why I became an alph gam

Friday

This weekend was my big trip to the city (NYC) to meet up with the boys, my three guy friends from freshmen year who all happen to be Bet Sigs (Jeff Whaley, Jon Berg and Josh Ruedi). They wanted to go to a game at Yankee Stadium before they switch to the new stadium and asked if I wanted to join them since I live in NY. I took Friday off and woke at 3 am so that I could drive to Port Jervis and catch the 7:40 am train to NYC. I’m only 4.5 hours away from the city but driving is a nightmare and parking is even worse and super expensive so its easier to park for free at the train station and take that right in to Penn Station for $25 round trip. I got to the hostel we were staying at (Broadway Hotel & Hostel located on the west side of Manhattan) only to find Whaley and Berg on their way to the courthouse! They got tickets for drinking on the streets the night before. Ruedi didn’t get one because he was off with drug dealers and a prostitute…true story!! The hostel was pretty standard w/ 2 bunk beds and a sink in the room. There were bathrooms across the floor. Actually there were 4 in our hallway alone. This is important to note because even though there were so many bathrooms, Whaley didn’t use any of these and peed in the sink instead.

Since they had to go to the courthouse, Ruedi and I headed to Chinatown and Little Italy for lunch. We had downed a bottle of wine by the other guys met up with us and then had two more after they joined us so I was good to go by this point. After, we walked down to Wall St. which was pretty cool to see. I noticed a super sparkly store and was surprised to find Tiffany & Co. I’ve been to the one on fifth ave. which looks totally different and isn’t as fun as the sparkly one I found on wall st! We went in and Ruedi and I pretended we were bf and gf to try on engagement rings. I tried on one that was 4 carats for $48,000 and another for $115,000!!! They were crazy big and beautiful. Next we stumbled into a wine store that was doing wine tasting! Not sure we needed more but you’ll take any free alcohol in NY since it is so expensive!

The 3rd to Last Game at Yankee Stadium
After a couple shots at an Irish pub, it was time to start heading to the Yankees game. We made it there for the second half of the first inning and made the climb up to our seats. I was pretty impressed with myself because we were definitely in the nosebleed section above home plate and I didn’t freak out. I’m super afraid of heights so this is easy to do. I couldn’t believe what a large slope the seats were on. By the 3rd inning, the boys needed to go smoke a cigarette. Because of the height thing, I thought it was best to just stay in place. By the end of the 6th inning, I was starting to wonder about them since they weren’t back yet. My phone had been off since the battery was getting low but I turned it on to find 4 missed calls from them. They apparently decided they were too lazy to walk all the way down to the entrance to smoke so they tried the bathroom instead. This resulted in them getting kicked out and went to a bar instead!!!  When they finally met me outside Yankee Stadium, they were all pretty drunk and Ruedi was speaking a language that was not English and couldn't stand up straight anymore.  They had reserved a limo early in the day to take us back to our hostel, pick up Megan Laboe and then go out on the town.  It was suppose to be there at 10 pm but it was now 10:20 and there was no limo with our name on it.  They called to check up and turns out, the boys reserved it for the wrong night.  Now we were stuck trying to find a taxi with the other 40,000 fans that just got out of the game.  This was a super fun task since the boys were like little monkeys and couldn't stay together...each wanted to go pee or find cigarettes or something.  Anyways, we finally made it back to the hostel in a $50 cab ride.  Whaley really liked this driver and thought it was necessary to tip him $30!  Seriously, WTF, who does that!  Oh, forgot to mention that we stopped for cigarettes and Berg got us Boone's Farm to drink...classy!  At this point, I was pretty tired from being up since 3 am and didn't feel like dealing with the drunks for the rest of the night.  Plus Whaley spit beer out all over my stuff which really pissed me off.  Oh and I forgot to mention that Ruedi in his drunken state thought that we were going to make out for some reason and kept insisting this was going to happen.  The original plan was to drop him off at the hostel b/c he was so wasted and then continue without him for the rest of the night but he kept insisting he wasn't drunk and wanted to go.  We even tried pretending we were all going to sleep but that didn't work.  I even went to the extreme of laying by him so he thought we were going make out or whatever even though that would never happen!  The boys ended up going out without me since I was in such a pissy mood and I just went to bed around midnight.  Around 4 am they came back without Ruedi!  Apparently he went off again with some crazy people and he just disappeared.  They were freaking out about this!  They kept trying to call his cell phone and got no answer and were worried he was in the gutter somewhere.  I told them that there was absolutely nothing they could do about it because it wasn't like they were going to be able to go searching for him at 4 am.  At 7 am, Ruedi came crawling back in.  I got up around 8 and noticed someone had once again peed in the sink.  This was Whaley.  Also, someone had peed in my water bottle and from what I could tell a red bull can and on the floor as well.  Turns out this was Ruedi.  Let me remind you that there are 4 frickin bathrooms right across the hall from our room!  I was grossed out and got ready to go shopping by myself!  I did have to laugh though because Whaley's alarm kept going off on his phone but he didn't really hear it even though he was sleeping with it.  Then he just held it while he was sleeping like a baby at one point!

