for it but to find the end and settle into waiting, which we did, for 20 minutes. At last, tickets in hand, we ascended an escalator to find ourselves in the lobby area of the Louvre, where there were rows of ticket machines with lines about 4 people deep in front of each. Blast. The room was brightly lit by one of the controversial glass pyramids that has popped up in front of the Louvre's traditional facade.

It's impossible to see everything at the Louvre in under, say, two weeks, so we elected to see just two areas: sculptures and some of the paintings. I loved the hour we spent in the sculpture wing, as it wasn't terribly popular and was therefore comparatively unpopulated. We saw a variety of lovely marble and bronze statues, many missing limbs. Some of the subjects were quite intriguing, but the placards were all in French and so Ed and I had to use guess what the sculptures actually depicted. I enjoyed looking at the paintings less. They were incredibly impressive, and the Louvre is a breathtaking setting, but the crowds of people were unreal. The passages, generous, wide, and lofty though they were, were absolutely clogged with crowds. They kept taking pictures of paintings without bothering to turn their flashes off, which irked me. I caught a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, though the crowd in front of it was so thick I didn't want to go terribly close. Ed and I wandered around for a while, taking in the superb works and being jostled. We had to leave before seeing nearly enough of the museum, but I think that even if we'd devoted the entire day to the Louvre and had it just about to ourselves we hardly would have scratched the surface of the huge collection.

View from Montmartre

Art and artist!

Next on our agenda was a borderline mountainous region of Paris called Montmartre, where our first stop was another picturesque restaurant for lunch; Ed got some sort of chicken and I had a moule frites, a bowl of mussels with french fries on the side - in my opinion, just about the most perfect dish that ever was. (We learned a lesson about French taxes here: our food was subject to a 5% tax - I think it was 5 - while our alcoholic beverages were taxed at 19%!) Montmartre is the area where the famous Moulin Rouge can be found, though we didn't end up stumbling upon it. It is known for its lovely views of Paris, and for the collection of artists who peddle their work in a central square. Though I haven't always succeeded, I have tried to purchase a piece of handmade art from every country I've visited, and I was determined to get something from Paris. Ed and I shoved our way through the throngs of tourists to view the many different drawings and paintings on display. Most were landscapes featuring the Eiffel Tower. I settled on two small black and white drawings of simple street scenes augmented with water color. The artist was a squat, friendly woman with short, grey hair who spoke no English. I was quite pleased with my find, and I look forward to framing them and finding a spot to hang them. Having got my purchase out of the way, I was free to enjoy the views of Paris as we hiked up and down the steep sidewalks.

Ed and I prepare to devour a langostina

After a quick stop at the hotel, we had quite an adventure on a French public bus that decided to change routes mid-journey. Luckily, Ed's Magellan-like qualities kicked in after we exited the wandering bus, and we managed to find our way to Conor and Charlotte's apartment, where we enjoyed wine, cocktails, foie gras, and delicious cheeses. All of this was just a warm-up for dinner at Conor's restaurant, however. It's just a short walk from his apartment. We brought cups of wine along for the journey, because apparently in Paris it's legal to drink while out and about as long as one doesn't stand still while doing it. (Weird.) At the restaurant, we met an American girl, a friend of Conor's from another restaurant, and her French husband. The two of them run the only food truck in Paris, and apparently it's incredibly popular, though they've run into a lot of obstacles, as many French people feel food should be taken seriously and not served from a mobile kitchen. Conor's restaurant had very simple and casual decor, but the food was decadent. They serve small plates that are meant to be shared by everyone at the table, and the six of us plowed through mouth-watering offerings like asparagus with a poached egg and parmesan shavings, langostina (a cross between giant shrimp and tiny lobsters), a French version of sashimi, mussels and clams, beef carpaccio, a slow-roasted lamb shoulder, heavenly cheeses, a dessert made of chocolate mousse with sea salt and caramel, and lots of other delicious stuff I can't remember. This was all paired, of course, with wine, and with an unusual but thoroughly delicious local cider that was fruity but not the least bit sweet. It was great to see Conor so happy, and I enjoyed watching him conversing in fluent French, which he did not speak at all when we were in school together. After gorging ourselves, Ed and I collapsed into a cab and were treated to a spectacular view of Notre Dame illuminated against the night on the way back to the hotel.

I Love Paris in the Springtime, Part I

Ed and I went on a long-awaited trip to Paris over Easter weekend, and I can confirm that the city is every bit as fantastic as everyone says it is. The whole trip was a whirlwind, but I got a really good introduction to the city and I hope to visit it again someday for a more in-depth look!

