New York/New Jersey Trip: Day 1 (or, flying, food, and settlers)

From Saturday March 18th 2006 to the 25th (also a Saturday), I took a vacation and visited some friends in New Jersey and New York. It was a great vacation! I got to hang out with people I hadn't seen in ages; I got to explore some places I never previously visited; I got to see some shows that I've been meaning to see for a while; I ate some food I'd never previously tried. And I also achieved my goal of spending some time relaxing and doing nothing, making it a true vacation. This and the following blog posts will document what I did -- effectively a series of diary entries reconstructed from my memories of the week and the little piles of notes and ticket stubs I have.

Since this was to be a vacation, I decided to pay a little extra and get a direct flight leaving the bay area at a reasonable time and arriving at the most convenient airport (Newark) to the friends I'd be staying with for most of the trip. My BART trip and flight were fairly uneventful. (Although I had a middle seat on a packed flight, it didn't bother me. I spent most of the flight watching television shows and reading news articles I'd downloaded to my computer.)

Flying on United and feeling hungry, I spent the extra five dollars to spring for their turkey and cheddar wrap. It was a sad item, with more cheese than turkey -I ended up removing most of it- and fairly sad processed turkey. Still edible enough. And the perfect size, it was small enough to leave me hungry for dinner when I landed, and this turned out to be quite a good thing.

Indeed, after Bryson kindly picked me up from the Newark airport, we arrived at his apartment to find his fiance, Catherine cooking -another friend of mine, of course- and dinner almost ready. It was great; I was hungry from the flight and steak fajitas with red peppers, onion, fresh cheese (I offered to help whatever was left to do, so I got to grate the cheese :> ), and fresh avocado. Fajitas: such a simple but good food.

Not surprisingly, since moving east Bryson and Catherine have missed being in close proximity to Settlers of Catan players. And I don't play it enough anyway to satisfy my craving. As I write this now, it seems like fajitas: Settlers is simple strategy game, yet interesting and social and good every time. Thus, we played. I lost both games -not that surprising- but I came close once (and had fun). And hanging out was nice. I was glad that I had started to fulfill the promise I'd made last fall when they moved east that I'd visit them.