I was sitting at work on Thursday afternoon, minding my own business, working on a control logic scheme when my telephone rang. It was my bother, Eric.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked.

“Not much. Just screwing around with a control scheme.”

“Uh huh. Whatever. What are you doing this weekend?”

I hadn’t planned on doing much. Cleaning out the closets, and other boring chores of that nature.

“Nothing. Why?”

“Because I just won a contest from Warner Bros. Free train up to New York on Saturday. Free concert tickets to see Guster. $200 to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Free night at a hotel. For me and a guest. You want to go?”

“Um…Hell yeah.”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the band Guster, they are a mix of rock, pop, some folk, similar to John Mayer, or Jack Johnson. Their music is pretty damn fun. I had only seen them live once previously, however, my brother has been following their music for about 9 years.

So I drove down to DC on Saturday morning. It took longer than expected, as I had to turn around after realizing that I forgot my wallet.

We decided that since we were taking a later train, (~1:00) it would probably be a good idea to grab some pizza instead of hitting Ruth’s Chris so we wouldn’t be late for the show. I agreed with his logic, although I was looking forward to seeing how much damage we could do for $200. However, since there is a Ruth’s Chris in Bethesda, we agreed to eat there for Sunday dinner. Problem solved.

We took the metro to Union Station and wandered over to the Amtrak counter. Unfortunately, when my brother told her that he had won these tickets, and a reservation was placed in his name, she couldn’t find it. During this predicament, the 1:00 train was boarding. We knew we’d miss it.

Finally, she realized that she wasn’t even looking under our name. Ugh! So she pulled up the reservation and commented that we had missed the 12:25 train we had been assigned. So she put us on the 2:20.

Due to arrive in Penn Station in Manhattan at 5:45. Ugh!

Since we had a few hours to kill we grabbed some lunch at the food court, which is humongous, and waded through the tourist groups of Korean War vets, camp kids, and foreign tourists to find a table. After lunch, we abandoned our post for people watching and headed over to the terminal.

Just as I had cracked the spine on my brand new copy of “The World According to Garp,” a black man with a fairly sizable afro, and dressed in a gray sweat suit shuffled over and sat down four seats away, talking loudly not to himself, but to all of us.

He seemed not to be talking, but rather preaching. Here was his monologue:

And then he would repeat this in its entirety ad nauseum.

And as he cycled through this diatribe for the fourth or fifth time, when people were grew tired at laughing at him and just wanted him to shut up, he pulled out a roll of money from his left sock. At least $2000 all in $20 bills. He rifled through it, counting it. Then he shuffled some bills around and tucked it in his left sock. Then he pulled an even larger roll from his right sock. Thankfully, the train was called and we headed into the second car.

By the way, this car must have been constructed with people like me in mind (tall people, I’m 6’4”) because there was a ridiculous amount of legroom between each row of seats. I could have lied down on the floor with the space available. Heaven, people. Heaven.

So I dove back into “Garp,” and as the train plowed ahead, from Washington, through Baltimore, through Aberdeen, and onto Wilmington and Philly, it began to rain. No, I take that back. It began to storm.

Past Aberdeen, the train travels over the Susquehanna River for a mile possibly. It runs rather low to the river, surrounded on all sides by water. It was there, that we were struck by lightning.

I’m not talking our train. I’m talking our car. Specifically, right next to my brother’s head. Other than freaking the shit out of us, the lights flickered and came back on and not much else happened.

Until five minutes later. The train stopped, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees, in the pouring down rain. Conductors were rushing through our car, their radios squawking that our car had been struck by lightning. After we got back on track fifteen minutes later, we were told that the lightning strike caused an alarm to fail. This alarm monitors the wheel temperatures. If the temperatures heat up to whatever°F, then the wheel melts off. Oh.

They just had to confirm that it was an electrical error, and not an actual temperature issue.

We finally pulled into Penn Station in Manhattan around 6:00, stepping off the train and into the dry, hot air. It’s like being in a boiler room. It’s fairly miserable.

So we caught a taxi to take us to the Mariott Marquis and Paul O’Neil welcomed us to New York, reminding us to buckle up for safety. I was secretly disappointed. I was hoping for Adam West.

After we checked into the hotel, greeted with, “Welcome to New York, Mr. Marks. The hotel will be taking care of your bill,” we took the Wonkavator at supersonic speeds to our room. You want to see what the room looked like? Here are some pictures of the room and the view.

Nice, huh?

So we showered and got dressed for the show, taking a cab to Radio City Music Hall, not realizing that it was only four blocks away, neglecting to eat dinner. I guess in all the excitement, we simply forgot.

Oh well. Who needs food when there’s plenty of beer? We found our seats, which were incredible. The record exec who ran the contest sat down next to me about ten minutes (and two rounds) later. He was pretty cool (and his wife was smokin’ hot).

Apparently, we weren’t the first winners of the contest. Some other woman won, however, when he called to congratulate her and give her the details of the prize, she declined believing it was some sort of timeshare scam. Hey, whatever. Her loss is our gain.

The opener, The Thorns, kind of sucked. Each song had a Country Music Channel quality to it, with each song sounding the same as the one preceding it. Whatever. More beer.

Guster played a hell of a show. They were incredible. The crowd was incredibly into it. Come to think of it, it was an odd sort of crowd. The ages ranged from about 12-55. That’s a pretty wide demographic.

So after the show, the record exec and crew were going to have dinner, and we parted company. We were off to meet some of Eric’s old friends from college at some bar in the city. Apparently, the record exec was not going to the Warner Bros. Party. (Lame.)

But he did take our picture for the Warner Bros. Gazette. So look out!

After wolfing down some grub at McDonald’s (where the $1 menu is the $1-plus menu with most items $1.29), we met up with Eric’s friends, Tommy, and Rick, and made our way to The View, the club on the 38th floor our hotel, which rotated giving a pretty exquisite view of the skyline. However, the bar kind of sucked, as did the music. When the bar closed at 1:00 am, we headed off to greener pastures.

Speaking of which, 1am? Dude, Delaware bars close at 1am. I expect more!

We headed over to Lace, a gentlemen’s club (read: strip club) where we were groped by women in search of $20 bills. I commented to Eric that perhaps the guy at the train station would feel right at home, when an Asian woman pounced on my lap. She was at least 35.

She started grinding in my lap, and actually gave one hell of a lap dance. I gave her a twenty for her trouble, but declined the private room.

About thirty minutes later, when it was clear we weren’t going to be spending any more on lap dances, we headed out. I complained of a strange taste in my mouth. It tasted vinegary, and I suggested that maybe she had recently douched. It was probably her perfume. It was hopefully her perfume.

We took another cab over to another bar, and spent a few hours drinking and having a good time. I ended up in bed at 5am.

We took the train home on Sunday, feeling too tired to go to Ruth’s Chris for dinner. Eric will be up next week, and we’ll go to the one in Philly, and have dinner on the WB!

I have an awesome story from the last bar we went to but that I’ll hold off until later this week, as it is pretty damn cool, and this entry is long enough as it is.

READ THESE JOURNALS Uncle Bob SaraH

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