Disney

Team Tan Pinocchio in front of the castle at Magic Kingdom

The other G8

I spent the last several days at PricewaterhouseCooper’s Intern Development Program at Orlando’s Walt Disney World. I had a great time and I may write about it in another posting, but right now I’d like to share my experience flying home to Columbus.

All the interns were assigned specific busses to the airport based on the time of their flight home. I was scheduled on a 5:30 flight, so I was in the last group of people to leave. Our bus left the resort at 2:30 en route for the Orlando airport. We arrived with plenty of time to spare and breezed right through security. I was traveling with Tanya, a friend of mine who attended OSU and will be starting with PwC in New York in a couple of weeks. We found our gate and sat down. We each took out our laptops and we checked for a wireless signal. We could detect one, but it was faint and fleeting, so we left to find a stronger signal. I mentioned that Tanya is starting full-time in New York in a couple of weeks. She has a job, but she doesn’t currently have a place to live. It was imperative that we found a WiFi hotspot so that she could get online and look for apartment listings. As soon as our flight touches down in Columbus, she’s going to get in her car and drive to New York to look for a place to live. She has about 24 hours to find an apartment and drive back to Columbus. (She told me what she had to get back for, but I really don’t remember) If you don’t know how much fun it is to look for an apartment in New York, scroll down the page a little.

We found a hotspot nearby and I checked my email and browsed the web as she looked at craigslist and the village voice. Pretty soon we found ourselves getting hungry, so we went to an airport deli and got a couple of sandwiches. As we were finishing up, we checked our time. Our flight was at 5:30 and it was currently 5:00, which was the scheduled time for boarding. I told her to go ahead and finish her drink because she wouldn’t be able to bring it on the plane and we left to get on board at about 5:15. We were no more than 100 yards from our gate, so we weren’t too concerned about the time. When we got to the gate, it no longer said Columbus, Ohio. As a matter of fact, it didn’t say anything at all. The sign board was blank. That’s never something that you want to see. I went up to one of the other gates and inquired about our flight. Gate change. “Oh crap,” we said as we took off sprinting towards our new gate.

We arrived at the new gate of departure a few minutes later and recognized some other Ohio-based interns waiting in line. As we approached, we heard them discussing an “inoperable cargo bay.” I asked them what was going on and they explained that the smoke detector in the cargo bay wasn’t working, so they couldn’t take on any checked bags, but anyone with just carry-on bags could still fly. We stood in line together discussing how much we didn’t like Delta as we waited our turn to talk to the people at the gate. After a few minutes, the Columbus PwC recruiter came to talk to us. She had just spoken with the Delta people and gave us the full report: “The cargo bay is indeed off limits without the smoke detector. Carry-on bags are allowed, but we’re flying on a very small plane, so nothing larger than a backpack or briefcase can go on board. As an apology, we’re all going to get a $7 meal voucher and a $25 discount to use towards our next Delta flight. They’re going to rebook us all on a later flight.” We were all very pleased to find out that we would be getting $32 out of all this. It more than made up for the hassle… (yes, that was sarcasm)

For some reason, they decided to tell us that the plane would still be taking off even if no one was on board. They said that it had to get to its destination, so it would be departing regardless. That was just what we wanted to hear at that point in time. Passengers were trying to reason with the Delta people, but they were getting shut down left and right. People asked why they couldn’t just fly home now and send their bags on another flight. Delta told us that it was against FAA regulations to send the bags on a different flight from the passengers they belong to. Other people tried yelling at the Delta employees, but that didn’t do much good either. Everyone was pretty much out of luck at the point. They weren’t letting people on this flight and they weren’t making any promises to get people on the next flight either. They were going to work people onto later flights as they found available seats. It was a bad situation and the likelihood that everyone’s bags would be lost was great.

A few minutes later, a Delta representative called out to the crowd: “Is anyone traveling with just carry-on bags? Does anyone not have checked baggage?” Silence... “No one? Everyone out there has checked bags?” I spoke up and told him that I didn’t have checked bags, but I had a larger carry-on. He told me that it wouldn’t fit under the seat, so I couldn’t get on the plane.

“So if my bag were smaller, you’re telling me that you would fly me…just me, to Columbus?”

“Yes sir”

“So no one else would be on the plane?”

“That’s correct.”

“Ok, then can I just buckle it in the seat next to me?”

