i keep a diary

October 20, 2003

European Vacation Part 1: Leaving NYC

After weeks of planning, vacation had finally arrived. The first leg of our trip was an exercise in sleep deprivation - The plan was to leave JFK in NYC on a 8:45pm flight that would arrive in Keflavik, Iceland at 6:20am (1:20am NYC time). We'd have just about 10 hours to explore Iceland before having to catch a 4:10pm (11:10am NYC time) flight to Heathrow in London where we'd be picked up by our friend Charlene and head out for a night of partying in London.

Grant wasn't able to come along for the first leg as originally planned because he was in LA and the filming of the pilot for his TV show was running a few days late (Seriously ladies, his own TV show. Fuck him now before he's famous, kay?). Grant was bummed about missing Iceland, but would be meeting up with us in London Wednesday morning. Ok, got all that? Ready? Here we go:

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I arrived at the Fatty's around 2:30ish to find him doing some last minute packing. (We had both gotten up that morning around 10am - Time Elapsed With No Sleep: 4h 30m).
fatty
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We headed to the McDonalds around the corner from his house to say goodbye to America properly. Aw yeah, Big Mac.
mcdonalds ˆ fatty
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Chris got to Fatty's around 3:45pm. We spent the next half an hour going through all of our checklists and making sure that we had everything we needed.
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We spent the next half an hour going through all of our checklists and making sure that we had everything we needed.
packing ˆ fatty
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4:13pm: Outside of Fatty's apartment, bags all packed and double-checked we coldlamped for one last photo before hailing a cab.
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Before getting in the cab, we neurotically checked to make sure we had our passports with us for the 11th time. You know, just in case one of us had somehow managed to loose it on the 25ft trek from Fatty's apartment to the street.
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I've been in hundreds of NYC yellow cabs, but I'd never been in one that had...
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...fucking hot-rod dice on the door locks. This was clearly a good omen.
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We spent our cab ride discussing tricks and traps we could employ to scare the crap out of Grant and capture it on tape.
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5:35pm: JFK international terminal:
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We breezed through security and made it to our gate just a little past 6pm (which gave us just over 2 hours to kill). We grabbed a snack in the cafeteria, read a bit and (what else?) goofed out and took pictures. (Chris and I had both just gotten new cameras so we spent a lot of time familiarizing ourselves with how to use them.
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And Fatty, not having a new camera, played around with his phone cam.
phone ˆ fatty
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Here's three portraits I took playing around with my cam. Chris (not so good, was getting used to some of the manual settings).
chris a
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Fatty. Ahhh, much better!
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And look, I even managed to figure out how to take a half-decent pic of myself, which was no easy task, because it's a big, heavy, digital SLR that you have to hold with a side-grip. (Which is why I've got that weird "looks like I'm pooping" expression on my face.)
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8:30pm: We got our boarding call. Here's Fatty's picture of me...
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...taking a picture of him. Hi, we're dorks.
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Boarding.
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Chris uses Fatty's inflatable neck pillow to do his impression of a Greek Orthodox priest. (He's so going to hell now).
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Fatty's big plan was to pop a few Tylenol PM and sleep for the entire flight. But for some reason, he didn't stay asleep. He managed to get, oh, about 25 minutes of sleep before he was awaken by the stewardess who wanted to know what we wanted for dinner.
airplane ˆ asleep ˆ fatty
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Our Icelandic stewardess (who didn't really speak English) gave us the choice between Beef Stroganoff and Curry Chicken - We all asked for the Stroganoff but were given this dish (which was neither Stroganoff nor chicken). For about ten minutes I had Chris and Fatty convinced that it was "most likely reindeer meat." Because, you know, "that's mostly what they eat in Iceland." Maybe it was Curry Lamb? We're still not sure. Yay, Mystery Meat!
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9:29pm: Night portraits....somewhere over the Atlantic.
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T-minus 3h 50 minutes until arrival.
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No sleep yet. (Oh also: at some point during the flight, the three of us watched one of those in-flight TV shows about "The Blue Lagoon," which is an Icelandic Spa Resort built around a huge geothermal pool. Other than exploring Reykjavik, we didn't have any other plans. After watching the video, we decided the Blue Lagoon looked amazing and that we'd try to fit it into our schedule if possible.
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