Adventureland

Athens, OH; West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York; Melville, NY; JFK airport; Reyjkavik, Iceland; Paris, France

Tuesday 14 June—Friday 17 June

We (Jess, Mary Brett, and I) followed a rainbow into New Jersey and a rainstorm into New York City, and we arrived on Long Island a bit after 10:00pm, exhausted. In short, the accommodations that we had arranged at Adam’s place were not as we had expected. We encountered a grumpy security guard who frowned at our sleeping bags and duffels and forbid us entrance into the building. Adam apparently lives in a high-security dorm where he is treated as a temporary “conference guest” and not a resident. We had no option but to sleep elsewhere. At 11:00 at night, that “elsewhere” ended up being the trunk/backseat of Adam’s car, where we quietly drank Yuengling, ducked every time we saw headlights pass, and distractedly watched late night construction and the immobile rides at Adventureland across the street. In the morning, we did saluted the sun that seemed so late in coming after a restless night and did yoga in the parking lot to loosen our stiff muscles and creaky joints. To continue our brief homeless adventure, we took adventure of the Target bathroom down the street to brush our teeth and hair and smooth out our baggy eyes with foundation and creative makeup techniques. I am only slightly ashamed to say that for the first time in my life, I ordered a vente latte at the Starbucks in Target. Yes, I was in desperate need of three shots of espresso, and yes, I was willing to spend my last American dollar bills for overpriced steamed milk, if only to add a bit of class to my night of homelessness.

We got to the JFK airport without any more problems, navigated the airport’s eight terminals to find Icelandair’s departure gate, and said goodbye. MB is off to Israel for the summer, and Jess will be working at a YMCA summer camp a couple hours outside of the city. And without further ado, I checked my bags, carefully removed all potentially dangerous objects that could peg me as a socialist or a terrorist from my person, and proceeded through security without a problem. While waiting for the plane, I met and chatted with a certain Alex(andra) Brown, who is working for a publishing house in L.A. We commiserated on the woes of the publishing business and the somewhat sadistic pleasure of rejection letters until she boarded her plane back to California.

My seatmates on the plane were just as pleasant as the aforementioned Alex. I found myself next to a pair of siblings, John G. and his sister (whose name has slipped my mind). They were born in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, but moved to the states some seven years ago or so. They were returning to Belgium to visit their sister and meet her newborn son. John had just finished his undergraduate degree in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Maryland, and he is pursuing a master’s degree in the same subject, again at the U of M. He would eventually like to enter the astronaut corps and/or work for NASA, and he is doing everything possible to improve his chances of being accepted into the corps, including working towards a private pilot’s license. He explained to me why the wings of airplanes have curved tips, how cold fronts always pass under warm fronts, and what happens when a scuba diver ascends to the surface too quickly. His knowledge base reminded me of the conversations between my brother and my dad, but with vocabulary that I could actually grasp and understand. Once we arrived in Reyjkavik (the capital of Iceland) I was frankly sad to see them go. It of course helped that John was a beautiful specimen of “tall, dark, and handsome,” and his sister was charming and kind.

From what I saw of Iceland, it is cold, sparsely populated, mountainous, and somewhat mysterious. My sense of time was entirely confused once we finally landed—not only was I exhausted from a night of sleeping in a trunk and increasingly jetlagged, the sun only set for an hour in Iceland. We touched down at 11:30pm local time in a rosy sunset. The sun disappeared behind the horizon for about an hour, but by the time my plane to France took off, the sun was already creeping back up in a grey dawn.

My arrival in Paris was inconsequential, and I got on the RER to Paris centre without a problem, but once I arrived at la Gare du Nord to meet Tom, I could not find him for the life of me. (Tom, for those who do not know, is a friend of mine from Ohio University. He graduated from the Honors Tutorial College when I was a freshman, and he now lives in L.A. and works for Digital Domain as a video effects designer). Bref, it was my fault. I had positioned myself on the right side of the train station, but at the wrong exit. Finally, I found a tabac to buy credit for my French cell phone, spent an obtuse amount of money to call Tom’s iPhone, and finally corrected my error. Hungry and exhausted, we finally arrived at the Hôtel Gérando, where I collapsed into the deepest 45-minute nap I have perhaps ever taken.

Tom finally roused me so we could find caffeine and food. The hotel was conveniently positioned in Montmartre, so before looking for something to eat, we first ascended the hill to Sacre Coeur (the Cathedral so prominently featured in Amélie, for those of you who know the film) and ducked inside to observe the ostentatiously pious interior. Descending Montmartre, we successfully avoided the Sénégalais selling tie on bracelets and miniatures of la Tour Eiffel (you’d think they’d make a miniature Sacre Coeur too, but no) and found caffeine on a quiet street. From there we took the métro to la Tour Eiffel. As we waited for our sandwiches at a nearby café-snack, we were entertained by a passing manifestation (strike). It is said that the American national pastime is baseball; in France, it is striking. This time, it was cheminots (railway workers) who were dissatisfied with something or another. They passed with much chanting, megaphone shouting, blank cannon firing, and sulfur flare lighting. We briefly joined the stream of parading strikers to get to the other side of the street, where la Tour Eiffel stood regally, buffeted by the din of the striking crowd and a sudden strong wind.

Although Tom and I had both ascended la Tour Eiffel before, we decided to climb to the second level to search for a note that a young friend of his had left for him under a table a while back. We both doubted that the note would still be there, but it gave us an excuse to participate in overt tourism and take cheesy pictures with the Parisian cityscape as our background. After descending, we treated ourselves to drinks—des Monacos (blonde beer, limonade, and grenadine syrup), a drink that we had both been introduced to by our mutual French friend Julien. Before dinner, we bought a bottle of cheap champagne and entertained ourselves by la Seine. I had missed Tom, really. By the time the “magic hour” of the evening had cast Paris in gold, we were pleasantly punchy. We wandered towards l’île de France to see Notre Dame bathed in the amber light of the magic hour, and then headed towards le quartier latin for dinner. We had the good luck to stumble upon a hole-in-the-wall Tunisian restaurant that turned out to be quite a hidden treasure. Although we had planned to return to la Tour Eiffel after dinner to watch the hourly light show, I was overcome by exhaustion that rendered me somewhat incoherent, so we returned to the hotel and for the first time in ~36 hours, I slept for a full night in a bed with sheets. What a luxury!

In the morning, I had the chance to shower in a real shower (again, quite a treat after days of travel grime), and we packed up our belongings. After caffeine, we took our daily bread up to Sacre Coeur and enjoyed our pain au chocolat with a magnificent view of Paris stretched out below. When I first met Tom nearly three years ago, we jokingly promised that one day we would have a baguette sword fight in Paris. We finally fulfilled our own promise. We borrowed a confused American tourist to take a picture of the indelible act, of course.

I said goodbye to Tom for who knows how long at la Gare de Lyon, from the window of a train headed towards Grenoble. A brief séjour à Paris after an incredibly long journey does the body good.