“Sorry, that’s against regulations.”

“Can I lock it in the bathroom? I promise I won’t have to pee for the entire flight.”

“Sorry, regulations.”

“Can I unpack everything and stick a little bit under each seat?”

“That would be fine, but you can’t fit your bag on the plane.”

“I can make it fit. I’ll jump on it and fold it up and force it under the seat.”

“I’m sorry sir, that won’t work.”

“Ok, how about this? What if you give me a garbage bag and I just stuff everything in that? That’ll smash down nicely. I’ll send my bag on a later flight or throw it away. It was a Wal*Mart suitcase – it cost about $25. I’m not worried about it; I just want to get home.”

“Sure, that’ll work. Let me get you a garbage bag.”

Ok, so let’s review here. They just told me that they would fly me on my own private Delta flight from Orlando to Columbus, but only on the condition that I transfer my clothes to a garbage bag. It made no sense at all, but I really wanted my own private flight and I thought it would make for some comedy for the rest of the weary passengers. I was right about that last part. Everyone else was loving the conversation I was having with Delta. You have to remember that I’m at the back of the line, the Delta guy is at the front of the line, and we’re having this conversation across everyone else. Tanya offered to take my empty suitcase on the later flight and one of the other interns asked if he could take my picture while I loaded up my garbage bag. Everyone else just laughed and discussed how stupid Delta was.

The Delta guy walked over and handed me a garbage bag and told me to pack everything up because if I wanted to get on the plane, we would be departing immediately. I put all my stuff down and got ready to make the switch. At this point everyone is laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, but that was an improvement over all the anger that had been flying around moments earlier. I opened my suitcase and the first thing I removed was the PwC backpack that I had received at IDP. Sherrie, the Columbus recruiter, suggested that I just pack my things into the backpack rather than the garbage bag. That was a much better idea, so that’s what I did. I packed every last item from my suitcase into the backpack until the backpack was just as large as the suitcase. Sherrie pointed out this fact and told me that I would have to take some stuff out in order to make it fit. I agreed, but opted to ask Mr. Delta. None of this made any sense anyway, so I might as well try my luck. I held up the backpack, asking, “Is this ok?” “That’s fine.” he told me “Get on the plane.” So with that, I handed my empty carry-on to Tanya, waved goodbye to my fellow Columbus-ites (Columbonians?) and got on the plane.

I wasn’t alone, however. Sitting on the plane were two pilots. This was most likely the reason that they were going to fly a defective and “empty” plane to Columbus even if none of the passengers were on board. It didn’t stop there either. Two other interns and a PwC manager walked on behind me. I’m not sure how they managed to pull that one off and I’m not sure what happened to their luggage, but somehow they made it on the plane. And rounding out the group were two other people, but I don’t know their back story because I had no interaction with them. Your guess is as good as mine as to how they managed to fight their way on. I managed to stuff my oversized backpack into the overhead compartment and looked for a seat. The flight attendant told me not to worry about what seat my ticket said and asked me to sit in the back. I asked one of the pilots what the deal was and she told me that they had to distribute the weight throughout the plane. Since it wasn’t full, they had to make sure we didn’t throw off the balance of the plane. Let me tell you how fun it was to hear that little nugget of information.

I sat in the second to last row, diagonally behind the pilot I had just spoken to. As I glanced around from my seat, I noticed her suitcase was stuffed behind the last seat, between the seat and the bathroom wall. The other pilot’s bag was in the same place on the other side of the plane. Ah…must be on of those FAA regulations…

It was a great flight. It was the most informal flight I’ve ever been on. The flight attendant walked down the aisle handing everyone a bottle of water before we took off. That’s how they do beverage service for eight people. It was also interesting to listen to the two pilots talk to each other. I’ve never heard pilot gossip before, so I enjoyed eavesdropping. They were complaining about their “lines.” If anyone knows what that means, I’d appreciate it if you’d enlighten me. Another thing I found interesting: The second we took off – the exact split second we left the ground – the pilot sitting in front of me grabbed her laptop and turned it on. So much for that regulation as well, I guess. She spent the flight watching “Walk the Line” on DVD in case you were wondering.

The snack service was kind of fun too. The flight attendant walked up with a basket of crackers, cookies, and peanuts and asked if I’d like anything. I took a package of those delicious airline biscuit cookies and she told me to take as many as I’d like… there were only eight of us after all.

