June 24th; The only time that a crowded public event is on is the only time that it doesn’t rain. It’s also the first one we’ve been really late to.

We started out having a lazy morning. We are pro-active teenagers and hence treasure every moment we have overseas. Every moment past twelve noon. Kate and I went to the Post Office to send some things home. This isn’t just any Post Office either. This is the Post Office, about the size of the Pantheon but a bit bleaker inside. A great, garish columned thing with the motto pasted across the top of the building. You know, ‘Neither Rain Nor Snow Nor Gloom of Night Will Stay These Couriers From Their Appointed Rounds.’ Something like that anyway. I wish that one day I may have such a tough sounding motto.

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June 23rd; Another early morning since we have to move hostel. Actually, it didn’t have to be. I had my alarm set for eight thirty. Ben, through some wild call of nature, woke up and took a shower at six in the morning. He only realised this once out of the bathroom.

‘Ben,’ I said, ‘you know you are a raging fool?’ I tried to get back to bed but he was very loudly questioning his own actions. ‘Why did I get up at six? I’m a raging fool!’ Still, I stayed in bed until my alarm went off. My general stance on things that morning was ‘hating life.’ It didn’t help when we had to lug our bags to our new hostel in Chelsea or the Lower West Side or wherever it is. It also didn’t help when it turned out be shit.

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June 22nd; Another late morning, since we’re all stuffed from not doing much the other night. I do not know how that works. It’s probably metaphysical or quantum or something.

We are meeting Natasha and Gabriel again today. They talked up this pancake place at the party and so everyone wanted to go. We were extraordinarily late as usual, but that was okay since there was a two hour wait for a table. It was called Clinton Street Bakery or something along those lines, near a big red bridge. Might have been the Manhattan Bridge. We went to a coffee and chocolate place in the meantime. I got a dark hot chocolate. It was good but, more than most hot chocolates, severely inhibited my walking skills. We walked to a park nearby. Natasha used to live near here, it seems.

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June 21st; Coney Island today. We are meeting up with Natasha, Gabriel and Andy from the party last night.

We were running a bit late getting ready and the boys were nowhere near the land of the living in any case, so I pulled what shreds were left of me together to go with Kate. We caught a couple of subways to meet Natasha near Union Square. That’s somewhere in the Lower West or East Side. I can’t remember. Anyway, she had a huge coffee and was already hyped up. I was wearing the sheepish smile of someone who had only thrown up in front of a complete stranger the night before.

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June 20th; Weather is good, I’m good, everything is good. Except my fitness levels. I’ll hit up Wii Fit when I get home, I swear.

We went for the hike down to the bike rental place, next to Loeb boathouse. I navigated, since I’m so good at it. Half the time I’ve been using the sun in the Park to figure out which way to go. It works very well.

We all jumped on our Cruisers and set off. I hate hills. I’m going to come right out and say it. I loved riding on the flat ground and speeding downhill, but hills stump me. I can walk or run up them, but bring wheels into the equation and I’m done. We rode for a while, did the bike dance from Flight of the Conchords’ Mutha Uckas, cruised down the hills and came to an uphill. I got off about five seconds into it and walked it up. We did the whole big loop anyway, took some photos back by the boathouse and eventually returned the bikes. We spent about an hour and a half on them all up, though I say that a little loosely as I was taking the shoelace express for a quarter of the time.

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