We were upgraded to a suite, so this was our sitting area!

On Thursday afternoon, I left work a few hours early, and Ed and I boarded a Paris-bound plane at JFK. He cashed in a bunch of credit card miles to get us business class seats, and the ride was heavenly. We ate a four-course dinner accompanied by all the wine we could drink, watched movies on personal tablets, and slept on chairs that folded nearly flat. All this rest and comfort was crucial, because we landed in Paris at about 6:30 on Friday morning. The cab to our hotel took ages because it was rush hour, but we finally made it off the highway and into the city, where I craned my neck in every direction to take in the Seine, Notre Dame, and other attractions. Our driver left us at our charming, tiny hotel, located on a quiet street just off one of the major thoroughfares in the city. After freshening up a bit, we set off to explore.

Les Invalides

First on the list was the Eiffel Tower. We'd decided to walk there, and within five minutes of setting out I could understand why everyone goes crazy for this city. Most of the tree-lined streets are arranged in graceful curves. (This makes navigation difficult, but results in a very pretty setting.) The buildings are ornate and elegant, dotted with lots of balconies decorated with shapely iron railings. They are tall enough to frame the streets, but short enough to let in plenty of light. I took about 30 pictures before we'd ever reached our first landmark, Les Invalides. This is some sort of military building, though you wouldn't know it to look at the thing. The lines are genteel and elegant, and it's surrounded by lush grounds and crowned with a gold-trimmed dome, under which Napoleon is buried - or so we heard. Apparently it houses a museum, but part of the facility is still used for veterans' affairs. Ed and I walked by, admiring the architecture and the landscape; the front lawn was adorned with rows of meticulously pruned, bullet-shaped trees and green cannons pointed outward. And in the distance was our first view of the Eiffel Tower. I was mystified when Ed pulled out the map and began to plan our route - it seemed pretty clear that if we walked toward it we would get there - but he said that the streets don't always line up the right way. So we followed his route through more, lovely neighborhoods and after about 25 minutes we were suddenly right in front of it.

The tower looks different in person; pictures of it I have seen always make the top part look thinner than it is. The base area was swarming with tourists, and Ed and I saw that if we intended to get through our ambitious agenda, we could not spend time waiting in line for tickets, and then for the elevator that would take us to the top. So we wandered the grounds and took some pictures. I can't imagine that Paris is ever more beautiful than it is in spring. Trees were blossoming all over the place, the lawns were a lush, flawless shade of emerald, and meticulously arranged flowerbeds dotted the landscape. It was pretty breathtaking.

We decided we were hungry as we left the Eiffel Tower, but walked for a while to get away from the heavily-trafficked tourist areas. We rejected two restaurants after investigating their menus and decor, and finally settled on a brasserie near the posh Madeleine shopping district. I couldn't believe how, well, French the place looked. There were tiny tables gathered outside under the red awning, and the floor was made of small, white tiles. There was a dark, wooden bar, and the tiny tables inside were surrounded by woven chairs. I'd always thought that this sort of place was a stereotype, but here we were, in the middle of Paris, about to eat in a three-dimensional version of what I would have labeled a ridiculously cheesy photograph. Apparently, it's the real thing. The menu, thank heavens, had English on it as well as French, but we heard no English spoken there. I ordered the salmon, and it came cooked to perfection, perched atop a bed of ratatouille. Ed had duck, a delicious fried potato concoction, and a green salad. And the sliced baguette that arrived in a basket was chewy, fresh, and delicious.

Bocce court

Refueled, we headed to our next stop: the Tuileries Gardens in front of the Louvre. We walked crowded streets and intersections before coming upon the open, dusty area, lined with rows of trees and lawns and crowned with the Louvre in the background. The whole thoroughfare was packed with people. Upon closer examination, the shady areas on either side of the wide, dust-and-gravel path, consisted of tall, deliciously shady trees hiding sculptures and fountains. Ed and I watched some ducklings paddling in a pond for a while, and I took pictures of the beautifully manicured lawns and flowerbeds. As the Louvre was on Saturday's agenda, we went past it and continued on along the Seine River to the Luxembourg Gardens, our final scheduled stop before dinner. This was more like my idea of a park; the paths were made of the same yellow dust and gravel combination, but they were not as wide, allowing more space for the generous trees spread their shade over more thick lawns and flowerbeds. We sat in the sun for a while, then walked on to a collection of bocce ball courts where players, mostly men, competed. They laughed, and chatted, cigarettes bobbing between their lips, as they awaited their turn, but they turned deadly serious as they crouched, wound up, and tossed the silver balls at their targets. They were quite a collection of characters, between the outrageous puffy track pants, bushy white eyebrows, and gold watches scattered among them. I was particularly amused by the coat racks that had been wheeled into the area so the players could hang their coats.

