Is the encounters.

I had a pretty strange encounter yesterday flying to NYC. Last minute, right before they closed the door to the plane, this woman comes stumbling in. She was wearing high heels and a cocktail party dress. She happened to be sitting across the isle from me. She had a roller bag that she couldn’t come close to lifting into the overhead compartment, so I helped her. That was the start of a very weird 3 hours.

I haven’t decided if she was drunk, stoned, both or maybe somehow mentally incapacitated, but she might of been the most inept person that I’ve ever met. She couldn’t do anything on her own. She couldn’t fasten her seat beat, turn her iPod off, buy a drink. It was amazing.

She told me she was flying to New York to meet up with a “blok”. She had flown a British guy, that she had met on the internet, over to New York to hang with for the weekend. She said that it had cost her $500 for his ticket, plus $900 more for her package, so that it was going to be $1500 for a “piece of ass”. She said he had a very sexy accent, so it was worth it.

She said that she already had three drinks at the gate, a bloody mary plus two shots of tequila. She didn’t have a credit card, so couldn’t buy a drink, so I told her I could use mine and she could pay me. She insisted buying me a drink. We got talking and it turned out that she had missed the same flight the day before. It didn’t surprise me at all. I’m not sure how she got anywhere.

She tried to stand up when the plane was landing. It never ended. She kept asking what time it was. In Kansas and in New York. She finally tossed a $50 bill over to me and told me it was a tip. I said, no, it was fine. This went back and forth a few times and I finally just kept it. Then she asked me if she could take me to my hotel. She’d pay for it. And if I wanted to met up with them for dinner that night. There was no way I was going to do either, but in the back of my mine I was thinking it might be super interesting.

I got her bag down and she wanted to go out of the back of the plane. The stewardess told her at least 3 times that she had to go out the front. She said “bummer”. The stewardesses thanked me for “taking care” of her and laughed. I followed her up the jet way. She was dragging her roller bag sideways, not using the wheels or the handle. I showed her that the handle extended and how it worked. She acted like I’d just invented the wheel. She couldn’t believe it. But, she could barely walk with her heels anyway.

I think she was an exotic dancer that just got off work. And the day before she didn’t quite make it.

Spending all day in NYC yesterday, I saw some pretty strange and amazing stuff, but nothing to come close to matching her.

Here she is, just wandering her way through life. Maybe it's a blessing.

Yesterday was a pretty busy day. I went to see an eye doctor that does Lasik surgery. It was good and bad. He told me that me that my vision is too good to be corrected. 20/15. Unbelievable. If this is better vision than everyone is striving for, and the average person has, then the whole world can’t see worth a shit. I have been seeing pretty well the past few days. I told him that. He said that I should use drops for dry eyes and that I would see better all the time. I’m having a hard time believing what he came up with. I showed him my prescription from my guy in Topeka. He said he can’t correct to “my standard” of perfect vision.

I’ve walked a ton the last couple days. Yesterday I ate dinner at a place call Eataly. It was super crowded. Pretty expensive, but pretty cool. The buildings are so impressive. I have no idea how the businesses make money. It must be the quantity of people going through their doors.

People watching is my activity of choice. And NYC has the nearly the best people watching of any place I’ve been. I’ve walked so many miles. I’m not going into too many places. But, the ones I do completely blow me away. I’m not so interested in the contents of the store, I’m more interested in the buildings themselves. And the buildings are unbelievable.

Last night I went to a Josh Ritter concert at Terminal 5, a small warehouse place on East 56th. It was great. Josh Ritter is one of my favorite artists. This is only the 2nd time I’ve seen him. I got there pretty early and was nearly at the rail by the stage. Scott Hutchison, from Frightened Rabbit, a Scottish band, opened up for him. I was pretty torqued by the end of the night. I’d ran in the morning. Walked for 5 hours and then stood for over 4 more hours. And the subway back to 34th was out of service, so I ended up walking another couple hours afterward, but I didn’t mind. I love walking around here.

Okay. I’m flying back to Kansas tonight. It is supposed to be warmer weather, in the upper 50’s this whole week. I’m heading down to Austin to race next weekend. It’s going to be a wake up call I bet.

The Empire State Building. It cracked me up. I was in a Walgreens and there was a back door out of the store right into the lobby of the Empire State Building. Talk about 2 diverse places being divided by a glass door.

Josh Ritter. Pretty good “seats”.

Rainne Wilson, from The Office, doing a little improv and then introducing Josh.

This place is unreal. It is 6 huge floors of super, high rent stuff. It’s on 5th Ave. I could spend a day here if I had time.

I’ve noticed that when you look closely at about about any medical device, it looks so primitive, like something out of the early 1900’s.

Fish department of Eataly.

And cheeses.

These guys were at the front of my hotel this morning. The dog walking people are some of my favorites.

You know how they say that people look like their dogs....just sayin'.