I wrote all of the above while I was still on the plane. After we got off the plane, I caught up with the other PwC people and asked them how they got on the flight. They told me that they couldn’t fit 5 people on later flights, so they were forced to put them on this flight and send their bags on a later one. They didn’t let people choose who got to go early and apparently that whole regulation about keeping people with their bags was a bunch of hooey.

Apartment hunting – day 4 – the long and winding road…to hell

After three long and heat filled days, we were ready to get home. Karie told me that she would pick me up outside Molly’s apartment at 8 am, so I coordinated with Molly and Lisa as to what time I would get up. I was planning on waking around 7 in order to be up and ready to go by the time Karie picked me up. Unfortunately, the heat kept me from sleeping well and I awoke at 4:30 and couldn’t return to sleep. I made the best of it by showering, watching an episode of “Rescue Me” and then walking down the street to get a breakfast sandwich and some fresh squeezed orange juice. About three hours later, Karie called to tell me that they were about to leave Brooklyn and they would pick me up at about 8.

They called to tell me they were outside at about 10am. Apparently they got lost in Brooklyn and then got stuck in the morning rush hour traffic. It was later than planned, but at least we were finally hitting the road. Getting out of the city wasn’t too bad and strangely enough, at one point, we were two cars in front of a bus from Ohio University.

The first leg of the trip was New Jersey. We stopped for gas and then continued on our way. I only mention this because it’s illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey. I find that very odd… This was supposed to be a quick jaunt of about 30 or so miles before we hit Pennsylvania. Unfortunately for us, the quick jaunt came to a screeching halt about 5 miles from the Pennsylvania border. It took us nearly 2 hours to traverse those five miles. The holdup? A garbage truck had flipped over just before the toll booth, spilling its wares all over the road. They had closed two of the lanes and had haz-mat crews on the scene to clean up the mess.

We made it past the toll booth and started the long, boring trip through Pennsylvania. We were only in Pennsylvania for about 45 miles when traffic slowed to a crawl. We feared that the evil dots were behind the mess, but after around 30 minutes of slow moving traffic, we got through the construction that caused the slow down and continued on our way. We hit a few more traffic jams after that, but to be honest, after a while they all started to blur together.

At this point we had hit at least four slow downs, but we were finally making some progress… until we weren’t again. Traffic came to a sudden stop and we were sitting completely still. A semi in front, behind, and directly to the side of us ensured that we could not see what was going on. We were totally surrounded by trucks and sitting completely still. After 15 or 20 minutes, we started to inch forward, but didn’t get over five miles per hour. After an hour of slowly inching forward, we learned what was causing the gridlock. We were on I-80 West and across the median of trees, we could see a disaster on I-80 East. We saw fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, and twisted pieces of metal that had previously been cars. I-80 East was completely shut down by the accident. We figured that our traffic was caused by people looking through the trees to try and see the accident, but as we moved forward, we learned that they were re-routing the eastbound traffic onto our side of the road in order to get traffic moving again. The sudden influx of merging traffic slowed us down and caused gridlock. Finally, after about an hour and a half of sitting there, we started moving again… only to stop again about two miles later. All that traffic from the eastbound side that had entered our highway was now blocking off a lane as they lined up at the next exit. It took us about a half an hour to get through this second leg of the mayhem.

With that behind us, we finally picked up the pace and were on our way back to Ohio. By this point it had felt like we were in Pennsylvania forever and we wanted nothing more than to see that “Ohio welcomes you” sign. Unfortunately, nature had a different plan for us. When we were only about 30 miles outside of the Buckeye state, day suddenly turned into night and the skies opened above us. We were hit with a torrential downpour that slowed us down and eventually forced us to pull over. At first, I continued to drive by following the tail lights of the car in front of us, but when that car pulled off the road, I had no choice but to do the same. It was raining so hard that I could no longer see the road and it was unsafe to continue. Luckily, after only a few minutes on the side of the road, the rain let up just enough to let us continue. I waited until another car went by and pulled out to follow it. After a few minutes, we found ourselves a part of a caravan of slow moving vehicles, hazard lights blinking, working our way towards Ohio at a rate of around 25 miles per hour. As we drove westward, the weather eventually let up and we continued our normal pace, but we had lost at least 45 minutes to the slow down.

