Hello, NY!!!

   My first trip back to New York to visit was over the summer.  Lori was coming with me. It was going to be her first trip to New York, so she was excited.  Eric and Heather also planned their trip to New York at the same time. That way Eric and Lori could spend some more time together.

   When we first landed, I got an instant reminder of how hot and muggy New York could be during the summer. I adjusted pretty quickly, but Lori was shocked at what it did to her curly red hair.

  The first weekend we were there, ‘Jesus’ Dan was hosting a party so we went to see everyone. When a drunk Dan became infatuated with Heather rather quickly. It kind of scared Heather with good reason and I was forced to walked around the block with Dan a few times convincing him he was not in love but in fact it was a ‘lust’ or infatuation.  While I was doing damage control, Lori who also had been drinking ran into Valarie, who was with her boyfriend Avi. Oblivious to this fact, she was concentrating on putting faces to the stories she heard about everyone.  When Valerie introduced herself, Lori said “You’re the one everyone thinks should be with Al!” Avi literally got upset and started to cry.  All this was unknown to me, so when I finally see Valerie and Avi, I invited the both of them to play softball the following morning. As incentive, I mentioned Alan would be there. By this time, Avi had calmed down, but flat out refused when I extended the offer. I tried to tell him he didn’t have to be good at softball to play with us. Valerie assured me they wouldn’t be able to make it. To make it up to us, we would meet up for dinner later in the week.

 The next day a bunch of us got to play softball and we had a great time. Afterwards we all went to Eric’s parents’ new home that they bought right off of the water in which Lori sported a cow print skirt.  We got to spend time with my other friend Dan and his girlfriend Casey and Alan. It was another fun, laid-back day.

  We spent the week trying to see as many people as we could and seeing as many sites as well. Like Eric had wanted to do for us in Texas, he wanted Lori to see everything. One day we all met up with Alan, Deana and Denver and went out East to the North Fork wine country for wine tasting and then down to the south fork for the aquarium.

   Out of all the people I wanted Lori to meet was Jen, but she couldn’t hang out for one reason or another. It was funny, whenever I went to NY with a girl, she wasn’t available, but when I went alone I always saw her.

 Another day, I took her to one of my favorite silly sites, ‘The Big Duck’, a street side advertisement for a Duck Farm built in 1931. Duck farmer Martin Maurer built this 20-ft. tall, 30-ft. long eye-catcher using concrete applied over a wooden frame. Taillights from a Model T Ford became its eyes, glowing red at night. Maurer sold ducks and eggs from the shop in its belly.

We met up with Val and her sister for dinner at a seafood restaurant on the water. It was funny, because we ate on the back deck, which was actually a floating dock on the water which made Lori get seasick. I didn’t even notice the deck was moving.

   We also went with Denver and Deana into Manhattan. Heather and Lori wanted to see the tourist sites, so at one point we sent Deana with the two of them up to the top of the Empire State Building while Eric, Denver and I went to the corner bar. About an hour or so later they finally got back and we went uptown to meet up with Matt who was waiting for us at one of Denver and Matt’s favorite hangouts. It was a bar on the Upper East Side, pretty close to “Strawberry Fields” in Central Park, so I had to take Lori to see the mosaic “Imagine” that decorates the sidewalk in the area which is the closest thing to a John Lennon Memorial there is.

  After we got to the bar, we hung out, and I remember getting my first real feelings of jealousy. I didn’t really understand how Lori and Eric could seriously have a long distance relationship without seeing or really having known each other first and Lori and I had grown really close since.

  By the end of the trip, Eric asked Lori to hang out the night before we all left because with all of his family obligations and entertaining Heather, he didn’t get to spend much time with Lori. So he picked her up on that last night and went for a drive. He was really anxious to show her the “Amityville Horror” house that was really close to where his parents now lived. I guess the getting to know you part of the trip fizzled because they’re relationship didn’t last very long after we got back to Colorado.