Going Full Circle: 24 Hours to NYC

*On the last episode of John and Erica's Adventures, John and Erica (myself) took a mini-vacation to NY. (It was exhausting...but fun!) For me, it was not only a vacation but a therapeutic trip down memory lane as well as a symbolic journey. I lived in NY until we moved away when I was twelve to Oviedo, FL (Orlando suburb). It was a huge culture shock and I really hated Florida for quite some time.

Now it's twelve years later and I'm 24. I'm officially half New Yorker and half Floridian. I'm more familiar and comfortable with Florida now...but I've always had the feeling that I missed out on something great.

So at this "half-way point" so to speak...I was fortunate enough to have John help me 'come full circle,' or come back to that mysterious, abstract place I used to live in and love. I was also fortunate enough to seize this opportunity around Christmastime. Hello? Nobody does Christmas like New York.

Anyway, to get there, we got round trip greyhound bus tickets. This meant we would avoid pricey airline tickets, pricey train tickets, and way too much driving in wintry conditions. Oh yeah and tons of miles on John's car. This also meant that we would embark on a 24 hour bus ride up there and a 24 hour bus ride back (woo! there go 2 days of the vacation! ;). To keep myself awake, alert (gotta watch out for the motley crew of bus passengers) and entertained (when I wasn't 'sleeping'), I jotted down a few notes during our breaks or whenever something interesting occurred. Since I also tried to keep a record of when the events occurred, the information is in a diary/hourly journal format. Here's the first part of Coming Full Circle: 24 Hours to NYC.

Day 1: Wednesday, December 19th
After: 1. Alex (my brother) drove us to the bus terminal on John Young Parkway in Orlando, Florida 2. We checked our bags and waited for about an hour 3. We boarded the bus around 12:30pm

1:00pm:

In Orlando, listening to my lime green Ipod.

2:35pm:

Daytona; starting a sudoku puzzle; John is reading novel called "The Third Twin."

3:45pm:

We're in St. Augustine now; no break: we have to stay on the bus; 45 minutes to JAX; John is continuing to read "Third Twin," about a rapist, and I'm working on Sudoku puzzle #49 in my Sudoku book.

4:00pm:

Sudoku puzzle #49 complete.

4:30pm:

In JAX. It smells horrible. We got food outside: "hot dogs," more like some kind of sausages for $8. John enjoyed his. Mine was okay. I ate half and gave him the rest. While eating, we saw our bus moving and we thought it was leaving us behind, so we rushed up to the gate and got in line! In line, our conversation stumbled upon some incidental 'she said' lines like "Look, my hands are big enough to to do this" and "Don't pull it out yet."

That's what she said. *giggle*

Still in Line 7B: Reboarding. A lady yelled at me for not having the tickets out (even though I told John to get them out...I like how I got yelled at instead).

We got on the bus and we switched our seats. We had been sitting in front of the bathroom. Huge mistake. Moving up a few rows was a gooood move. We were away from the stink. Also, we were away from the interracial couple that kept making out the whole time. Now we were next to a jolly, black guy.

5:00pm:

JAX cont. John's cell battery is dying and eating cheetos we got from our last break. Looks like he will continue reading "Third Twin" and see what happens to the rapist; I'm eating Funnyuns (yes!) and diet coke.

Oh, haha, John was hit in the face accidentally by a passenger's coat. I laughed at him openly, but quietly (so only John would notice that I noticed and no one else would notice..anything). The bus is now VERY full from the last reboarding (new passengers joined us in JAX I guess).

5:18pm:

We depart JAX for Savannah, Georgia. We now have a black, female bus driver (the other driver was a heavy set white, female). This new driver's name is Saleisha and she sounds really sassy over the intercom in the bus. She announces the same stuff that the other driver announced, "I will be your driver...no drugs or alcohol on the bus, that includes the bathroom, keep your electronic devices at a low volume and use head phones, keep phones on vibrate or silent, our next stop is....at.....blah blah blah."

5:55pm:

Enter Georgia! John handed me this book called "Twisted" that has a bunch of short stories that have unexpected twists at the end. I just read the first story "Without Jonathon." I would tell you about it but that would ruin it for you.

6:45pm:

Sudoku puzzle #50 completed! Mom just called my phone, worried. I'm going to wait til the next break to call her so I won't get in trouble.

7:35pm:

Savannah!!! Break time!