We made it to Ohio and we let out a happy cheer. From there it was a painless drive to Berea where Karie’s home and my car awaited us. We had to stop off a Denny’s for a few minutes to wait for our passenger, Karie’s friend Tara, to get picked up by her mom. We were soon back at Karie’s house. I transferred my stuff into my trunk and got back on the road for my final leg of the trip.

I was on 71 South for maybe ten minutes when blue and red lights suddenly materialized in my rearview mirror. “Great, I thought to myself. This is just what I need to end the perfect drive.” I pulled over and waited for the officer to walk up to my window. I handed him my license and he turned and spat. “Did he just spit on my license?” I thought to myself. It turned out that was chewing tobacco and he had spit on the ground next to my car. This was how our conversation basically proceeded:

Officer: Where is…spit…Sylvania?

Me: Just outside of Toledo, sir.

Officer: And where are you going?

Me: Columbus, sir. I’m driving back from New York and I’m on my way home. I just graduated from Ohio State and I’m living there for the rest of the summer.

Officer: spit… I clocked you going as fast as 70 back there. You know you’re in a construction zone? Spit… You’re supposed to go 55 in construction zones. Those signs aren’t there as a suggestion you know… spit.

Me: I’m sorry sir. I apologize sir.

Officer: You were obviously paying attention. You were using your turn signals. I’m not going to give you a ticket… spit. Just make sure that you slow down in the construction zones. I know that no one is working out there, but the rest of the drive back to Columbus is under construction, so I want to see you going 55… spit. Have a nice night.

Me: Thank you sir. I appreciate that sir. I will sir.

I pulled back into traffic and cruise controlled it back to Columbus at 55 nearly the rest of the way back. I know that I was fortunate to not get a ticket. A double fine speeding ticket would have surely not been pleasant, but I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. People were flying by me at 80 or 90 miles per hour and I got pulled over for going “as fast as 70.” I kept the needle somewhere between 65 and 70, so let's take the average of 67.5 mph. There was no construction going on and there weren't any lane closures or anything. So I was going (on average) 2.5 miles over the speed limit. Awesome.

I slowly made it back to Columbus and finally made it home around midnight. I threw my stuff on the floor and went right to bed. I had been up for nearly 20 hours and I had been in the car for 14 of those. It was most unpleasant and I get to do it again in a few weeks… this time in a moving truck.

Apartment hunting – day 3 – success

edit: I'm finally home and have a real internet connection, (no more bluetooth to cell phone) so I can finish updating my pictures. The final day's story will be up within the next 24 hours.

I don't have a lot of time to write, but we signed our lease this morning for the place that we wanted on 2nd, between 84th and 85th. Here's some pictures:

My room

The bedroom we'll be using as a common room. We're thinking about putting a dining room set in here. This is the view from my bedroom doorway.

Kitchen

The main common room looking from the kitchen. The door on the left leads to Karie's room (pictured here, far right) The door on the right leads to the "dining" room and then on to my bedroom.

A peek into Karie's room

A view from the main common room. The door to the left of the vacuum is the entrance. You can see the bathroom right next to that.

Apartment hunting – day 2 – the end of Farnsworth

Yesterday we met with Farnsworth Bentley from one brokerage firm and Denis Leary/ Gary Busey from another. Today’s broker was a team effort. We started the day by heading down to Chelsea and meeting them in their office. We filled out all the initial paperwork and went over what we were looking for. The woman (I’ll call her Abi…because that’s her name) looked through listings and short John Stamos (I’ll call him that because that’s what he looked like) took us around to show them to us.

It is important to know at this juncture that I received a phone call during our meeting with Abi and John. The call was from Sky Management, the company who operates the building in which we applied to lease. The message they left informed me that we had not gotten the apartment that we had wanted, but we had been approved for the same basic apartment, but on the fourth floor. I don’t remember if I mentioned last time that there were two listings in that building, so I’ll go ahead and do that now. There were two listings in that apartment. Both rooms looked very similar, but one was on the second floor and the other was on the fourth floor. We put on our application that we wanted the second floor, but we would take the fourth if we couldn’t have the second.