A Van Gogh come to life!

My feet were aching by the time we came out of the garden. We had a few hours before our dinner reservation, and a nap seemed to be in order. Back at the hotel, we collapsed into the small bed and slept for an hour before smartening up and walking 15 minutes to the restaurant we'd picked. My friend Conor, a chef in Paris, had recommended it, and it did not disappoint. Neither the decor nor the food were exactly traditional - it looked like the kind of chic bistro one might find in southern California, and the food had Asian influences - but it was a beautiful place and the food was simply out of this world. Ed and I ordered the "Discovery Menu," a prix fixe line-up of several small appetizers, two dinner courses, and dessert, made more interesting because we had no idea what we were going to be getting next; the chef picks the items on the menu and each night features different, mystery offerings. Happily, each surprise was a pleasant one. My favorite was a plate of small scallops served with some sort of sweet, lemony sauce. I forced myself to put down my fork between each bite to make the food last as long as possible; otherwise I would have wolfed it down at light speed. It was heavenly.

After dinner we staggered back to the hotel through unbelievably romantic Paris streets, full, sleepy, utterly content, and ready for the next day's adventures.

(Stay tuned for Part II!)

Moving on Up

(For those anxiously awaiting my Paris post, rest assured that it will be coming tomorrow! I'm still compiling pictures to include, but the text is written. Expect a three-part summary!)

Moving is never fun, and moving in New York is more challenging than it has been in almost any other place I've lived. (Tokyo is a notable exception.) My lease is up at the end of April, and I have decided to move in with my wonderful boyfriend, Ed. This is great news, because his apartment is already furnished, and since his stuff is a lot nicer than mine, I won't be taking much furniture with me when I go. I am still faced with several challenges, however.

CHALLENGE 1 - Getting rid of my stuff
The environmentalist in me doesn't want to throw things away, and the financier in me wants to make back some of the set-up costs I faced when moving in, so I'm selling as much stuff as I can. Craigslist (a sort of online classified ad service for those who don't know it) is great for this - mostly. I've put up postings about my couch, bed, and other large things. I also created a Photobucket account, and have photographed, written descriptions of, and priced everything I want to sell. (Access it here if you're curious.) So far it's going fairly well. I have buyers interested in most of the big stuff; in fact, two of them will be coming by tonight. Several people have expressed interest in some of the smaller items as well, like some of the kitchen items. However, I've been getting a LOT of scam emails from people supposedly interested in items when all they really want is my contact information for fraudulent purposes. They're easy to spot, but it's a bit of a pain to keep getting them.

CHALLENGE 2 - Moving out of my building
I live on the 5th floor of a building with no elevator. Even though I won't be bringing much stuff to Ed's - clothes, books, and personal stuff - I still have to walk every single thing I want to keep down all those stairs. Ditto for things I'm donating, like clothes I no longer want, kitchen items no one will buy, etc. This makes selling as much as possible even more important. Not only will I make money on everything I sell, but I won't have to move all the sold items out myself, which is a huge deal. In New York, it's a pretty well-accepted rule that if you buy something from someone on Craigslist, you're responsible for picking it up yourself.

CHALLENGE 3 - Moving without a car
This is a biggie, and is the reason I drove huge, gas guzzling cars throughout college, when I moved into and out of a dorm every year. It's important to have a vehicle that can shift a lot of stuff when one is moving. Or any vehicle at all, for that matter. Luckily, I've known about the move for a while, so I've started ferrying things to Ed's every time I go over. My books were the first to go, and I've got about 75% of them re-shelved at his place. I've also moved my winter hats/gloves/scarves and ski stuff, and I plan to move more clothes over this weekend. I know I'll still be left with a huge pile when it comes down to the wire and I've got only a day or two to make the final move, but every item I get over there in the interim is one less that I'll have to shift when it's crunch time. I plan to rent a car for a few hours on moving day to do this all in a reasonable amount of time, but I'm hoping there will be little enough left that one trip in a sedan will do it.

