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07/06/2004: "I hate 4th of July"

Back from the three-day off. Unfortunately the trip to New Hampshire *sucked* overall: no hiking, no skinny-dipping, no encounter with exotic animals, no fireworks. The way up wasn't so terrible: $10-Chinatown Bus to Boston, which was packed, somewhat chaotic, since there's Chinese people yelling at each other (that's what it sounds like) all around you. Some traffic, but not so terrible. Four and a half hours. From there to Concord, New Hampshire, one and a half hours. And I arrived at Concord. A clean New England town. There was Main Street. Stores. A clock. A statue. The State building. Holiday Inn. That was all I saw. "Yeah, there's not much here." Guida admitted. Her friend Joe and his girlfriend Amanda picked us up at the bus station and we went to eat and drink. Then we went to a Chinese restaurant called Tea Garden and drunk tropical drinks on a deck. Then we went to another bar called Green Martini and drunk more. I actually couldn't drink more than a little sip of Bass since the Scorpion Bowl (or Ball?) from the Chinese place which was pineapple juice and something alcoholic hit me hard. So that was my first day ever in New Hampshire. Big deal. Next day, I thought we were going to hiking or something, but another friend of Guida, Tim, didn't really want to do anything hardcore on his day off. So he took us to a public beach on a lake. A public beach. I traveled 6 hours to New Hampshire to sit on a public beach and eat a sandwich. A few other options fell through and although Tim and his girlfried told us we were welcomed to stick around in their house doing nothing for the night, but sitting in the woods doing nothing with people I don't know and their crazy dogs on Fourth of July didn't appeal to me much. I voted for heading back. Maybe we catch the fireworks in Boston. So we took the last bus from Concord at 7 pm and arrived at Boston. When we got to the park where the fireworks were supposed to be, the tiny park was of course already full of people. And guess what? There were trees everywhere and we couldn't find a place where you got a clear view of the sky. But people were sitting everywhere on the little patches of grass. So we sat down among already drunk people, and hoped that the fireworks would go up in this tiny clearing between the trees in front of us. The sky was already dark, and I assumed for no reason that the fireworks was on the way anytime soon like 9:30. We bought this disgusting thing called fried dough since there was nothing else that seemed edible around, and boy, it was the truly disgusting thing you could buy for four bucks. In the darkness we bit into gross pockets full of oil. After some classical music by Boston Pops, David Lee Roth came up (we hear only audio where we were) and sang California Girls. Then there were sing-a-long of bunch of patriotic songs. Some announcer went yap yap yap (we were listing to live broadcasting) that more people came out to see Boston fireworks than New York last year. Good for them! It better be good then. But it's almost 10:30 and there's no fireworks. I said, let's just go. The last Chinatown bus was at 11:30. As we started heading to the subway station, the fireworks started. People stood around to watch the little sparks behind the trees. With little I saw, it didn't seem anywhere comparable to Macy's fireworks. The guy next to me across the isle on the bus puked all over on the way back to New York. All the rest of passengers almost puked also because of that. When we finally arrived by the Manhattan Bridge it was seriously pouring and we gave up on having a breakfast/late supper in Chinatown at 4 o'clock in the morning. So this is why I hate the fourth of July.