So anyway, we then set out to look at the first apartment with John. During our trip from the office to the first listing, Farnsworth called both Karie and myself twice. We decided that we would not return his call until we saw a couple of places with John since we weren’t sure what we’d be seeing. We walked into the apartment and immediately knew that we wanted it. All the listings that we had seen yesterday were okay at best or downright awful at worst. This place was fantastic and we knew it right away. It was a first floor apartment and it was huge. The bedroom windows overlooked a small garden-ish area and it was overall just a great place. We told John that we liked it and he told us that we had to act quickly. Other people were looking at it and if we wanted it, we had to get on it immediately. John was not one to mess around so we began running at full speed down the street to find a cab to take us back to the office so that we could get the paperwork in motion.

Funny thing about running around New York. It’s hot. It’s really hot. As a matter of fact, while we were in the cab, we were listening to the radio. After talking about Castro, they did the weather report. As of that moment, the temperature was reported as 91 degrees, with a heat index of 109 degrees. Yeah, we were sprinting down the street in 109 degree weather. It was awesome…

We got back to the office and began our paperwork, but we were told that someone else had put in an application before us. It was close though, so we still stood a good chance. By this time, however, Farnsworth had left several more messages on each of our phones. This was difficult because we knew that we wanted the place that we had just seen, but we didn’t want to lose the other place if we needed it. We decided that we would go back out and look at a few more places before getting back to him.

We headed down to the East Village and ended up getting lost looking for the apartment. This was absolutely miserable because it was just so unbearably hot. We were all sucking down water like it was our job, but we couldn’t seem to stay hydrated. It was really really hot…

By this point Farnsworth had called several more times and was telling us that he couldn’t hold the apartment much longer. He said that the management company was going to start showing the apartment to other people again if we didn’t sign immediately. I called him back and told him that we were running all over town looking at places, but we didn’t want to lose the apartment. I asked him to hold on to it for as long as possible and I’d get back to him as soon as possible. You know what he said to that? He hung up on me. Can you believe that? For some stupid reason, I thought that he would be an advocate for us. I would have thought that he wanted our commission. Apparently not.

We eventually found the place that we were looking for and it was really bad. The shower was in the kitchen and the bathroom was a toilet in a closet. It sucked so we moved on, but we had wasted a lot of time and effort. The next stop was the Upper East Side and we looked at one rather lackluster apartment. We expressed our dismay and quickly moved on to one on 95^th street. This was about as high as we were willing to go, but it was worth a shot. It was a second floor walkup, but it was fairly nice. It wasn’t big by any means, but we liked the location, the apartment was doable, and the rent was around $400 cheaper than any of the other places we had seen. We decided on the spot that we wanted this place as our backup if the apartment from the morning fell through.

Again with the urgency, John called Abi and we raced into an internet café across the street. Abi faxed us the application and we filled it out and faxed it right back. We were really pleased with the speed and efficiency of this broker. At this point, we felt confident that we had sufficient other options, so I called Farnsworth to tell him that we didn’t need the other apartment anymore. Since hanging up on me, he had called several more times. He had changed his tone and was trying to be nice again, but the damage was done. I cut him loose. We then left to go look at more places…

We took a look at one or two places that didn’t excite us and were left with only one more apartment. John told us that this next place wasn’t actually showing yet, but he had talked to the tenants and they had agreed to let us look around. It was located on 84^th and 2^nd, which is right by where I’m staying now and it’s a young, fun neighborhood. We walked into the apartment and immediately fell in love. It was amazing. It cost $5 less per month than the place from the morning, but it was probably twice as big. The girls living there now had turned it into a three bedroom, but it was really a quasi-railroad style two bedroom. Karie and I walked around looking at the rooms and discussing what we thought. We didn’t want a railroad style, but this one we decided could work. When you walk into the apartment, you’re in a big room. To the back is the kitchen and the bathroom and in front is a large communal space. There are two doors on the far wall. One leads to the converted third bedroom. The girls told us that they thought it was meant to be a large closet, but they had turned it into a bedroom. The other door leads to a large room with a huge closet and tons of cabinet style storage space. Through that room is another large bedroom. Karie told me that she would be willing to take the small closet/bedroom as long as she could keep her clothes in the middle room with the giant closet. She said that she lives in as small of a room now and her only necessity was the closet. I told her that conditional to that offer, I would be willing to take this apartment.

