Early this morning Pam and four friends drove in from Michigan in a big white Eddie Bauer Limited Edition Explorer. License plates: OH CMSA (which stands for Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association. I kid you not). Five crazy girls drive driving from Michigan to New York for one quick weekend. Nuts. They parked the car at Avalon because they didn't want to drive in the city so me and Hong ended up driving in and dropping them off at their various destinations. First of all, Hong did his usual "i'm a superstar" driving and pretty much freaked out Sonja (whose car it was) by cutting off mad cars and getting into at least three "we're about to die moments." Sitting shotgun while riding with Hong in the city is not for the faint of heart. On top of this the car was making funny gasping noises from the front and by the time we had dropped everyone off the car was shuddering and creaking and the brakes were squealing. The whole thing sounded like it was going to fall apart and we couldn't figure out what could possibly be wrong. The brakes produced a smell of metal on metal and it was perilous driving back and forth in a barely still together contraption. We took it into the local Pep Boys this morning and it turns out the rear brake pads needed replacing and a screw was missing in the front, thus causing the car to shudder and gasp. It will be fixed soon though so the car will hopefully run beautifully all the way back to Michigan.



On another note, got to drive by Ground Zero and saw all the streets blocked off and all the cops everywhere. The craziest thing was the smell from the still smoldering rubble. That was pretty trippy and even though we couldn't get that close to the wreckage it was an experience to drive through lower Manahttan sans September 11th.