Saturday

I met Megan Laboe for some shopping and introduced her to Loehmann's!  It is a really awesome discount designer store (way way better then TJMax).  After, we went down to Chinatown for some Vietnamese food which was so yummy.  I was excited I actually remembered how to get back to the place my Vietnamese friend had took me last time we were in NYC.  Then we were going to meet the boys in Battery Park but they got confused and were actually at 84th pier which was way far away.  I took Megan to Century 21, another discount designer store located by Ground Zero.  After, we walked around and were just taking everything in.  We found St. Paul's church which the place a lot of people went when 9/11 was taking place.  It is quite amazing because there was debris all over when it happened and the 100 year old tree in front of the church was taken out by 9/11 but not a single window was broken at that time!  They had a lot of memorials in the church and a feeling of sadness just overwhelms you as you go through.  We worked our way up to meet the boys in Chinatown and ended up having to wait a good amount of time for them which I was not pleased about.  Then, we went back to Little Italy to walk through the 81st Annual Feast of San Gennaro which had venders lining the streets for about 10 blocks with steak sandwiches, drinks, italian desserts and anything fried you can think of!  We stopped off to get some gelato at a dessert restaurant before continuing to walk through the festival. Then after stopping back at the hostel, we found a cute little Cuban restaurant for dinner.  We waited about 1 hour to be seated but it was worth it!  Megan and I shared a pitcher of Sangria which was so yummy and drank that down while listening to the music and waiting for our food.  I had the vegetable paella!  YUM!  After a drink and a shot or two at Bubba Gump Shrimp in Times Square, I was good to go home!  Plus the guys promised me they would get me a Steak Sandwich from the corner store that they swore was the best steak sandwich they ever had.  I have to admit, it was pretty darn good! 

Sunday

We all woke up fairly early and got our stuff packed up.  They were going to go see lots of things I had already done so I met Megan for some more shopping/eating.  We went to Chelsea Market which is a really cute market on the first floor of the building that is home to the Food Network!  I love that channel so I was pumped to be there!  Then we walked over to a ice cream/sorbet place I read up on that was suppose to have amazing ice cream.  They even had a corn flavored ice cream that was pretty darn good.  Kind of tasted like creamed corn.  I got the chocolate and raspberry sorbet.  After more walking, I went back to get my stuff and it was off to the train station to head home!  I didn't get home until 12:30 am so today was pretty brutal at work!  Overall this was a pretty good weekend but I don't think I would ever stay with the guys again!  They were my friends way back from freshmen year and this trip definitely brought back feelings from back then.  It is fun to hang out with them every once in awhile but they are dirty, nasty boys...which is why I really appreciate my alph gam girls!