I changed into my conference suit in the bathroom of a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. I fell asleep on the Hudson Line, waking up at a stop which, by sheer dumb luck, was the last stop before mine, where I’d get off. But wait! There was no key taped to the top of the door frame, meaning I couldn’t leave all my luggage.īy now, it was time to throw my stuff down, turn around, and get to the bus stop. Got back to the apartment around 5:45am, whereupon I caught a neighbor leaving, explained my situation, and begged them to let me in.Wandered to a Dunkin’ Donuts, where I charged my phone and used WiFi for an hour, then.Walked back to the apartment, tried to catch someone leaving, and failed,.Paul, from County Omagh in Northern Ireland, not only commiserated, he shared tips for the area, talked about his home and how long he’d been in New York, and at the end of the night turned my $35 bill into a $8 charge. Settled on a nearby bar-The Grange, long since closed-where I explained to the bartender why I was sweaty, carrying luggage, and just wanted to nurse a beer while I plugged my phone in for an hour (God bless 4am closing times).Changed clothes in a separate alley, then.Waited outside the building for an hour, missing only one opportunity to sneak in behind someone,.Oh, and it was summer in New York City, meaning I was sweating balls from my walk and everything smelled like rancid garbage. Otherwise I’d be sleeping in an airport or on the curb.īecause I had to take a bus and a train to the conference town and arrive before 8am, I decided the skulking option would at least get me to the city, where I could better plan my attack and maybe get in before daybreak.Ĭharles refused to communicate with me, meaning I arrived outside the building around 1:30am with no clue where the hell I was, a laptop bag over my shoulder and a full duffel bag in my arms, a dying phone, and no one in sight to let me in. Subsequent messages made it clear: if I wanted to get into the building, I was going to have to skulk around outside, wait for someone to leave or enter, and sneak in behind them. In retrospect, this should’ve been a red flag: My plane from Milwaukee to Newark got delayed by two hours for mechanical issues, so I messaged my host, because instructions had been to buzz the property manager. Reviews told me not to look in the fridge, to use the bathroom and bed and that was it. Ran something like $50/night before taxes and fees-remember, this is in 2016.though that’s still too cheap. So I booked an Airbnb in the city, somewhere up around 140th and Amsterdam. TO WIT: My Night with a Northern Irish Bartenderįor a conference in New York back in 2016 or so, the actual venue itself was 45 minutes up the Hudson in some swanky locale that covered all your meals and lodging for something like $750 for three nights to share a room with 1-2 people I’d never met. That Airbnb was a fun, dumb memory from my grad school days, and it led me to reminisce on a few of the other dumb adventures I was privy to in my youth, because so many of them were found at the intersection of academia and college football. This game brings up fun memories for me that I now realize I’ve told three different times-it involves an overnight drive from Atlanta, an NC State fan giving me a bottle of Lagavulin, and then me drinking said Lagavulin as Hurricane Irma hit Atlanta and I couldn’t go anywhere from my Airbnb in a part of town I was told I wasn’t supposed to be in. It’s time for more Northwestern-Duke this weekend.
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