We walked back outside with huge grins on our faces. The place was amazing. It was huge, in a great location, and on the second floor. (We were so sick of fifth floor walkups, especially since at this point it was 99 degrees without the heat index) John called Abi and set the wheels in motion. We then headed back to the office. By the time we got there, Abi had already filed our application. She told us that we had lost the first apartment of the day to the application before us, but we had a good shot at the place on 95^th and we had an even better shot at the place we had just seen. She told us that since it wasn’t actually showing yet, no one else had seen it. No one else had put in an application on it. She said that there was really no reason that we wouldn’t get the apartment, but we wouldn’t know for sure until we got approved. She said that we should know by noon tomorrow, so here’s hoping for the amazing apartment.

Apartment hunting – day 1 – the bridge to nowhere

The first day of apartment hunting in the city is now complete. It was an exciting day filled with many wild and sordid affairs.* Come, have a seat, and I’ll share with you.

Our first appointment of the day was with one Farnsworth Bentley.** We met him at his office on 20^th street and Park Avenue. We sat down with him, verified what we were looking for and filled out some paperwork. He told us that he had a couple of apartment on the Upper East Side and a couple of apartments on the Upper West Side. That’s pretty much where we wanted, so we were eager to start our journey.

Our first stop was a real estate office so that Farnsworth could pick up the keys to our first two listings. I missed the details of that event because I went into the hallway to receive a phone call. Right as I hung up, Farnsworth walked out of the office and informed us that one of the apartments had been rented and the other was going to be having an open house later in the day, so we would have to wait for that one. In the meantime, he told us, we could look at the apartment on the Upper West Side. This was mildly annoying because we had walked from the office at 20^th to the subway stop at 23^rd, taken the subway up to 51^st and then walked to the office around 53^rd. We now had to walk back to 51^st and take the train down to 42^nd. From here we had to transfer to another train to get to the Times Square terminal. Once we got the Times Square station, we transferred again to get to a train to take us up to the Upper West Side.

Big deal, right? You’re in New York, you’re going to take the subway. This is true, but it was unbearably hot out and we managed to find the only subway cars without air conditioning. And also, an hour had passed and we hadn’t seen an apartment yet. It was going to be ok though, since we were about to see some nice apartments on the Upper West Side. Our first stop was another rental office to pick up the keys. Farnsworth talked to the girl at the front desk and his tone became noticeably more intense. Apparently another broker had the keys to the apartment that he wanted to show us and she was not around to give them to him. He called her on her cell phone and arranged to meet her at 102^nd street to pick up the keys. My ears suddenly perked up because I had never been that far North and had never really planned to. Anyway, that was that, so we walked back to the subway and started taking it up North. We got as far as 96^th street when the conductor announced that the next stop would be 133^rd street. Anyone wanted to get off before that would have to get off at 96^th and wait for the next train. We didn’t want to go that far, so we got off. Farnsworth then decided that didn’t have time to get up there and back in time to see the other place, so we started walked back South towards the other apartment. We walked and walked and finally arrived at the place to see. Farnsworth buzzed to be let in, but didn’t get a response. He tried a couple times and then called the super. His end of the call went something like this: “Oh, yeah, I got your voicemail but I hadn’t checked it yet. The apartment has been rented? I just talked to you this morning. Oh, ok, thanks anyway.”

We walked all the way back up North to the subway station and rode up to 102^nd street. We met the other realtor and got the keys. I was expecting to get back on the train and head South, but instead we started walking North. This was odd because we had specifically stated that we didn’t want anything North of 96^th street, but we just kept on walking. We finally made it to the apartment at 108^th Street and Amsterdam – a place I would not want to live. We walked up to the fifth floor walkup and it was horrible. Utter piece of crap is an under statement. He didn’t even ask us what we thought. We walked through the run down railroad style*** apartment and then gave him the look of “seriously? It’s been over 2 hours and this is all you show us?” He led us out.

We made plans to meet up later at 82^nd and 2^nd for the open house and we went our separate ways. Karie and I killed an hour until our next appointment. For our next appointment, we met a really nice foreign guy and he walked us through what we were looking for, our price range, etcetera. He complied a list of three potential apartments and turned us over to the guy who would be showing us the listings. The guy, Mike, who he introduced us to looked like a cross between Denis Leary and Gary Busey. Yeah, it was weird. Mike lost his chance to be my friend when he revealed his opposition to the subway and made us walk from apartment to apartment. It must have been 100 degrees and we were dripping sweat as we walked around. I can’t convey how hot and terrible it was outside. The only thing I can say is that I consumed 64 ounces of Gatorade and 24 ounces of water and I was still dehydrated and miserable.

