Prologue

It all started with a phone call.
"So are you an idiot?" she asked. 
"Yes, I think that has been well established," I reply.
"Right, but I’m talking about New Years here. What’s the most idiotic thing you can think of?"
I kept my trap shut. I can think of lots of things.
"Times Square" she says.
"Right. You’re a genius".

Cast of Characters

    Godzilla
    Princess
    New York City

We’ve managed to roll out of bed and even clean ourselves up. One of us may have had a bit too much New Years Cheer the night before. Our hair is dry and our shoes are on. Let’s Go! A command decision had been made during the "planning" stage of this mission that all of our packing would be things that we could carry on us- in our pockets and such places- not in bags or other easily snatched or lost vessels of totage. So our jacket pockets are stuffed with the bare essentials- like a map and some gum and hats and gloves, and the all important shoe phone. We forgot the camera. Idiots.

We are ready. Turbo is prepared. His oil and other vital fluids have been checked and we are off.

We stop here because we must. It’s the rule. You can’t pass this place without stopping. Impossible. It is a primary source for "I dig boogers" bumper stickers and other such priceless items. It’s also time for some caffeine. Ms. Fantsy Pance gets some freaky Snapple-type concoction. I’m a purist. I get a liter of Mountain Dew. Chug-a-lug.

It’s time for some food. We’d been thinking about eating since about the time we left, but really couldn’t find anything good. So we pull of and go to a Wendy’s. What a mistake. Nothing against Wendy’s- we love Wendy’s- but why did we have to wait until we got to New Jersey to eat. Note to New Jersey: What the hell is wrong with you people?! Bellmawr is definitely a part of hell- if not a neighborhood downtown, then definitely an inner suburb. How can anybody live here? Located right between I-295 and the NJ Turnpike- what a slice of heaven… And to add insult to injury, the Dr. Pepper was extremely low on syrup. Yum. Also, we had to endure over-hearing the lecture of some "Jersey Jenius" about how Reagan was great and he masterminded the whole ending of the cold war and all of that. I was tempted to hurt him, but decided against it.

Turbo’s Oil cap is secure. I had to check. Why? Because sometimes I forget things- like putting oil caps back on after putting in more oil, that’s why.

So after a good couple of hours of driving and the added bonus of two large suspension bridges, we have arrived at our first destination. But not before New Jersey tried to get us lost. What a mess. Another note to New Jersey: please include "Trenton" on your sign of distances to locations on the side of I-295.

We park in a garage. Patience is required while I try to remember everything I need and go through the long process of declaring myself ready and then looking in the locked car and realizing that I left something in there. This goes on for about 5 minutes.

We get our tickets to Penn Station in New York. Score one for New Jersey- the tickets are really damned cheap. We wait around on the platform with a bunch of frat boys until the train is ready. We get on and commence napping.

Getting from the train to 8^th Avenue is perplexing- especially when your not paying attention. I’m glad I had a chaperone. After all, I’m the one who had been kidnapped (I drove, the kidnapper never drives- watch TEEvee and you’ll see), so how could I be held responsible? So we get up to the street and there is the Umpire State Building. Nice. So we start to wander towards Times Square, but realize that this is going to be a little more difficult than we thought. We are walking up 8^th when I realize that it might be a good idea to use a potty while still possible. I wander around like an idiot in the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then finally take care of business. Upon leaving it is pointed out that there are busses driving around on the top few floors of the building. Freakin’ Crazy! It’s like and ant farm- but for busses!

The police are out in force. I’ve never seen so many cops. You can’t turn your head without seeing a pack of about 20 of them.

We proceed up 8^th and attempt to cut over to Broadway several times. The NYPD keep telling us to go further north. I start to figger out what’s going on here. We finally get up to 56^th street and are allowed to cut over. We cut over to Broadway and are strolling south, when all of the sudden we realize we are trapped. Those sneaky bastards! The NYPD had set up "holding pens" with metal barricades all up and down Broadway. They shepherded us into them and then shut us in there. So there we were, stuck at 52^nd and Broadway- 4 blocks from a giant viewing screen and 10 blocks from Times Square. At 6 PM.

It’s 6 PM and we are getting’ our stand on. We will be standing, more or less, for the next 6 hours. We have nothing to do and nowhere to go. There are tens of thousands of us within view, and millions just around the corners. It is times like this that I am always impressed with human resourcefulness. Here is the essential thought of everybody at hand- what the hell do we do for the next 6 hours to keep from dying of boredom?

The general consensus was to act like an idiot. This was fine with us. We, after all, are idiots. People were just sort of standing around loudly commenting on their boredom- some people thought it sucked (yet didn’t want to leave), while some people were doing a running commentary on the color of the traffic light every time it changed (as in "light’s green- let’s go"). One guy decided he wanted to be our leader- so he tried to start "The Wave" which didn’t work out so well. But soon somebody hit pay dirt. Somebody realized that there was some manner of office party going on the second floor of the building directly to our left. There were women in there. So you can guess what happened next: a barrage of yelling "show us your tits!" and "take it off!". At this point it couldn’t have been later than 7 PM, so nothin’ doin’. Time passes. People are still yelling for nudity. The best we get is a little tease. At some point some guy in our cell couldn’t take it any longer and decided that he would get naked- so he dropped trou and ran around for a few minutes yelling like an idiot. Somebody taped him and replayed it- he seemed to be impressed.

