This post actually has nothing to do with travel.  It’s less interesting and insightful than the travel posts, and mostly just features me in various stages of intoxication with friends from hom.  But, as I do not own sweetHangingWithFriendsBackAtHomeblog.com, I had to post these here.

Less than four hundred dollars, round trip, nets me a ticket home and I jump on the deal.  I miss my family, my friends, creature comforts, live music with songs that don’t inevitably use the word “corazon” somewhere, Taco Bell, good pizza, having more than three beer options (all of which are Pilseners) and being in a land where the dominant language is (at least currently) my own.  My friend Flynn grabbed up a ticket to see the newly reformed Phish, Jeff’s handling a crabfest on the MD side of town and Jessica’s wedding at the Mandarin Oriental in NYC warrants a weekend of its own.  Nothing like a vacation!

Since A) a picture’s worth a thousand words, B) it doesn’t have much to do with travel and C) I’m lazy and trying to get caught up here as fast as I can, I’m just going to describe the rest of the week in pictures:

Friday

My friend Pete greets me at the door to his apartment, topless.  Maybe some people would find this sexy, but it’s not exactly my scene.  He’s just waking up.  Despite this, he listened when I’d told him I wanted to get the most out of my ten days in America, and planned out an exhaustive trip through Manhattan’s east side, covering much of Chinatown and Little Italy.  Dim Sum was my one specific request, so we started there.

I'm not sure what the name of this Dim Sum restaurant was, but it was this full on a Friday at 1 pm, and had a wide assortment of live entertainment. This was only about half the room, too, and yet we still had to wait for some open spots at a table.

Dim Sum. I'd love to say this was prepping me for my upcoming year in China, but apparently this is a very different style from what I'll be getting in Chongqing.

This jerky place is all the rage right now with many of my NYC friends. Tasty, and unlike anything else I've ever tried, but not as mind-blowing as the hype might've led me to believe.

If there's ever a type of candy you're looking for, there's a better shot of finding it at this place than anywhere else on earth.

Ordering knishes.

For dinner, I chose Mexican and got mildly mocked for it. Look, Mexican food is actually in short supply through most of South America and I was honestly missing some quality burritos.

Trying out some Argentinian dulce de leche liquor with Louise. I've got pics from this night with lots of people, but since she's a semi-regular reader, she gets posting priority :)

Saturday and Sunday in Boston

Besides scoring floor tickets to the opening night of Phish tour at Boston’s Fenway Stadium, Flynn was also gracious enough to both drive and provide lodging as well with his Bostonian friend Laurie.  Following the four hour drive to her apartment, Saturday was mostly a calm uneventful exploration of Boston’s rooftops and Oyster bars.  Sunday was the main event.

A pre-show party at our friend Mark's place. Perfect weather.

Just a few blocks from the main event

Me, Laurie and Flynn

Flynn and I are circled in red, though good luck finding me. He's easier to spot with the signature green jacket, though I'm looking off to the right.

Monday and Tuesday

Knowing I’m in town for only a week, my Virginian parents make the trek up to the big city to get a little Yancy time in.  For two days, we venture around through parks, museums (cheap ones, at least) and pizzarias making the most of our time.

At the world-famous Lombardi's Pizzaria

The brick pizza oven at Lombardi's. This guy does this pose for tourists about 87 times a day.

Wednesday Night

Despite their never really learning how to sing that well, The Disco Biscuits still play my favorite live music on the planet, and it would’ve been a shame to catch Phish — a band I’m only connected to nostalgically at this point — three times while in town, and never get to see the Biscuits even once.  Wednesday night offered up a show in Providence, Rhode Island and after weeks of sweet-talking all of my employed friends into giving in to wanton irresponsibility, I finally succeeded with my friend Brittany.  Along the way, we picked up her friend Joy at the halfway point in Hartford, CT, which would also serve as our home for the evening, post-show.

Joy, me and Brittany. Complete fun -- not awkward at all!

At one point Joy mentioned her eccentric landlord kept chickens in his basement. It was crucial that I investigate!