Mike first walked us all the way across town to an apartment on 57^th and 9^th. This place was amazing. It was big, it had an elevator, it was brand new. This place had on-site laundry and we would have the top floor. It even had a kick-ass roof deck with an amazing view. Unfortunately, this place was several hundred dollars out of our price range before even factoring in broker’s fees.

We then walked back across town to a 5^th floor walk-up on the Upper East Side. It could only be described as “meh.” It was ok. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. Moving on…

We then went to another 5^th floor walkup. (Remember how hot it is? Yeah, fifth floor walkups suck) Mike knocked on the door a few times, but no one answered. He backed away and took out his cell phone to try and figure out what was going on. During this phone call a girl poked her head out the door and told us that the open house didn’t start until 4:30. The time was currently 4:00. She required 30 more minutes to sit in her apartment in peace.

We left Mike to kill a half an hour and rehydrate. (Or at least try) 4:30 finally rolled around and we walked back up the flights of stairs and looked at the apartment. Another “meh.” We shook Mike’s hand and walked away. We were quite dejected at this point because we really hadn’t found anything. The only place we liked was way out of our price range. At least we still had Farnsworth’s open house to go to. Where did he tell us to meet him again? 82^nd and 2^nd at 5:00? Hmm…we were currently standing outside 82^nd and 2^nd. I called Farnsworth and asked him if he was planning on showing us the same open house we just visited. He was. I told him that we happened upon it and didn’t need him to show it to us anymore. We made plans to meet up at 6 for another open house.

We went back to Molly and Lisa’s apartment (where I’m staying) to cool off and relax a little before hiking all the way across town to meet back up with Farnsworth. The time came and he hoofed it back across town and stood on the corner for 15 minutes while Farnsworth took his sweet time getting to us. We were hot, we were miserable, and we were in no mood to wait around. But finally he arrived and he took us to a 4^th floor walkup. It was really nice. We really liked it. He then took us down two flights of stairs and showed up another apartment. This one was even better than the one before, was only one flight up, and cost the same amount. We liked it. We really liked it, so we went back to the office to fill out an application.

This company takes multiple applications, so we aren’t guaranteed to get it. Everyone who wants the apartment submits their applications and then the rental company picks the best candidates. We’re going to keep looking at more places, but we’re hoping we just get this place and we don’t have to look anymore. It’s just too hot to look for apartments right now.

*Nothing sordid actually happened. Sorry to disappoint you. You see, there’s this thing that marketing people do where they try to grab your attention right in the beginning in order to peak your interest, but then you find out that it isn’t really that exciting. This is sort of like that.

**Names have been changed to protect people who look exactly like Farnsworth Bentley.

***Railroad style, also known as floor-through, is an old, pre-war layout where you can only enter a room by passing through another room. It is a long, corridor style layout. It would be fine for a one bedroom, but we would have to walk through one person’s bedroom to get to the next. It sucks and we specifically asked to not see any railroad style apartments.

Aaaaah, freakin' dots!

This is supposed to be about my experience looking for apartments, but there’s on thing I want to get off my chest before I begin. Freakin’ dots on the highway! Ok, I feel better. Now let me explain…

Pennsylvania is a long state. It’s a very long state. It’s really too long of a state. When driving through such a long state, the last thing that you want to experience is a traffic jam. We had two such traffic jams during our trip though Pennsylvania. The first one was long and boring, but at least it had a legitimate cause – road construction. We sat through the jam and finally got to the front to discover that the holdup was caused by a lane closure. I’m fine with that. What I’m not fine with was the cause of our next traffic jam.

We were nearly out of Pennsylvania. New Jersey was no more than 20 miles away when we hit traffic jam number two. It was annoying. All traffic jams are annoying. Alas, we finally got to the front of the miles of stopped cars and began moving again. There was no construction. There was no accident. So what caused the traffic jam? You guessed it, freakin’ dots on the road!!

At one point, white dots began appearing painted on the roadway. These dots were accompanied by a sign that instructed drivers to “ensure a safe distance, remain at least one dot apart.” (Or something to that effect) The dots were effective. Quite effective. Every vehicle was slowing down to make sure that they were maintaining the proper distance. And it caused a freakin’ traffic jam. Aargh…that was so annoying. We were held up for an hour because there were white dots on the road.