Long Island/NYC -Day Off


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Wake up in the hotel parking lot around 8am. Pouring rain. Great. Hotel is on Long Island, right next to the Nassau Colesium. Grab my key and head in.

Rain breaks about 11am. Decide to head into Manhattan. Grab a cab to the train station to catch the LIRR into Penn Station. Aim for a 12:30 train, but read the schedule for another station online, so have to wait an extra 30 minutes.

Run into Lammy and Rob, two of the new guys on my bus. They are headed in to grab some electronic and guitar parts to fix something for the band. I have no agenda, except to meet friends Steve and Morgan for a late dinner, so I decide to hang with them.

We arrive at Penn Station, which is under Madison Square Garden. Stop at the Starbucks, and run into a few of the carp/lighting guys from our crew. No one wants to be stuck out on Long Island, even if it is raining in the city. Grab the subway downtown, headed for Canal St. As we come out of the subway, it is pouring rain again. Stop at the first store on Canal we see selling umbrellas. Rob and Lammy each buy an umbrella, I stick with my REI raincoat. We head to see Mr. Wong, who is an electronic parts guy that Rob's friend recommended. Find Mr. Wong's shop in the back of one of those places selling fake purses and Rolexes. He has the parts we need and soon we're back out in the rain and headed for Ludlow Guitars.

Ludlow is a great little guitar shop just south of Katz's Deli on Houston. We spend an hour or so checking out some guitars and chatting with the staff. They don't have the guitar part needed, so Rob and I jump in a cab and head up to 30th Street Guitars. Arriving at 30th St., I chat up the owner and find out we have a mutual friend (Jimmy Archey formerly of Gibson Guitars, now with First Act), who he proceeds to get on the phone for me. I spy a vintage pedal that I've been trying to find for the boss. I may come back and get it on Monday, after I get his approval to buy it. This place also has a ton of cool old guitars, I could have bought quite a few, but since I've procured 3 guitars in the last few weeks, that's out of the question. Rob finds his guitar part finally. I bid Rob farewell as it's getting close to 6pm, so I head down 3 blocks to meet Steve at his office.

Hang around at Steve's office for an hour or so, as he finishes up work. We eventually head downtown for our traditional 6th Street Indian dinner. Steve's wife Morgan has Tae Kwon Do class tonight (she's a 4th degree black belt), and is running late, so we kill time at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square. I buy Alfred Hitchcock's 'Frenzy' DVD, as I've been searching for it for a year or more. Steve and I walk the remainder of the 8 blocks to 6th Street and meet up with Morgan. We don't always eat at the same place as 6th Street is full of Indian restaurants. We just look at the menus and select a place (they all look the same) that has Banana Pakora and Vegetable Samosa.

Seated at our table we all order Shrimp Vindaloo to go with our Pakora and Samosas. We spend the meal catching up on our various lives. It's after 10pm when we finish dinner. Walking to the subway station, Steve and I get ice cream, while Morgan plays with a puppy outside the ice cream place. We go our separate ways at the train staion, as they head to Brooklyn, and I head across town to Penn Station. I get the 11:30 train back out to the island, arriving back in my room around 1am.


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    I got tired of writing the same email to everybody asking about life on the road. So here it is, day by day...
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