Where to begin? I know that I am only starting my travels into this world but when I look back, I also realize that I have done a lot.

I was born in Monterey Park, California, USA, or at least that is where Garfield Hospital is. The house that I live in is located in Rosemead, CA. My parents moved there three years earlier when my older sister April was born. We still live there now. It has been 22 years and we haven't moved.

I was a chubby little kid. If you tried to identify me now, and you only had my baby pictures to work with, you would not get very far. I liked playing in the schoolyard near my house. That is were I spent most of my time outside. There were swings and slides and all that cool stuff that you play around on when you were small. I especially liked to "fly" off of the swings by letting go at perfect time so that I fell out of the seat high up in the air. That is also when I learned how to fall. I was very accident-prone when I was little (still am). I am always getting hurt for some reason or another. Probably because I am never one to hold back when I do crazy things. I slide into every base. I rip holes in my jeans and scrape up my elbows. I am one of those "look, Mom, no hands" type of kids. The kind that needed a warehouse full of Band-Aids. This is probably why my most vivid childhood memory is of the first time I got stitches.

My dad was going to let our dog Rusty run around at the park nearby our house. It's very small, and all fenced off, so on days when there are no people there, we usually let him get some exercise by letting him off his leash. I usually just grab a ball and play fetch with him, but that day I wanted to get in some bike riding. It was a beat-up little black two-wheeler that had loose handlebars and foam pads all around the said "BMX" and had a picture of a guy on a bike jumping through the air with his feet off the pedals and a checkered flag in the background. It was beat-up mostly due to that fact that I crashed a lot trying to imitate the guy in the picture. The blacktop at the park had basketball poles on it which I usually wove in and out of. I was probably going about as fast as my stubby legs could turn the pedals when my dog barked out in the field. I turned my head and waved at him. Next thing I know I am in the hospital with a doctor looking at my head. My dad told me that I hit the pole head-on (literally) and I got knocked off my bike. I then proceeded to scream my lungs out. I couldn't remember anything, including, thankfully, any pain. My dad ran over and carried me back to the house. He happened to be wearing a white shirt that day which I saw the next day. It was half red, but since it doesn't have a hole in it, he probably still wears it. Anyway, I wake up and this doctor is hovering over my head with thread and needle in hand. I have never had anesthetic before so it was the strangest feeling. He was tugging at my head, moving it this way and that, but I couldn't feel a thing. I couldn't see my parents anywhere around so I started yelling for them. They came over and comforted me. As soon as I found out where I was and what had happened, I became my usual, overly-curious self. The first question I asked the doctor was, "Can I see it?" referring to my wound. They described it to me, but wouldn't let me near a mirror. I thought that sucked. All they told me was that it looked like a piece of skin flapping away on my forehead. I pictured it like a peeled orange. They taped it up really good, but with clear adhesive, so I sort of made out what it looked like. All I saw was little black dots where the knots of the stitches where. I showed it off to my friends at school the next day.

I decided to go to school out of my district when it was time for me to enter high school. My sister was a senior already at Schurr High School, so I thought it would be a good idea to start off knowing at least one person, even if it was my sister (at this point, I am 14 years old; a 14 year old brother and 17 year old sister do not mix). For once in my life, my accident- proneness actually helped me out. In the summer before freshman year, I took General Science, a requirement for freshmen, to get it out of the way during the regular term. One day, I was being chased by my friend Jimmy (I think because I dumped a glass of water on him or something). I was running down a flight of stairs and misjudged when I should skip the last few steps at the bottom. I caught the very last step and snapped my left ankle. It swelled up so much that it looked like I had a raised donut for an ankle bracelet. To make matters worse, the stairs led into our school's outdoor amphitheater, which was visible by everyone who had classes in C building (the largest one on campus). There I was looking like a complete idiot in front of half the school. Around this time, the infamous Life-Alert commercial had just started airing, so I heard some students yelling out, "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" The campus security finally came over to wheel me away, and my mom came to the school to take me to the hospital. In addition to a cast, the doctor had to put pins in my ankle to stabilize it, and I was on crutches summer school ended. Wait, you say, how did this help me? Well, in between the time when summer school ended and regular term began is pre season for the Schurr High Marching Band. Because I was on crutches, I received a lot of pity, but also made a lot of friends, since I had an easy conversation starter.

