Did I ever tell you about that time in London?

I was sitting in the Comfort Diner on W. 23rd Street tonight, having dinner with Meg and Erika. We were talking about navigating cities and Meg was recounting how lost she felt in London when this hilariously embarrassing memory popped into my head. Did I ever tell anyone about the time I jumped from the back door of a moving double decker bus in London? Probably not...in recounting the story tonight I was both crying with mirth and cringing with the sheer humiliation of the whole event.

It was my third visit to London, this time with my friend Janel. We were staying with her friend (and now my friend) Leah, who lived near the Angel tube stop in north-central London at the time. I was returning to her apartment after a day in the city by myself, and I was on one of those classic London red double decker buses with the open back door. I was riding in the front of the bus on the top floor and knew that my stop was coming soon, but wasn't exactly sure where it was until we were about to leave it. The bus was packed and I had a hard time making it to the stairs and then down them. By the time I got to the back of the bus, the driver had already pulled out of the stop and was picking up speed on his way to the next destination. In a moment of absolute brilliance, I decided to just jump off the bus. I'd seen it done in movies of course, and as Erika reminded me tonight, everything you see in the movies is completely possible in real life. Ha!

So picture it...the bus is moving forward and I jump straight out at a right angle to the bus. In hindsight it would have been better to jump out facing forward so I could have kept moving forward when I hit the ground, as momentum was moving me in that direction. Hindsight is always 20/20 as the saying goes. I jumped out facing the sidewalk though, and that was a colossal mistake. I landed awkwardly on my feet and then completely lost my balance thanks to the forward momentum and sort of skidded and rolled into the gutter. My shoe flew off and landed on the opposite sidewalk of this narrow little one-way street. I didn't know what hit me really, and suddenly there were several nice British people helping me up off the street and bringing me my shoe. I felt life THE biggest dork that ever walked the planet, and moved as quickly as I could to get away from the scene and the people who had witnessed this act of stupidity. When I got back to Leah's I told her and Janel the ridiculous story and they both laughed at me. Luckily the only injury I sustained was a big fat ego bruise.

Just writing this makes me giggle and turn red! Ha! Now that I've written this down for posterity's sake this memory can be suppressed again along with all my other humiliating moments.

Does anyone remember me when I was in college?

I have come to the realization that I have no memory left. It has all been used by stupid stuff that I wish I could forget so that I could remember the important things, like a seminal transitional moment from my undergraduate years for the paper I have to write for College Student Development Theories. Can you guys help me remember what I was like back then? I was thinking of using study abroad as my moment, but really that was like 11.5 months of my life, so not exactly a "moment". I can't even remember when I decided to study abroad actually...parents, a little help here? Perhaps this was something I decided really early on, like maybe in high school already, but I can't even say. I do remember that I didn't ask permission to go, but rather told Mom and Dad that I was leaving for a year. Does anyone remember my making the decision to go abroad?

You know what else I have forgotten? How I decided to even go to Central College! I've been reading lots of theory on student college choice and access and honestly, I can't remember why I even looked at Central, let alone why I decided to go there instead of somewhere else. I do remember going on a college visit to Iowa and consciously deciding that was not the place for me because it was too big. I remember dreaming about that crazy military college in Vermont that would have set me on the right track to becoming a CIA agent, which was a hot career option for me at the time, but that was quashed by the parents if I remember correctly. They told me I couldn't go so far away or something like that. Does anyone remember why I didn't look anywhere else? While Irene was sneaking off to Chicago to audition for colleges she'd never even seen, I applied to one school and that was that. How did it happen?

Help me friends and family! (I'm like an amnesia patient who will believe anything you tell me that sounds vaguely plausible and like something I might do or think.)

Splish-Splash in Lake Wallenpaupack

Like a fish...

Good-bye city, hello Lords Valley, PA!

Man, this was already two Sundays ago...time flies when you're a grad student/full-time worker bee. Ronit invited me out to her parents' place in Pennsylvania for a Saturday night/Sunday extravaganza! We both had things going on Saturday and left the city late, getting in to Port Jervis, NY at about midnight on Saturday night/Sunday morning, which is on the border to Matamoras, PA and is right near where Ro grew up. We went out to a couple local bars in the big bad white conversion van her dad had left for us at the train station. Ro (and everyone from the PA side of the Deleware River) call Port Jervis the "dark side", which is where we spent the greater portion of the night. First we made a stop to dance at Dad's bar and then we spent a large amount of time on a crappy couch in some stuffy basement with a guy that she's hoping to date and his pot smoking friends. (No, I did not smoke pot.) Around 4 AM we hopped into the crazy white van and rumbled down the highway to her parents' place. For whatever reason her dad decided to hang an honest-to-God cow bell from the air vent lever right in front of the passenger seat, so it rang every time we rounded a corner, which set us both to laughing.

Piloting the fine vessel

Sunday we spent on the catamaran with her parents on Lake Wallenpaupack. It took quite a long time for us to get into the water, but when we did it was actually really nice. We weren't sure that we should go to PA at all because the weather forecast said it would rain on Sunday, but we were both so glad we went, because the weather held all day. It was so pleasant to be out of the city for a little bit and back in a place where you feel like a local.

Ro and Mama Bear

Maybe I'll go to write for the Press Journal...

I just re-read my last post about the moon and was struck by how similar in style it is to the County Line column in the Strawberry Point Press Journal. Couldn't that have been a Bertha story? I guess we are technically related in some way shape or form that I can't exactly remember. God forbid I turn into her, esp. at this early stage in my life!