straight trippin'

Matching trucker hats: check. Full tank o' gas: check. Bruce Springsteen on the iPod: check. We even had a bobble-hipped hula girl on the dashboard. About four minutes into our road trip, we hit a broken traffic light at 400 South and State, leaving us pumping our fists to Thunder Road at a complete standstill. It was not exactly the wind-in-hair, cares-leaving-behind start to the journey I had envisioned. Also, I-80 was closed, so we had to go through Ogden. Woo hoo! Road trip! To Ogden!

Don't worry, I'm not going to narrate the whole road trip here. That would bore you (and me) to tears. I thought it would be more fun to document the experience by periodically taking pictures of our hula girl, capturing the changing scenery as we made our way across the country. I was totally diligent with my picture-taking, but somehow, the photos disappeared when we got to New York.

Thanks to the miracle of Google Earth and some other photos swiped from the internets, I recreated the hula girl photos. Witness, a Photoshop road trip:


So, we made it. Our place is bigger than a shoebox. It's big enough for the both of us PLUS two visitors (hint hint). The neighborhood is awesome. Less than a stone's throw away (only if Dave's throwing), we have:

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine (seen in the final photo above)
The restaurant from Seinfeld (average diner food)
A nice grocery store (pictured here at 5:00 on a weekday):


Pinkberry, where you can get average frozen yogurt for the price of a Carnival cruise
Columbia University (where the learnings happen)
Pizza the size of a large area rug
Central Park
Riverside Park
Morningside Park

I like it. I think I'll stay. I just need to find a job so I can afford a frozen yogurt.