I got interested in music when I was in intermediate school. There was a class called Introduction to Music. Mainly, it was just an opportunity for fifth-graders to bang on drums, squeal on trumpets, and play with beat-up violins. I wanted to play the drums; I guess I got my inspiration from Animal on the Muppet Show. But there were too many aspiring percussionists in the band that year, so the director asked us to choose something else besides the drums. That way, everyone could rotate between being a drummer and something else. I ended up playing the tuba. I don't remember exactly how, but I think the fact that the director was a tuba player himself had an impact. Anyway, there I found myself huffing and puffing away on this brass monster bigger than I. My teacher said I looked like Dizzy Gillespie, but I had no clue who he was talking about. When I got home that day, I asked my dad about it. He told me that Dizzy was a jazz trumpeter whose cheeks looked like two balloons because they puffed out so much when he played.

That tuba caused me a lot of trouble. I didn't have much of a lap as a fifth-grader, so my tuba kept slipping off. Whenever I had to practice, I would have to lug the large, black wooden case out of the closet where the low brass instruments were kept. I would sneer at the piccolo player whose case was no bigger than my plastic pencil box. In a standard concert setting, tubas are placed on the far right and all the way in the back. Since our band room had risers I played right next to a drop of about three feet or so, which doesn't seem small when you are right over it. One day while I was preparing to rehearse, I absent-mindedly sat down on my chair without checking to see if all four legs were on the floor. As I fell through the air, all I thought was "THE TUBA!" They are pretty expensive; a nice one runs around $4500. So I held the tuba at arms length while I fell with my back towards the ground. With a hearty grunt, I landed on the yellowish-orange shag carpet, and with an even more hearty grunt, the tuba hit me. Of course, the whole class busts out laughing, but I didn't think anything was funny about it at all. I felt that searing tightness from having the wind knocked out of me along with the heat on my face from blushing. After that I never sat down in a chair without looking first.

Pretty soon, all the visions of snare drums danced out of my head and it occurred to me that I was the only tuba player in the band. It made me feel special. I got pretty good too. I made it to the Honor Band and was able to go to Disneyland and play the Mickey Mouse March in one of the parades. I even got a scholarship from one of those women's clubs. I thought I was all that and some on the side. Anyway, back to high school.

I was cordially initiated into the tuba section of Schurr High School by my section leaders: Tony, David, Vidal, Chris, and John. They were all seniors and in charge of all the tubas in the band. My feeling of uniqueness soon faded. I had to do everything they said, the first of which was to address them each as "sir" or "tuba god." In the summer before my freshman year, the high school marching band had what was officially called pre season, and unofficially called "Hell Weeks." As in more than one week. For five weeks I had to endure ten to twelve hours a day of marching, conditioning, rehearsal, and harassment in the middle of a Southern Californian summer. There were many forms of torture- I mean training. We had a two-mile run every morning through the foothills near our school, followed by a set of fifty sit-ups and fifty push-ups. We marched in place while playing that year's selected march ten times in a row. (Oh yeah, it had to be memorized too.) There were the dreaded drill downs- a mentally exhausting exercise in which you are given a set of ten marching commands which you have to perform in the right order. The catch is that you can't start until the last order is given. Concentration and memory are key. At any time during your sequence, the section leader(s) can stop you to inspect your attention stance, get in your face to try to make you flinch, which you aren't supposed to do, or try to make you laugh by whispering things in your ears or making face right in front of you.