7:50pm:

Bathroom break! John charged his cell in the greyhound bus terminal. I called home, spoke to my little brother Johnny; mom was in the bathroom when I called; told Johnny to have her call me back; she called as we were re-boarding saying that there had been an explosion in JAX (???) when she called earlier around 5:30pm and was worried we were there; told her I had to go but that everything was ok; as we were re-boarding, the lady at the gate said she only had room on the bus for one of us. ??!?!?! We thought she was maybe talking to somebody else and we started re-boarding anyway; she stopped us again and said, "I said, I only have room for ONE of you." We explained that we were RE-BOARDING (we already had seats on the bus) and she finally let us go; no only did she want to stop us from getting on the bus that had all our stuff on it, but she wanted to split us up; wtf;

Anyway, we got on the bus; took a while to get to our seats b/c there was a skinny, old black guy blocking the way but we sneaked by him;

Told John about my mom/the explosion in JAX and he joked that there was a dramatic fireball exploding behind us as we were departing JAX (like in the movies). :)

The Savannah bus stop was much cleaner and nicer than the JAX one; although a really weird guy that appeared either to be drunk or retarded, barely made his way through the aisle to his seat, while juggling his fast food and drink in his slippery fingers; the black, jolly old guy near us commented on this weird guy's incapacitated nature and we laughed. Even though the Savannah bus stop was cleaner than JAX, that didn't stop the bathrooms from smelling like a gigantic period. Gross.

7:58pm:

Enter South Carolina.

8:35pm: Just finished a "10 min" break at a random gas station in SC: "driver courtesy"; drunk guy's wife almost got left behind there! she was in the bathroom. we got subway for the two of us for $8.50. Yum! :) We had a hard time finding the right plastic cover for our cup of Sprite soda. So, I put our cup inside a bigger cup I...found and then covered that with a big cover. One of the ladies at the counter did not look too happy but oh well. I didn't want it to spill on the bus and I didn't fill up the bigger cup...I just used it as a container for our regular cup; ironically enough, our cup had a label on it that said, "E-Z Shop: The E-Z way to go! Making your life easier! The product you need in the sizes you want; Priced to Please!" The 330z Styrofoam cup also said "Caution Hot" on it which was not true...since all people would put in there would be soda from the fountain machines or iced tea.

By the way, the girl who prepared our sandwiches was way too slow. She put WAAAY too much mayo and ham our on sandwich; oh well; we also got sour cream chips.

It was kinda cool though that while we were in line, our driver was waiting behind everyone. She stayed back to make sure that everyone got something to eat and got back on the bus before she did; Drunk guy's wife still managed to slip through the cracks but we didn't leave without her in the end. We continued to enjoy how sassy and fiery-tongued our driver, Saleisha was.

8:45pm:

This darkness outside my window reminds me of the movie "Cars" (you know when the truck is driving the race car to CA at night and he gets really sleepy?). We're saving the sour cream chips as a snack for later. :) Oh and we're quietly playing a game of mad libs with a 2 year old Entertainment Weekly (had George Clooney on the cover and Oscar picks inside).

10:13pm:

We're now in Manning, South Carolina. We have a 15 min break at a gas station. John got us berry flavored mints.

10:45pm:
Still at Manning, SC. WTF. What happened to our 15 min break? Anyway, I finished reading the short story "Beautiful" from the Twisted book. It wasn't that great compared to "Without Jonathon."

10:49pm:

Departing Manning (finally!). I'm getting a lil sleepy.

12:00am, Thursday, December 20th:

Enter North Carolina.

1:32am:

Took a long break at Fayetteville; bus got cleaned up while we were at the terminal; Got a Grape Snapple at the machine for $1.75, yikes. Worth it, though. 2 bathroom trips at the beginning and end of the break; the re-board went smoothly and we started eating from John's stash of Hawaiian bread rolls on the bus. Mmm. They checked our tickets on the bus this time. "12 hours to NY!"

6:04 am:

Just finished up a break at Richmond, VA; nasty as f*ck bathrooms (blood on the floor in one of the stalls); I ate a bagel with cream cheese for $1.38; I wanted a hot chocolate too but they were out; So then I wanted to purchase a yummy strawberry milk but when John walked up to the cashier she said, "That's $3.49. You still want it?"

John said, "Um, No."

Lady at the gate tried to skip us while re-boarding this time.

I unfortunately said to John, "I wonder how far Richmond is..Wait!- We ARE in Richmond...Ooops."