Mitzvah Tank Parade

My office is on the 12th floor, and so generally it is pretty quiet up here. We don't get too much street noise, though it is possible to hear car horns and sirens sometimes. Still, I was surprised today to hear music blaring as loudly as if Susan was playing it in her office next door to mine. I peeked out the window and saw a long line of musical RVs bedecked with banners rolling down 7th Avenue far below. Jeremy, our office manager, explained that this strange phenomenon was a Mitzvah Tank Parade.

New York City has the second-highest Jewish population in the world; only Tel Aviv is ahead of us. So it shouldn't really come as a surprise that the Mitzvah tanks roll through our streets now and then. Apparently a  particular branch of the Orthodox sector uses them as portable synagogues with which to spread the message that Jews everywhere should be engaging in mitzvot (plural of mitzvah). Technically, a mitzvah is something one is obligated to do because it says somewhere in one of the Jewish holy texts that one should. But there's a connotation that a mitzvah is a joyous duty. Giving money to the poor, for example, is a mitzvah. It's something that, although one is supposed to do it, one is glad to do it also. The branch of Judaism behind the wheels of the Mitzvah Tanks believes that the more mitzvot people perform, the faster they can persuade the Messiah to hurry up and return to earth.


This particular parade rolled through in anticipation of Passover, which is right around the corner. It's an interesting tradition, to be sure, particularly since, unlike Christians, Jews don't often broadcast their beliefs to those outside the fold. As a Jewish friend once explained to me, "We're not really recruiting." Interesting as this is, in my opinion the Mitzvah Tanks pale in comparison to the contribution made to New York City by the Jews who settled here generations ago and introduced the city to bagels. Mmmm...

New Pre-Race Ritual?

Ed's friend Matt is moving to California, so to bid him farewell, our friend Maggie arranged a wine tasting trip to the Hamptons. She's done this several times for this group. Here's how it works: for $100, a party bus (limo-style seating so everyone is seated around the edges of the bus facing the middle, speakers, stripper poles, fridge/bar area, and seizure-inducing flashing colored lights) drives the group to a few wineries in the Hamptons for pre-arranged tastings. Fees for this are included in the $100 fare. Ed and I met the bus at 10:00 on Saturday morning equipped with bloody Mary-making materials and joined the other 40ish people, who had brought their own contributions of beer and liquors. I had a bit of a headache and so did not drink much during the two-hour drive to the first winery, though many of our group were pretty warmed up by the time we arrived. We went to two wineries before heading home, arriving back in the city somewhere around 6:00.

Our group at winery #1

To be sure, a good time was had by all. I was struck, though, by how different wine tasting is on the east coast, at least judging by this experience. In California, wine tasting has always been a quietly enjoyable affair. The average age in the room is generally somewhere around 40, and people sip and make notes about what they're drinking. They discuss the character of the different wines with the pourer behind the bar. If there is music, I have never noticed it. On the east coast, wine tasting is sort of like going clubbing. The first winery we went to was a bit like California, though there were several bachelorettes and their entourages wandering around in garish sashes and tiaras. Parties mixed, mingled, and flirted as though we were at a bar, and there was a lot of unashamed staggering. The second winery had booming music and milling crowds. Instead of standing around a bar, chatting (in a slurred manner, to be sure) with your group and the proprietor, people lined up like they would at a wedding to trade in the puzzle pieces we were given upon entry - four per person - for different plastic cups about 1/3 of the way filled with wine. There was no paper on which to write our impressions, and it was hard even to get hold of a menu to see what the names of the wines were, let alone what flavors we could expect. Ed told me that he liked one bottle in particular and that's the one I ended up getting with all four of my pieces, for simplicity's sake. The place was packed and nearly everyone ended up being spilled on from some angle. I expect conditions would have been more pleasant if the weather was better and we could have spilled outside, but it was freezing, rainy, and muddy. 

The ride home was messy. The bus was littered with refuse of all kinds - though I'm happy to say that no one revisited things they had previously swallowed - and wine-splotched people either engaged in yelled conversations or slept pressed against windows and each other. I did a bit of both. Upon arrival back in good old NYC, Ed and I took a cab back to his apartment, where we ordered dinner and I drank tons of coconut water, my new favorite beverage. I was asleep by 8:40.

My recovery was a major priority since the first race of my running year took place at 9:00 A.M. the following day. I figured odds were good that I wouldn't even make it to the race, and that if I did, finishing may not be in the cards. Instead, I woke at 7:00 on Sunday morning surprised to discover that I felt great. I made it to the race on time and ran a very respectable, if not record-setting, four-mile race, and followed it with one of the most productive Sundays I've had in a long time. Contrary to my expectations, Saturday's debacle seemed to lead to pretty good pay-offs.