Well, as some of you may know, a little while back me and some friends went to the US, specifically NYC and then DC. If you're reading this because I linked you from my Twitter, then you're probably sick of me talking about it all the time so I thought I'd do a blog post on what was probably the best time of my life.Day One.
We left school at about 11.30, 30 minutes after we were supposed to. Upon arriving at Heathrow we were told by the teachers that we weren't allowed to take food past the first bit, so we all tried to eat all the food we had as quickly as possible, which we did, throwing what was left away. We then learned that this was a lie. Needless to say, the teachers were very lucky that I knew for a fact that we weren't allowed to take in Ninja weapons to the Airport.
It was a long trip, about 8 hours, but I wasn't bored in the slightest. I was sat next to my friend Alexej, who had the brilliant idea of putting all his important personal belongings into his 'Super Secret Bag of Mysteries'. This included his passport, his iPod, his phone, his Visa card forms and his Camera. Now, you may think that this plan seems flawless, but trust me, it wasn't. He ended up losing this bag about half way through the journey and it took us about an hour to find it. Naturally, it was under my chair, which I assure you I knew nothing about..
We arrived at about 2AM GMT, which was 9.00PM East Coast US Time. Upon arriving at the Airport, I made countless jokes such as 'Wow, they have windows here in America' and 'Look, they even use phones over here!'. This was probably the point at which Joe coined the phrase 'Nuff of that wit, Slade'. That was one of the 5 magic phrases which we used endlessly on the trip. More about these 5 magic phrases later. After getting past the scary man who checked me through immigration, we stepped outside into what we were told would be unbelievably cold temperatures. Now, it was well below 0 Celsius, granted, but me and George immediately decided that we were man enough to withstand this, and preceded to strip down to just our shirts. Naturally, the rest of our group looked on with a sense of compassion, admiration and lust for our sheer manliness.
The Hotel in New York was shit. It really was fucking awful. The ground floor was nice, but it hit me as we arrived on our floor that the smell of Cannabis and the worryingly unidentified stains all over the carpet were not particularly appealing. Adding to that, it turned out that our key didn't work so we had to get a new one, after standing outside our room worried for about half an hour. I should say at this point that there were 5 of my friends going with me, and we had to stay in rooms of four, so me and another friend manned up and went with two Year 13s. Well, I say 'manned up', but it turned out that those Year 13s were quite keen on trying to convey as many homoerotic experiences as possible, naturally.
We were supposed to go to Time Square on our first day, but we didn't because it was too late in the end. We could have eaten at the Restaurant at the Hotel, but we were warned how much of a rip-off it was so I just didn't eat anything. We also learned at this point that there was a very large dog competition going on in Madison Square Gardens, which was literally across the road, so there were about 500 dogs and their crazy American owners in the Hotel. This was very surreal as we ended up sharing lifts with the biggest dogs I have ever seen, and then had to listen to their owners discuss these dogs. It was quite funny hearing one dog owner subtly mock another for not winning anything and the other's look of disgust. Strange people. Also, am I allowed to fucking swear in this blog? Hmmph.
Well that just about made up day one. It was pretty much just a long plane journey in which I ended up listening to my iPod and not reading any of the hideous amounts of Books for English I was supposed to read. Ah, before I end this post, I should inform you of the mighty iPod selection which I went through many arduous hours deciding on (because my iPod only holds 500 songs, retro, right?)
250 Beatles Songs.
Rolling Stones
Dire Straits
Pink Floyd
Regina Spektor
Arcade Fire
The Doors
The Hold Steady
MGMT
Rage Against the Machine, naturally
Rise Against
Say Anything
The Smiths
A Wilhelm Scream
Radiohead
It should also be noted that my official song for the trip, following on from my dad aptly playing it in the car on my way to school was 'L'america', by the Doors. And Rage Against the Machine were pretty much the biggest thing in my life at this point. In the leadup to the trip, two days before we left, the RATM gig had been announced and I had applied for tickets, just before going to my Sixth Form Party. Rock on.
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