Day 0 (Wednesday)

I was under the impression that I would be well prepared for this trip and that it would go pretty smoothly. I purchased my plane tickets months in advance, got my press pass all situated back in July, and even planned out tacking on going to Germany for BMXnet right after.

Obviously planning is a waste of time.

Let’s start out 1 month ago. My server hosting people told me that they have new servers for me to host BodyMod.org on and if I wanted them, I need to have the site migrated by the end of September (1 month). I figure it was worth it and took on the challenge. Things may have gone a bit more smoothly if my main content drive didn’t take a shit. About a week before I was supposed to leave the country, all the content on the site started disappearing and not being saved. So now I’m troubleshooting the old server, freaking out because I lost about half the content, the backup hard drive was completely dead, and I have days before I absolutely have to have it all fixed.

Cut to the night before I leave...

I have the site up and running on the new servers successfully, and most of the content is back. It’s somewhere around 1 in the morning and I still have to drop my motorcycle off at the garage, attempt to recover the missing journal photos, and make sure I’m all packed. I throw the hard drive into the freezer, remember to wash my pants (those go into the washer), and double-check my pack. I then moved my pants to the dryer, plugged in the hard drive and tried to recover the journal photos. With that in place, I jump on my bike and head into Brooklyn (that’s where I have a garage space for my bike when I’m traveling). I was expecting one last nice ride through the city and over the bridge before taking off. Well, it started out that way. Then god spit on me. Sorry... I mean it started raining. I’m not sure what made me laugh hysterically, the rain, the cold front that came in, the fact that I was retarded tired, or that I was in shorts and a T-shirt freezing my ass off with no other option than to keep going. I love my luck.

When I finally get to the garage, I park my bike outside, and as I was dismounting my iron horse, I slipped on the pavement and my leg kissed the muffler for a hot second. This is where I became “this asshole I met on the way home” to some random hipster chick in Williamsburg. Let me explain things from her perspective (at least how I imagined them after my thoughts were gathered once the event ended).

Girl’s inside voice - “la la la, i’m walking home. At least the rain stopped. Oh, look. A super cool looking guy on an awesome motorcycle [ok, i’m fluffing it a bit ;)].”

Girl’s outside voice - “Hey there, nice bike!”

[This is the exact moment I slipped and burned my leg.]

Me, not really processing what she said because I just tried cooking myself - “Oh, Fuck You!”

Girl, possibly starting to cry a bit - “What? Asshole...”

Me - “Wha?...Oh, shit. No, wait... ah fuck. Nevermind. Fuck my leg hurts.”

That would be the end of the conversation to the best of my recollection. I kinda felt bad, but the shooting pain in my leg let me move on quite easily.

Now that my bike is safely in it’s home for a couple weeks, I trotted off to the subway to head home. I’m exhausted and just want to go to sleep at this point. I swipe my metro card (the thing NY’ers use to pay for the subway... which has gone up something like 75% in the last 7 years...) and head down in the belly of hipsterville. I glanced up at the sign to see when the next train was arriving... 20 minutes. You’ve GOT to be kidding me...

Fuck this.

I head back upstairs and take a cab home. Waiting for train and walking home = 45 minutes. Cab = 10 minutes. At this point it’s worth th