Independence Day 2006

Chronology of events :

Friday, June 30

Spend 2 or 3 hours at work taking printouts of reservations, driving directions etc for the big weekend.

Fly out at 7pm from Minneapolis, headed to NYC.

Touch ground at 10:30 pm and reach Vyju’s house at 11:30 pm.

2 JD’s with coke before heading to bed ( at 4 am)

Nik, Appu and Anusha make it the same night too.

Saturday, July 1

Appu n me head to New Jersey to rent that cars for the weekend ( since NY city rates are ridiculously high)

We meet Satish ( Nik’s friend) and rent the cars around 9:30.

It is 11 o clock by the time the lazy asses Vineet, Vasavi, Vyju, Nik and Anusha join us at New Jersey.

We pick them up and head to Ocean City, NJ to spend some time at a water park.

The drive is too long cos of the frikking traffic … taking 5 hrs where it should have taken 3 and we spend about an hour an half playing different water games and coming down slides and generally getting wet n wild.

Get some stuff to eat and change of clothes and then head back to Vyju’s place.

Everyone takes a bath and gets changed and heads out to party, after a nice big peg of JD mixed by Girish who has joined us now.

Reach club TONIC at 1 am in the night and start drinking and partying. I remember about half an hour of the night cos after that I was in my zone and doing all wild and crazy things with everyone. I was letting myself go and having awesome fun. I had to look at the pics later to know what was happening even.

Around 2:30, after 6 of us have downed about 250 dollars worth of booze ( 2 ppl weren’t drinking) … I pass out …. Then I puke … then the bouncer throws me out ….. the cab driver pleads with everyone to not let me puke in the cab and I still do …. We come home by 3 …. Everyone lends a hand in cleaning me up and everyone’s asleep by 4.

Sunday, July 2

Everyone is up and taking their baths bright and early after 2 hrs of sleep again to head for the white water rafting place.

They finally manage to wake me up around 8 o clock and tell me the events of the previous night which I have no recollection of. I don’t remember dancing, taking my shirt off, grinding with the ladies, passing out, being brought home …. Nothing. Total amnesia.

We reach the white water place at 11:30 just as the buses are pulling out and none of us has time to change into our gear and so some of are wearing jeans, and everyone is in thick cotton t-shirts which are not the best thing for a journey on the river. Well at least we had life jackets and our oars to paddle with. ( Well at least Vyju had it before she lost it in the river and one of the other rafts had to pick it up .... she and her crazy arm power)

Anyways we picked a good day for rowing cos the tide was up cos of floods the previous week. He only problem was they stuck all 8 of us on one raft and we had no guide. Yea thats great when 90 % of the group has never rafted before. So our boats goes left, goes right and goes circling around on the river with us having no idea how to straighten it out. The we get hit by this big wave and our raft is filled with water.

So this guide from one of the other rafts starts yelling ... you guys we r gonna get you a guide but start bailing that water now now now. Now all this excitement with barely 2 hrs sleep is bloody invigorating. And I am still recovering from last nights activities. Anyways after we get our guide he teaches us when to paddle staright and when to back paddle and which side should do what when etc etc and we handle it much better.

Some interesting conversations happened on that raft about cross dressers, steak, potatoes and vegetarian restaurants ... yeah i told you we were all drunk.

Anyways after that we got washed up, ate some hot dogs ( complimentary of course) ... well the vegetarians had to do with chips .... and headed back home.

Then we went and rented 2 movies ( which we never got a chance to see) and then went out for dinner to Pizzeria Uno in Forest Hills ( another place in NYC). I got the NY Strip Steak .. which was very good and then we all headed back sooooo sleepy cos we got very little sleep for 2 days in a row and had too much activity.

Monday July 3

Appu, Girish n me get up early one more time to head to New jersey to return one of the rental cars and by the time we got back it was 11:30. Vineet and Vyju had to work, so the rest of us at that time ... Appu, Nik, Anusha, and me head to Saravanas ( The Saravana Bhavan from Madras) and met up with vasavi and we eat a great meal there. Idli's vada's and dosa's and oothapam's .... great stuff.

We then head to Dave and Busters and played a few games and Nik won a few coupons so he could buy Vyju her soft toys .. some ppl never grow up !!!!

Vyju and Vineet met up with us and then we headed to this Blues club BB KING, where 4 guys were playing as the Beatles ... all dressed as them, their Sargent Peppers costumes, their regular suited version and also their Indian mystic version. They sang a lot of Beatles songs and even though my knowledge of their music is shaky I had a good time cos it was very diff experience seeing a live band and eating good food and drinking some fine Merlot.

After that we headed to “Superman Returns” and honestly as a fan of the original 1978 version ... I thought it was very good. If you know the history of Superman u will definitely enjoy it. At least the casting of Superman and lex was spot on.

Headed home to sleep again.

Tuesday Jul 4 – Independence Day

Appu headed out early to go meet some other friends and hand over the other car, so Vineet could go return it.

Anusha left a little earlier cos she had to leave back to Virginia.

Vyju, me n Nik went to this Irish pub called The Kettle and watched the Germany – Italy game, which was simply awesome, drank some Heineken, ate some chicken wings and chicken nachos.

We then headed back to Nyc and watched this movie called “The Devil Wears Prada” ..... which was a chick flick but it was certainly a very good one. Meryl streep was outstanding and Anne Hathaway was also very good.

Then headed to our fav good old Bubba Gump and ate a nice dinner with lots of shrimp and a huge chocolate cake which Vyju had to pack for home cos it was just too big. ( and which she is gorging on as I write this)

Thats abt it. Headed back home. Slept at 1. Woke up at 4. Caught a plane at 6. Back to work at 9. Damn life now.

That was Independence day vacation !!!!