Arriving in NYC/The Precursor

Ah, New York, New York! It has been awhile since I have been here...New Year's Eve 1999 at Times Square, to be precise.  Remember that, when the K2 fear gripped nearly everyone with this image of computers crashing everywhere and the global market crashing into obliteration at the stroke of midnight? Okay, I'm slightly getting off course here...sorry. But much has changed since 1999. One of my fondest memories was going to the top of one of the WTC buildings and, of course, we know all too well that I will never duplicate that. Once arriving in NYC this time, however, I also understood that more things have remained the same.  The famous slogan "The City that never sleeps" still rings true today, and with that promise in hand, I knew the NYC TB meetup had the potential to live up to its billing!

The 3JXPRESS (Jillian, James, and Joy) met at JFK airport on Friday afternoon and took a shuttle to our hotel (the Flatotel), perhaps our first mistake.

..the shuttel made sevveral stops for other tourists and our ride must have lasted more than two hours.  Live and Learn! But we eventually made it to our weekend home.  Once settled in, it was time to get dressed for the night and begin the adventure! Stephen (jaxsully) had already made arrangements to bring over a bottle of Patron and a bottle of red wine to get things started.  Another Stephen, from Texas, was also joining us.   It didn't seem that any of us were too shy about the booze, and needless to say, things did get started rather quickly. The Patron and wine were waxed off before we left for our dinnerr reservations.  And since none of us had eaten anything all day, the results from our private happy hour shouldn't even have to be mentioned here! Does the word TOAST mean anything to you???

Our reservations were at an Italian restaurant.

  Without going into too many boring details, the food was great, and so were the bottles of wine we had! WOW! The premeetup party was not even started, but we sure was.  After dinner, our next destination was the Fat Black Pussy Cat...venue for our pre-meetup. I imediately recognized several faces that I knew from TB but had not met in person.  There were 4 people in particular that I knew I had to meet...Natasha and Jeff, of course, because they were the organizers, and because I will be joining them in Belgium in two weeks.  It was so incredible to meet these two! Then there was Debra (Sheba124) who also helped organize the meetup.  Deb was one of the first persons I regularly chatted with on TB. It was terrific finally meeting you, Deb!! And then there was Mark (travelman727). We actually are both from the midwest and are co-hosting a KC meetup this summer.  But we have not met in person, until now. It was good to meet you, Mark. I'll be seeing you in KC!!

Of course, I also met many other TBs for the first time....but damn that PATRON!!!! It seems to have erased some of my memory banks.  Some of those I do remember meeting were Warren (ocwarren), Josh (smuffygt), Francois (Fr-ank), Dimitri (dimitrinyr), Mike (mikey_love), Liz (mewzak), Gloria (momiji), and I know many others. **I will update this list** (Gloria, it was so nice meeting you!!!) And then there was Peggy (wonderer)! This was the first time meeting her, too. We had a fun time dancing together, Peggy!  And I would not be too considerate if I failed to mention Ruthie (ruttietootie).

But in my amnesic state of mind on Friday night, somehow this memory was infected with a Patron virus. It was either that, or I just couldn't get close enough because she had so many people around her! haha  It was also great to meetup with a TB friend I had already met out west, Matt (mattrilla)! Matt, you are a great friend!!!

Somewhere around 1:30 AM, Jillian, Stephen (dallasintersc) and I decided it was time we should leave while we still could. I have to watch over my two Js. I failed miserably with J3, but I still had J1. We could not flag down a cab in the street, but someone pulled up beside us and offered to take us to our hotel. We had no clue who the person was, but in our drunken stupor we accepted. We arrived safely at our hotel and somehow managed to wobble up to the room...where I immediately plopped onto the bed, with Jillian's help, and did not remember anything else until the next morning.