Thursday and Friday: More Phish

The gracious Lazars of Long Island offered up their two condos to our assortment of misfits (yes, two — they bought a larger unit in the same building, but haven’t sold the first one yet) for two more concerts at Jones Beach Theatre in New York.  With only ten days stateside, there would be no rest for me.

The lovely Lazars of Long Island

Stay back, Brendan -- they're all mine!

2/5 of this night were hilarious. Sadly, only 2/3 of this picture are awesome. (Sorry to pretty much anyone reading this for all the obviously private jokes that make no sense without context)

MunchkinJess’s Wedding

On very little sleep after two hedonistic nights of Phish, i put on my finest (and only) suit and made my way back into the city for a rendezvous at the Mandarin Oriental (apparently, it’s quite the swanky establishment — you can’t even enter the main lobby without a suit on) for my friend Jess’s wedding.  As she’s of Chinese descent and he’s Jewish, the wedding was a tasteful mix of both heritages, with some contemporary elements thrown in for good measure (”Here Comes the Bride” replace by a Yo La Tengo number, for instance).

Jess and Dave. Note the chuppa in the background, a traditional cloth covering over the ceremony, colored in a dark red, the Chinese color for good fortune.

Melissa ended up being my unofficial date for the evening, such that I never went without a dance partner. The photographer apparently liked us.

Sunday: Maryland Crabs

Argentinian King Crabs never quite did it for me, and I was quick to mention to traveling companions how superior our Maryland variant of the crab was, regaling all that would listen with tales of the Maryland crabfest: picnic tables covered with newspapers, wooden mallets, a bushel or two of crabs and multiple large piles of Old Bay seasoning.  Thanks to my friends Jeff (for picking up the crabs) and Liz (for hosting), I got my wish.

A quality MD crabfest

Crabs!

Monday Mimosas

Lisa, possibly one of the best people ever, picked me up early after arranging a mimosa brunch at our friend Rachel’s house.  Luckily all of these people seem to have night jobs!

Though I've recently started to tolerate Bloody Marys, I think Mimosas still win out as the number one morning beverage

Lisa and me. Something funny was apparently happening here.

Tuesday: Back to Peru

And just like that, it was over.  I spent the last of my time with my Mom; sure, I’d just seen her in Santiago, but mothers never can quite get enough time.  I let her get even more time with me by driving me to the airport.  When you’re only in the country for ten days of the year, you’re a celebrity — a walking party.  One more week in the States and I’m sure coming across people, the reaction would return to “oh, you again…” but as it stood, no greeting was anything less than a bear hug, and for an attention whore such as me, that’s enough to keep me out of the country for 51 weeks per year for a long time!

Mom and me, just before heading off. I miss those glasses. They'll be stolen the following week in Cuzco...

On to Cuzco…

Surveying the multitude of diverse and bizarre weblogs out there, a wise man once posited that they could all be categorized into three possible topics: Knowledge, Adventure and Bacon.  Knowledge blogs clearly would cover the quest for and divvying out of knowledge in any way, from professorial theses on the most esoteric of subjects to awkward, trenchcoat-wearing adolescents documenting their experiments with household cleaning supplies to find which work best to “blow shit up.”

Adventure blogs cover ballsy and/or stupid people documenting their off-the-beaten path experiences with activities normal people avoid because they actual have some basic degree of common sense.  The girl that motorcycled through Chernobyl would’ve been a perfect example of an Adventure blog, had the story not turned out to be entirely porcine.

That of coure leaves us with Bacon, an umbrella category for nearly every other tale of daily personal trial and tribulation.  As in “I got up this morning and had bacon for breakfast.”  Or “I got up this morning and had the best bacon ever for breakfast!”  That’s not to say that bacon journals are uninteresting, but their scope is limited to readers that either A) care enough about the blogger to spend time reading about his or her intimate experiences with bacon, B) care enough about bacon to read about its intimate experience with the blogger or C) find the blogger so innately compelling that even bacon literature can be uplifted to the level of high prose.