More time passes. Every hour on the hour there is a countdown to celebrate New Years somewhere east of here. People aren’t very good at counting in "seconds", so it kind of turns out a mess.

More time passes. Sitting down on the curb and consuming way too much caffeine is involved.

Yet more time passes. We’re all hopped up on caffeine now. Finally, the people at the office party are pretty smashed. They are standing on tables and lifting up their shirts. I think this was in response to a mooning from the crowd. One of the girls at this party is starting to get really smashed and by 11:30 is lifting up her skirt so that we may all see her behind. I’m not sure what the best part of this little episode is- that somebody got naked, that somebody gave in to peer pressure, that the guys in the office (probably the boss) was helping this woman remove her cloths, or that the cops were standing around shinning their mag-lites up there for spot lights. It’s hard to say. At any rate, the woman disappeared for good at about 11:30 or so. Back to the copy room, so we surmised.

Throughout all of this I realize that It’s really cold out and that in fact, I am getting really cold. I was working on a nice case of mild frostbite in my toes (I checked later- a couple of blood vessels burst). That’ll teach me to wear a crappy pair of tube socks around for 6 hours in 34 degree weather. At one point I had to suffer the indignation of a borrowing a pair of socks from a girl, since one of us had decided to wear appropriately warm footwear- including dope boots with liners. That would not be me.

So it’s about midnight by now. We realize that we can see the ball if we lean over the railing of our holding pen. It drops. Everybody cheers. It’s almost anti-climatic. But not really, since I get to yell "2000" at the top of my lungs. I can also say "2000" every day, and write it on every check for the next year. 2001 after that. It’s like living in the future! A dream come true.

That’s enough for us. I suppose we probably could have stuck around and whooped it up for a while, but I was really freakin’ cold and we had a train to catch. So we cut over to 8^th Ave. and start walking down to Penn Station. Apparently about a million other people had the same idea. 8^th Ave is packed. We keep on walking south, and it’s not too bad- that is until we get to 42^nd Street. The sidewalks is very packed and the cops won’t let us in the streets. Then they decided that we all have to back up (all several thousand of us) so that some a-hole in a suburban with a police escort (hmmm, the mayor maybe…) can leave right away. Good thinking. Nobody got trampled to death, but it certainly wasn’t very comfortable. Some people were being moved without their feet even being on the ground.

We wander around the maze that is Penn Station for a few minutes and find our train. We get on and sit down in heat for the first time in hours. Ah! Flavor Country! However, our blissful peace was not to last for long. Somebody was in the bathroom. Then somebody else REALLY needed to be in the bathroom. That person was ignored, so she barfed on the floor. That’ll teach us. For the next 45 minutes or so the people sitting right there next to ground zero made a game of whooping it up and laughing like idiots every time somebody walked by and stepped the pool of mildly chunky stomach juice/booze cocktail. Oh yeah. So I didn’t get much of a nap on that train ride- and we still had to make the drive back to Evil Robots HQ (our secret bunker at an undisclosed location in Maryland).

The train stops and we get off and relieve of bladders for the first time in many several hours. Let me tell you that that felt good! We leave the station and notice The Fog. Hmm, annoying. So we go rendezvous with Turbo, who is sitting right where I told him to stay. Warm up and head to the ticket booth. We are the third car in line. Somebody is obviously either drunk, or grossly underskilled to be working in a parking garage. For his sake I hope he was drunk. This guy was taking about 5 minutes to get each car through. My patience was waning. We finally got up to the front of the line. Obviously, somebody else’s patience was completely shot, because what happened next was a little odd. We were just sitting there rolling our eyes and tapping our fingers when we hear an engine rev, tires squeal- followed by the sound of wood being split as a beat up blue piece of Detroit steel (with Pennsylvania tags) shoots by in the next (and unused) ticket line. He busted through the gate! My hero! I’ve dreamt about that even before I saw the A-Team or Knight Rider.

So that was bizarre. But then I had to contend with The Fog. What crappy driving conditions. I’ve had an easier time driving in a snow storm in the Rockies. It also didn’t help that New Jersey doesn’t feel the need to illuminate their directional signs on their roads. How nice. So the visibility is horrible. Probably about 50 feet of clear visibility, tops- probably more like 30. So driving is really a pain. I’m lucky if I get up to 50 mph. I suppose we are pretty lucky that I-295 is so stinkin’ straight or otherwise we definitely would have had to stop. Pronto. I being an idiot (and cheap) decide to press on. Down near the Delaware Memorial bridge I ran over a rabbit and resolved that it was about time to stop. We made it over the bridge and it got better, then much, much worse. "Nuts to this, my eyes are going to explode!" I said and pulled into a Rest Area about 5 miles into Delaware. So did most of everybody else in I-95. There we slept. I tell you what- there’s not much more classy than sleeping in a rest stop at 3 am. Somebody milling around was giggling at all the fogged up windows.

At about 7 am we unreclined our seats and uneventfully drove back to HeadQuarters.

So that was our adventure. It had been less than a week from conception to completion. Now that’s a weekend for you. The rest of the weekend was spent primarily sitting around on the couch watching our hair get greasier and greasier. We had gone from frantic traveling to frantic inaction. Kickin’ Back. Takin’ it easy. Oh, and there was a surprise inspection of one of our bureau offices in Richmond, VA- but that’s another story…