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Last Night

So Summer and I went to NYC last night as I mentioned we would. Seth's play was among the better updates of a classic I've seen, and he (Aigisthos), Clytemnestra, and Agamemnon were all quite good. But the real fun happened after the play.

Well, first off we happened to be attending the same showing as Summer's uncle David was, and Summer hadn't seen him in four or five years, so we had a nice little family reunion. After we all said our "see ya later"s, though, Summer and I wandered the streets (around Greenwich and Bleecker Sts., so you know where we were) for a little while looking for the Bonneville, which was not where it ought to have been. Oh boy.

So we went back to the theater and found Seth again and after receiving confirmation that most people's cars did not disappear from that particular neighborhood, we went back out to search again. Seth and the director of the show found us on the street and we called the police, determining while waiting for them to arrive that the car had been towed.

"Oh boy!" we said as we pieced together the details. "Oh boy oh boy oh boy!" There are red signs on lots of the streets in the area that read (in black writing, on the dark red background, for ultimate clarity) "NO PARKING 8AM to 6PM." It was 8:15PM (15 minutes into the show, which the ushers nevertheless kindly let us into upon learning that we'd driven four hours and knew Seth) when we parked on a street which sported two dark red signs with black writing. What these signs actually read was, approximately, "NO PARKING authorized mental hygiene vehicles only." Wow were we ever wrong! I don't know the first thing about mental hygiene, and I'm sure the Bonneville doesn't either. But according to whomever Seth and Summer talked to in some nearby building, the NYPD tows people from this particular street all day long, and doesn't seem to mind too much that the signs are un po' misleading. Also according to the informant, the whole sheband is going to cost us "a pretty penny."

So the next step was to take a cab over to the lot where they were keeping ol' Bonny. This we did (still with Seth's pleasant company), where we were greeted by perhaps the nastiest woman I've ever dealt with at window number one. You know, the type who sneers "now that wasn't so hard, was it?" after you have to think a second about a question she's snapped at you. So I give her the car info (thank goodness I had the license plate memorized or we would have had to go through this whole process twice, once for permission to get the registration out of the vehicle and bring it back to the nasty woman, and again to actually get the car), then we stand around until the nasty woman yells, "GREENE! Don't you listen to anything? They been yellin' for you over at the other window for hours! NOT THAT WINDOW! That window. Open yo' ears! GOOD GOD, that wasn't so hard now, was it?" That window was the one where I got to pay $185 from an account which, luckily, contained $200 at the time. (Unluckily there's an outstanding check for the RWU 5k which the SBA president is now trying to keep the school from trying to cash at the moment.)

So having paid my dues to the city of New York (or so I thought), I and my companions were permitted to follow the arrows to another room, where Summer and Seth had to go outside and walk along a yellow line to sit on a bench outside a little booth, while I got in a van driven by a guy who was actually sort of pleasant, who then took me to the Bonneville after a stop at some poor construction worker's car--he didn't know his tag number so he had to get the registration and go back through the process again.

The Bonneville has a ticket for $95 tucked gently into the windshield wiper. Apparently New York takes its mental hygiene very seriously.

I hopped into the car and made my way to the booth, where I had to show my receipt to a guy to make sure I'd paid, then Summer and Seth were permitted to get in the car, and I hightailed it out of the garage. At this point Seth, turning down offers of a ride home, tried to get out of the car, causing us all to be yelled at. So he got back in, I drove another 50 feet, and then he was allowed out. Goodbye Seth, and thank you a whole lot.

From here on out it takes us an hour to get off Manhattan; the maps we have show intersections that don't actually exist, probably due to construction projects, and there is terrible traffic for some reason I can't fathom being that it's now 1AM. The gas gauge on the Bonneville is broken, so I've been using the trip odometer to tell me when to get gas. I'm nearing 300 miles, which probably means it's about time, but New York has screwed me enough tonight and I really don't want to pay $2.60 for gas, so as soon as I'm over the border into Connecticut I fill the tank with $2.60 Connecticut gas, pee, get some fuel (coffee and rich chocolate frosted donettes), and hit the road for home. Finally, at 4:30 in the morning, we arrived.

Now I've just found out that class is cancelled so maybe I'll try to get some more sleep now. Maybe not. Anyway, that's last night for you. Quite mixed up. A little high on expense and frustration, but at least we got some quality time with some good people, and see a quality off-off-Broadway show in the process.