Nearly everything I’ve pushed out onto the Internet in the past has fallen squarely into the bacon genre (and please, for those observant Jews in the audience, note that “bacon” here is a metaphor.  A succulent, non-kosher metaphor, but a metaphor nonetheless).  As I’m currently looking at close to a year abroad (assuming I suffer from neither critical injuries nor critical boredom), I have for once in my risk-averse (read: kind of pussy) life the opportunity to write something from the riveting Adventure angle. 

Don’t hold out on Knowledge from me any time soon, though.

Why you shouldn't urinate into the Amazon

My biggest fear with keeping this blog, even if it won’t likely ever be seen by anyone outside of family and friends, is that I’ll eat up a year of my life and a sizable chunk of my bank account with little to say or show for it.  Actually, that’s a lie; my biggest fear is the Amazonian candiru fish that has a penchant for urine and is known for swimming up into urethras and getting lodged into that tight, delicate spot with their spiky outerbody.  Yeah, actually, writing a crappy blog doesn’t even compare to that fear.  Let’s be honest.

Miami’s got me for a solid 24 hours until my next flight which takes me into Quito.  It’s a good breaking-in to what will likely be the format of my life for the next year; it’s my first hostel experience, most of the people here speak Spanish and I’m already sweaty and dirty.  Check-in isn’t until three, but they were kind enough to draw up a map for me of South Beach, and I walked around for an hour or two with my backpack left in the hostel’s storage room.  There were plenty of other people’s belongings in there, but as literally all of my worldly possessions are in that bag, I’m a little skeptical to just leave it laying around.  When I reach South America, I’m sure my suspicious nature will kick into overdrive. 

Walking along South Beach, I was able to deduce that toplessness is apparently legal here, though limited to women either over 50 (years of age) or over 300 (pounds of weight).  Meanwhile, within feet of said offenders were many of the most perfect sets of sunbathing breasts I have ever quickly glanced at while pretending I had seen something interesting in nearby sand.  All were cruelly locked away as though the local constable never informed them that they had the same rights and privileges as their more expansive and/or ripened sisters.  It was a veritable apartheid, and for the first time in my life I felt an urge to become more socially conscious to the injustices of the world.

Ocean Drive in South Beach is a long stretch of pastel-colored, art-deco inspired hotels with ritzy names to match their 50s-movie-theatre image, like “The Majestic,” ”The Avalon” and, uh, “The Leslie.”  Locals (immediately recognized as such, since no tourist can take on such scruffy, carefree appearances in the amount of time the typical vacation lasts) ambled down the streets without a visible sense of urgency, and I envied them.  I have a hard time going anywhere slowly, even if I have nowhere in particular to be.  Traffic and long lines (hardly fun for anyone) kill me.  Despite this, I am generally always late, regardless of destination.  Hopefully with a year of having nowhere in particular to go, I’ll be able to adapt the sense of calmness employed s effortlessly by the homeless and developmentally disabled.  Wait…

The homeless, while not exactly in large numbers, seemed to congregate outside pizza joints asking for change, and while I wouldn’t even oblige them under normal circumstances, these days I’m rejecting the requests with extreme prejudice.  Financially speaking, I had a lucky streak that makes a trip like this theoretically possible.  But whether I choose to call it “unemployment” or “temporary retirement,” it doesn’t change the fact that no new checks will be coming in for a while and I need to make every cent go as far as possible.

That means I need to break from my classic vacation philosophy of “This is vacation.  Make every second as awesome as possible, regardless of cost!”  There are a lot of seconds in a year, and if I’m going to hang out with penguins in Antarctica and hangglide by Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, it means cutting back on nearly all day-to-day costs.  Cheap foods, uncomfortable means of transportation and very little alcohol — Love the stuff, and it definitely makes meeting strangers a bit easier.  But even if it gives me horrible, explosive diahhrea, water’s still cheaper.

However, they’ve got an incredible happy hour special about to begin here so, as with most things involving sobriety, that’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow…

Hopefully I’ll have something adventurous and interesting to write about shortly.  Until then, enjoy the bacon!

Sweet blog.