mychai's Diaryland Diary

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Day #21: A shade of Stagnant Blue

Wow. What a busy few days... Kinda.

The last time I wrote I was sitting in the freezing cold of Quebec City. I was somewhat glad that we would be leaving the cold, northern climate for the much warmer New York area. And as I am writing this, I am sitting at my friend Mike's house in Princeton, New Jersey, and it has snowed more than six inches. I could have stayed in Canada to experience this kind of crappy weather.

"Hey, JP. Could you summarize your train trip to New York in as few words as possible?"

Sure! I would say it was what I normally call "long-ass." As in, "That was one long-ass train ride." It was long. My ass hurt afterward (and during). So... long-ass.

I spent over thirty hours on a train beginning April 4th and lasting until late on April 5th. There are a few truths in life. One is death, another is taxes. The seldom heard truth -- which I proved with no doubt -- is that you do not want to spend thirty hours on a train.

As bad as it was, though, it could have been a lot worse. Had Nicole not been with me, I would have had to sit next to a complete stranger pretty much the whole way. And by the looks of it, the complete stranger would have been an old, creepy woman that smelled of cigarettes and stale medicine cabinets who felt the constant need to clear her sinuses.

A sidenote about trains: going from VIA Rail to Amtrak is like going from a swank, five-star hotel to... well... a hostel. Hostels are fun and have their charm, but wouldn't you rather spend your time in the hotel?

One redeeming factor on the Amtrak train was one of the conductors. She was a cranky old woman who laid the rules down without much icing. But if you closed your eyes while she was talking on the P.A. system, you would swear that you were listening to Marge Simpson. It was pretty funny, and every time she would get on the system to announce the next stop or say why we were being delayed (over and over again), I would say something louder than usual to the effect of it being Marge. I got a few laughs.

For about thirty minutes, I found Marge sitting in the cafe car filling out paperwork, so I put on the ol' JP charm and talked to her, asking lots of questions about the train and her life. She used to live in the South as well, and she had been working for Amtrak for about eight years. After a lot of hard work -- and enough charm to kill an elephant -- I finally got her to smile at me. She was a sweet lady underneat her brashness.


I was glad to finally get in to New York. My friend Mike met us just as we got off the train, and we hurried Nicole to her train home minutes before it left. It was a rushed goodbye because we had only a few minutes to get to our train. My last view of Nicole after two-plus weeks of spending virtually every minute with her was seeing her sitting alone in a Long Island Rail-Road car, bottom lip poking out, watching me leave. I felt like crap.

I was so exhausted on my train trip with Mike that I did my best to keep up conversation. When we got to his house, I took a quick hot shower and went right to bed.

Mike had to work yesterday, so I was to my own pretty much all day. Quite a blessing. I doubt I would have been much fun had Mike taken me around all day. It's strange going from constantly being on the go with someone you are quickly forced to have complete trust in and share the responsibilities of looking out for one another to suddenly being alone and stagnant. I felt like I was missing something -- someone -- and I just felt somewhat empty.

I went and dropped off some film. Five rolls of it, to be exact. I went to the store so I could make dinner for Mike. I went to the library to check my email. I called home for free for the first time in nearly three weeks.

Then I came back to Mikes and took a nap. Five hours later, I woke up.

I turned on the television and came across a new channel. I wanted to see the latest happenings in the war, but the first story I saw informed me that David Bloom had died. This turned a blue day even bluer.

I never met David Bloom, yet I saw him pretty much every weekend for the past two years. When you work in master control, you see things most people don't see. You hear the idle chat between anchors. You hear them talking about their families, their plans, what's bugging them, what they thought was funny. Mix that with what they tell you during the newscast, and you really get the feeling that you know those people. After two years, you basically feel like you could go to their houses, eat a dinner, and converse with their families without missing a beat.

Even more, you almost depend on these people to guide your emotional responses to news. You trust them to tell you the straight story. If you can't trust and believe these people, they aren't worth watching.

When I heard that he had died, I felt a huge loss. It affected me quite a bit. It is one thing to hear of other journalists that you didn't know who died while doing a distinctly American duty. But it is another thing to hear the fate of someone you truly liked.

When September 11th happened, I finally knew what it was like for people to hear about Pearl Harbor in 1941. Yesterday, I knew what it was like for people to lose Ernie Pyle during WWII. It just sucks.

The only thing that makes me cope with it all is that I know he led such an exciting life. He didn't sit on his butt his whole life seeing the same things day-by-day. I've always lived that philosophy. I hope that I, too, live a lifetime of experiences by the time I am 39.

But I hope to keep going...


Mike and I are going into New York tomorrow. We are going to start the day at the Today Show. I was going to hold up funny signs and generally make a fool out of myself, but I think I may just take a sign with a nice note about Mr. Bloom. Maybe I'll bring two signs. We'll see.

I want pimp my diary. Get a million hits. I want my diary to bog down all of Diaryland. I'll be King of Diaryland! Muh-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

I want to see a lot of the neighborhoods in New York, like Chinatown and the Bronx. I wanna give a loud Bronx cheer just to see what happens.

He will take me on a ferry ride. We may go see a Yankees game, depending on the weather. I want to go to Harlem and get some "soul food," which is just another name for food that I grew up eating: fried chicken, collards, mashed potatoes, fried okra, and sweet tea.

So, that's my day tomorrow... hopefully. Let's hope that the weather clears up, that terrorists don't strike, and that I don't come down with SARS.

And keep your eye on the Today Show. I'll be there with a face that hasn't been touched by a razor in three weeks. If I may toot my own horn for a bit, I think I have a Christopher Marlowe image going on. He was the real Shakespeare, you know...

Ok. So, I'll tell you all about New York tomorrow. Right now, I have to clean the kitchen.

1:24 p.m. - Mon., Apr. 7, 2003

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