I'm going to sit here and act like the reason you haven't heard from me in one whole week has been in respect of the Lakers' death (and I guess now George Carlin's), but that is in no way the truth, so don't believe me!

So it's been one week since the Lakers blew (and I mean totally blew) the Finals. What the hell team was that? Sure as hell not the Laker team I've been rooting for all year. But I don't want to spend my time talking and crying about the Lakers, you've probably had enough of that, that's last week's sadness, instead let's talk about happier things, like how cold it has been on the East coast and about my stay in New York City!

Let's see, the last time I wrote, we just made it through a Missouri thunderstorm and just nearly missed a tornado - there were no tornadoes in New York, I can assure you. The real reason I didn't update for so long was because New York had taken a lot out of me; the only time I spent in our room was for the very short hours in which I spent sleeping, we were in the city for most of our stay. Overall, I walked about 30 miles more than I wanted to walk those four days, which was about 0 miles, haha, but I decided going in that I did not want to drive in New York, I wanted us to live like real New Yorkers. And we did, so I am not at all complaining, it is an extremely beautiful city.

I really wish I had spaced this post out through the four days we stayed because there is a lot to say about New York. I cannot exactly call myself a traveler yet, as I have not been to enough places I think, but there has never been a city I enjoyed more than New York... not even LA. It is such a great city. I went into it thinking that everything we hear about it is nonsense, it's all hype and it doesn't mean nearly as much as they make it out to mean, but damn, New York really truly is amazing. I have no idea how that city functions! Complex beyond complex subways working at all hours, crazy taxis roaming the streets while disobeying most road laws, and pedestrians running wild disobeying almost all road laws! But somehow, it all works! Whoever designed this city was a damn genius, because it is truly amazing, I'm surprised the whole place didn't blow up the second the "on" switch was flipped! It's just beautiful to see the huge skyscrapers being surrounded by yellow taxis around a body of water, and then a few miles inland, it is green as if no people have ever set foot on that island!

We were there a total of four days, and because we stayed in Queens (Manhattan was way to expensive, and I'm so glad we didn't stay in Jersey - stay out of Jersey!), we took the subways everyday. I sat on all but three or four lines! But not only that, we drove through four of the five boroughs, all but Staten Island. And not wussy LA driving either, I drove like a New Yorker. I have never honked that many times, ever. Taxis started getting out of my way, I heard them talking, here comes that guy from New York, show him some respect. After all that, can I call myself a New Yorker? haha, yah right, but it sounds damn cool, doesn't it?

I can sit here and tell you all about New York and what makes the fast-paced life so awesome, but you really won't know until you go. But I don't expect you to hop onto a plane tomorrow (or behind the wheel like me you stupid oaf), so here are some photographs! I'll only share a few, then I'm going to bed!

That's the first thing we saw of New York, besides the large buildings from Jersey of course. It's on of New York's underground tunnels, and on our way to it, I kept quoting Jim Gaffigan's joke about directions, haha.

If you want to know just how congested New York is, check out this photo, it completely did it for me:

We in LA park cars side by side, but we have room. New York on the other hand has to park cars on top of each other!

In Queens, just a few minutes from our hotel, is an area where almost every person is Indian, most of which are Muslim - are there any doubts where we ate at night? Every morning, on my way to the city, I grabbed myself a hotdog - or two - from this guy, a really good guy on the corner of 74th and Roosevelt, he remembered me everyday:

No, he's not a Kabir like Ima, but that store was not too far away!

The rest of these pics are rather self-explanatory (in other words, I'm way too sleepy to write about them), so check them out for yourself!

I know that was a really cheap way to end this post, but I'm so damn tired! It's almost 3AM for me! Just to quickly try and clarify a few things: the WTC construction is in there somewhere, that's Madison Square Garden, that guy's backpack got stuck in the subway door, we went to go see Blue Man Group and I bought a shirt, that's my Dad pointing out Central Park, that's Rockefeller Center, that kid was spitting on people on the first floor, and that last image of Time Square's Naked Cowboy is for Ima because he begged me to take a photo for him. Now I'm going to get some sleep. So in a nutshell, NYC is one great city. I'm in DC now, the rest of these two days will be short trips, so I'll have more time to post pics hopefully. But now I'm tired (can you tell)! Good night! Take care everyone. see u.