Here in Richmond is also where:

• I drank some naaasty non-dairy creamer and John laughed at the expression on my face
  
• John and I watched some jacked-up reporter CNN
• We heard (AGAIN) about Teen Spears' pregnancy
• We witnessed the greatness of CNN reporter Don Lemon! He rocks! (His face looks like a cross between a lemon and a fish with huge eyes)
• John said "did these seats get smaller?" when we got back on the bus
• We laughed at the exit sign on the bus ceiling
• I witnessed two friendly passengers on the bus joking during the break with one of the staff at the food area who asked them "Are you too married? You joke around like you are!" The replied, "Woman:Actually we're not! I have a husband and his has his own wife. *Awkward pause* Man: We get along so well, I should get a restraining order against her... *Awkward pause*"

7:54am:

Saw Washington Monument and White House from a distance but still! John's phone died. He had me take down Alison's number from his phone right before it died so we could call her later (Alison is his step-sister that we were going to stay with in NY) He also jotted down her address. Anyway,

8:00am:

Virgin.I.A.

Passing Pennsylvania Ave (like Monopoly!); more consumption of Hawaiian bread; lotsa VA license plates all over the road; lotsa cute Victorian townhouses along the roads as well as some crappier looking apartments.

Passed NY Ave! Ha. Ha.

Our driver at the moment is a bald, black guy with a calm, sexy, reassuring voice.

Just passed "Liberty Cab Association." How colonial.

9:15am:

Finishing up our 30 min break at Baltimore.

At the rest stop I came across terribly malfunctioning bathrooms. Most of the stalls had no toilet papers and in the stall I was in, I had to hold the door closed. Just icky.

At the rest stop I also noticed a sign for "Peter Pan." Must be Greyhound's sister company. There was also an unnecessary amount of Arcade games in this rest stop. Pointless.

We got breakfast at the mart portion of the rest stop. Yummy apple jacks and milk for me and 2 sausage egg and cheese sandwiches and a mini carrot cake for John; cashier asked John for his ID with his Debit Card purchase (this happened a lot up North...why don't people do this down South??) and when he gave her his license she said "Mmmph. Handsome face." heh.

In the bathroom, by the way, I overheard a conversation involving one woman sharing good lotion with another. Apparently, it was not too oily or watery!

We started eating our breakfast at the rest stop but finished up on the bus since we were pressed for time.

Next stop: NY! Full Circle! As John would mockingly say in a Anthony Hopkins-esque voice, "This is Erica Colon and this is my diary!"

10:02am:

Are we in Jersey? Can't tell. Looking at the road signs, we are 47 miles away. I'm also galking all the naked, deciduous and evergreen trees along the highway... how seasonal! We're getting closer!! I can FEEL it.

Saw a DC to NY bus pass us on the road.

The Jolly Black guy near us has gone the bus restroom about three times. *Shrug*

Just saw a Newark sign; I hope we see Run's house. (as seen on MTV, Thursdays at 9:30pm, I think).

10:06am:

Welcome to Delaware!.....eh? This multi-state area is quite confusing. E-Z Pass? What happened to E-Pass or Sun-Pass????

Okay, now I see a Newark/Middleton sign...like the Middleton pest control frog!! Nevermind.

Lots of tree nudity continues... (no leaves to cover them...just bare branches)

Just passed the Wilmington exit. Are we in Delaware? Pennsylvania? NJ? I'm so confused.

Now we're on a long bridge with lots power grid thingees around us...very industrial...lots of smoke stacks too.

sign: "NJ state law"

Atlantic City, next exit..

"NJ turnpike"

...icy ponds...

12noon: Day 2 (12/20/07):

Welcome to Newark..? What?

Anyway, we can see the Empire State building! And a little bit of snow on the ground! ...And lots of graffiti...

Driving on Raymond Blvd.

NJPAC. New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

12:17pm:

Can see the NYC Sky Line as well as the Giants Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford.




John says, "Damn, you, NJ, you're a labyrinth!" Good thing we didn't drive.

...leaving the NJ turnpike!

..John saw a Best Buy store...oh brother...

...we're starting to see billboards for musicals all over the place...

....just saw a Days Inn on steroids...and we have a cloooose view of the skyline. wow.

12:26pm:

Lincoln Tunnel....

...dark and scary, like the Willy Wonka boat ride...

12:31pm:

LET THERE BE LIGHT! We're out of the tunnel and we're HERE!!!!

John: "Dear Diary, blah blah blah..."

I see the Metrobaptist Church...METRO? METROBAPTIST? Is that like a masculine yet overly fashion conscious Baptist church?

...40th St and 9th Ave...gritty-looking. Real.



*I haven't been in NY since I left 12 years ago. I was 12 years old.

Now I'm 24 and after a 24 hour bus ride I am here.

This is the diary of Erica Colon and I am coming full-circle. This is the first part of my journey....*

(more to come)