Last weekend I went to one of best tournaments there is, Wildwood - four hundred teams playing ultimate on the beach. We alternate by playing one game, and then having one game off, where everyone runs into the sea. It was a lot of fun as always, and we camped at the same site as the last two years. We took two teams of Grey Till members. Since I did not "baggage" with any of the core members, I ended up on the new member team. This turned out to be great because the other team was taking things a little more seriously than we, and we had a winning record, unlike them.
We had a little snafu at the last minute on the way to Wildwood where my beloved van decided she did not wish to make the journey. Luckily, she made this decision while I was on the UWS picking up Sam, and some hot logistics action on the part of Brandon, Kara, and perhaps some anonymous heroes got us back on the road with only a couple hours wasted.
Of course, that still left me with a limping van with potentially very expensive repairs, 50 miles from her parking garage in New Brunswick, 10 miles from my apartment, and with me leaving town on the 3rd for three weeks.
On Monday, which was supposed to be a work day to finish up my Portland cycling project, I took the hour train ride to Sam's place with the intention of checking the differential oil as that was one of the possible problems found in my research. Alas, I had not the correct tool, which was a square. I wandered up to Harlem in search of a hardware store or auto parts store, sweating my ass off in the heat. I found nothing and became very frustrated. When I had been leaving my house that morning I spoke with an old Polish guy who has a van on my block, and he recommended a place in the neighborhood, as well as giving me an oral history of the maintenance of his van. I decided to make a go for it rather than trusting some random Harlem service station and was able to bring her home without a problem.
When I got home I went to a parts store nearby and asked for the part. The guy looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "it's square. They just use a socket wrench. You can put on the extension and it's still square." Indeed. So of course the problem was not the fluid, so I had to bite it and take her to a shop. This is something I've been avoiding since I moved here since I have a hard time trusting mechanics, and in New York, forget about it. Nobody has a car here, so I could not get any decent recommendations.
So by this time, it was too late to go to a shop and my day was shot. Wednesday it would be. I spoke with Sal, who has the same van, and he told me about another shop, recommended to him by an ex-mechanic friend who also has the same van.
On Wed I took her in, expecting the worst. One trip around the block and Junior told me that it was my universal joints and it would be $150! So the world is sunny again, at least in my head, and Gina is back on the road. I took this opportunity to finally get her inspected, and that dratted driver's side mirror is also fixed. I'm afraid though that the A/C is not, and never will be.
On Wed I could not do my Portland project either since I was having a dinner party, and for me this is an all day affair. It was a great time as Sam from my team, Lauren, Seth from CS and a Russian CSer, Luva, Brittany (a girl who lives in the neighborhood and plays disc) and her roommate, and Lilli and her boyfriend attended. Besides appetizers, I made scalloped kohlrabi, couscous salad, and a French beef dish that came out excellent. We played Werewolf and Lilli confessed! which was the second time this happened this week as Kara did the same at Wildwood. Dang Brandy used her intimate knowledge of my nuances to figure out that I was the other. After that, and a bit too much wine and sangria a la Brandy, we went on the roof to smoke cigars. All in all it was a great night, but going to work the next day was not a lot of fun.
Friday I was able to work most of the day and got a lot of my project done. That evening I went to Seth's, since Karrie, a CSer I had met long ago in Philly was in town. Our roommate Dan stopped by for a bit to get the keys since he was staying in our house that night because his sister kicked him out so she could have a slumber party (i.e. get totally wasted without your brother). The funny thing was that Dan had met Karrie a long time before that at Beauty Bar and she was the first one to tell him about CS. It was a small gathering and we hung out for quite awhile before Karrie, her German friend, and I caught a cab to the LES to meet up with Brandy.
We went to this bar called D.B.A. on 1st Ave. The moment I walked in I said, lame! There was nothing interesting about it and it was filled with tools. But then, I looked behind the bar and saw that beautiful sight, the giant chalkboard covered with tiny writing. This can only mean one thing, beeeer! The price was typical, $7, and the beer was delicious. Yet, the place was still fairly lame and we were getting tired so we headed out. We walked up to 14th St and then decided to show Beauty Bar to the German guy. They were stealing identies at the door with their fucking swipe thing, so Brandy and I opted for home while the other two entered.
Ok, it sounds conspiracy, but we are convinced that when they swipe your ID at the bar they take your info and sell it to marketers. After all, there is no need to do the swipe. Also, Dave got swiped once and shortly thereafter he was mysteriously on the Marlboro list and got inundated with offers and also started getting other ads for drinking related shit. This may be circumstantial, but there is enough evidence to have concern.
Yesterday we were a little toasted in the morning so we lounged around and then went to Eat Records with Dan for brunch. We hadn't been here before and this place is awesome. They sell mostly local organic food, so they are a bit pricey, but they also have this amazing outdoor area. It is in this little brick enclosed courtyard with lots of trees and foliage and there are three long, communal tables. There is this novelty store across the street with lots of stuff like bacon bandages and bacon scented soap. We also stopped at a yard sale where we got The Truman Show and some other movie on VHS for a buck, opting to not purchase the stone penis for $8.
After that I spent much of the day working on my Portland project and finally finished. We then took a nice walk through Williamsburg. These little exploratory walks is one of my favorite things about living here. There are so many cool places to see that we almost always discover something new. Of course, we also almost always see some new yuppie condo and this time we saw a new Subway invading Bedford Ave. We checked out this video store we just heard about that is a block from our place, Film Noir. It is this hole in the wall place with videos stacked all over the place and a pretty decent foreign selection. I can't believe we've been walking all the way to Greenpoint Ave. We were tired and excited to try out the new projector, so we rented a Korean 'horror' film called the Host, which turned out to be pretty decent.
Today I have to take Gina down to New Brunswick and we may check out Princeton, although the rain is pretty formidable.
Tomorrow I leave for Europe for three weeks. Sweet.