Zip Car

Yesterday, for Ikea: Round II, I used my first Zipcar! Well, it wasn't quite the experience I hoped for or heard about. I think it has something to do with the fact that it was a pickup truck and everyone in NY that uses those seems to forget that it's a shared vehicle. Oh well. It was still useful and cheaper than renting a car for the day. I think it's going to be really fun to do mini-adventures in Jersey (yes, i just said adventures and Jersey in the same sentence....I actually do have a story about getting lost in Jersey after Rebekah and Steve's wedding....I'll save it for another time), and other fun places. Here's how it went down yesterday:

I set up the time to pick it up and ended up having to take a taxi to get there b/c the bus was the fastest way to get to the location...which would have made me late. (Okay, so I was a bit behind schedule....I think everyone knows this about me. Argh, maybe NY will be a new leaf?) Anyway, so I got the truck and headed to Ikea with Nathan. Thanks to the fact that no one else signed up for little "Teramoto" I was able to extend my reservation by like 2 hours via the phone. It was taking MUCH longer to do the Ikea stuff than it should have. Plus, it started to rain. Thankfully we bought a tarp at Home Depot just in case. We loaded up the back of the truck, and as luck would have it, a NJ cop was watching us place the tarp. He was giving us tips about the tarp and then showed me his badge and informed me that "his guys would definitely pull me over" if I didn't tie up the tarp better. Argh. Very annoying and not helpful. K...moving on...

We got back to our apartment and unloaded all the stuff. Then, I had to find my way back to where the car's garage was.....yeah, I thought I could remember. This is the fun part about living in a new place. You never know when you'll make a wrong turn and end up somewhere TOTALLY NOT what you were looking for. In Manhattan, it's more like, you never know when you'll make a wrong turn and end up on a bridge to get off Manhattan. No worries, I didn't end up on a bridge. I did, however, make many wrong turns and finally found my way to the garage after I pulled over and looked at a map. (those things are really helpful, you know?) That was only the beginning...

The garage operator had no clue where the subway was and my map had me a little turned around (the subway stations aren't listed on the NFT book maps, just in the back on a Subway map that doesn't show all streets). I ended up walking down canal street and after 2 blocks, I realized I was walking the wrong way. I turned around and started heading in the correct direction. Turns out that I was basically at the beginning of Chinatown. I walked past the Chinatown buses for all sorts of cities: NY to VA Beach; NY to Boston; NY to I'm not sure where; etc. I also discovered that the best ripped off watches, bags, clothes of any kind, and Gucci is found just as you exit Chinatown. Oh, and I stumbled into Little Italy, too, which was cool and I can't wait to take Kristin there. (here, that, friend?) After walking....12 blocks, I saw the Subway...finally. I of course made a stop in the corner Starbucks, and then walked a block to the correct Subway entrance and made it home.

So, I guess this story was more about how I got lost in Chinatown than it was about Zip Car. In the end, the lesson of the day was to reserve a car close to the Subway, not necessarily close to my house.