New York 2008: Day 1: Flushing
The trip begins with a surprisingly decent start compared to last year's disaster of delayed flights, pouring rain, and 1am-turned-into-5:30am arrivals.
The flight from LAX actually got there on time (complete with scheduled stop in MKE, site of delay of all delays last year), although we had to wait forever for our gate at LGA to be cleared due to problems with Airtran's laughably tiny number of gates available there.
Joel picked me up, then we darted real quick off to Flushing to meet up with Joe and Nikole at Little Pepper for Szechuan food. We were actually a bit early, which gave time to explore Flushing, share in the Diddy Riese I had brought with me, find a McDonalds with a fireplace (!) in it, and wait for everyone to arrive. Even Maria made it, somehow surviving the trip from New Jersey to Flushing on local trains without losing her sanity...
We were so full after stuffing ourselves at Little Pepper (Joe's favorite place out there!) that as tempting as the dumpling house down the block looked, we would have exploded if we had eaten there... and the garlic cucumber at Little Pepper, holy crap that was awesome. Ditto for the spicy beef noodles as well as the green beans. Not as good as mom's green beans, but distinctly different (hey, my family is not from the north!).
Stumbled back to Joel's place after that for a relatively sane night, which probably was reasonable considering all the stuff planned the next day...