The tuba section had a reputation for being loud, obnoxious, and tough. Still does, actually. When the band director called out, "Band, atten hut!" we would have to yell "Schurr High" as loudly as possible. If, after going through all the sections, we weren't the loudest, the section leaders would give us an extra hard time during that afternoon's practice. They would make us yell until our throats were dry or until it echoed off the gym. Especially if we were beaten out by the flutes, (who outnumbered us ten to one.) We were tubas!

They would expect nothing more than perfection from me. Unfortunately for me, my ankle was still healing and I couldn't execute the deliberate heel-to-toe marching style that they were teaching. This was not acceptable for my section leaders, so for the entire pre season I walked around with a wad of masking tape attached to the sole of my shoe and could do nothing but heel-to-toe walking.

For the first two weeks, I practiced with a "Tupperware" sousaphone, the white ones that are made out of plastic except for the valves and slides. A sousaphone is a marching version of a tuba, the kind that fits around the musician, instead of just sitting on the lap like a concert tuba. One day the head section leader, Tony, decided that it was time to put me on a "real" sousaphone, one made completely out of brass. Behemoth would be a good word to describe that piece of scrap metal. The brass was so old that it was almost green from all the tarnish and layers of dust. It was never used because the tuba section had never been large enough to need it. It just lay there, waiting to burden some unsuspecting freshman like me. The bell was not smooth and rounded like the others, but crinkled and bent at the top like a fedora. To add to that, it was the heaviest sousaphone they had. It took me a couple of tries before I could lift it and put it on my shoulder. I could hear them snickering at me. I could swear that after that practice I lost an inch or two I height. Someone had to tell me before I noticed that I was walking with my left shoulder up high, still supporting a sousaphone that wasn't there.

Around October of that year we received a letter from the city of Pasadena. We had been invited to march in the Rose Parade. The letter was read during sixth period Symphonic Band. Everyone went crazy and it took a while before it really sunk in. I had seen it on TV many times before and knew that it was watched by millions of people. One statistic brought me out of my celebration- 6.2 miles. My skills were going to put to the ultimate test. The longest I had ever marched was two miles. At that parade I had thought I would have to drop out, the equivalent of losing face when you are a tuba. Now, I was faced with three times as much. Vidal and Chris didn't help much by betting me twenty dollars each that I wouldn't make it through. For a high school student those were high stakes. I just had to make it through.

But then, there were other performances to think about. Yea, you read right. It was only after I finished my freshman year in band that I realized that it was the best year I could have possibly had. Forget the Rose Parade, we were going to Hawaii, baby! It was a bit strange though, we would be touring Hawaii over winter vacation. It would be my first Christmas away from home. It wasn't, however, going to be the first one away from my family. They were coming too. Their philosophy was if they were going to pay for me going to Hawaii, they sure as hell were going to come as well. So the Moronez clan, Mom, Dad, my sister April, and myself we soon flying over the Pacific Ocean on our way to the sunny skies of the Island state.

The reason that the band was going was two-fold: we were invited to play as one of the guest bands at the Hula Bowl, and we were going to visit some of the high schools on the Oahu island. The Hula Bowl was really fun. There were many bands seated in various places around the stadium, and we all were designated a band to root for, if weren't the band of a college team that was playing. Our band was rooting for Stanford. We got some air time on national TV too. The coolest part was when all the bands marched out onto the field to do the half-time show. I was surprised how many people come out for a football game on Christmas day. Visiting high schools was very fun as well. We usually played joint concerts, where we watched them play their pieces, and vice versa. Sometimes we played simultaneously. All times I got to meet new people and even made a few pen pals. Hawaiians sure are hospitable. We visited three high schools, each of which had a band size of around 120, so you do the math on how many people I met and actually remember.

When we weren't out visiting high schools, marching parades, or playing in football games, we were out touring the island. A t first I thought having my parents along would be a major drag, but my parents gave me my space and, as most of my parent-less friends pointed out, they were an instant money source. Bank of Mom, one might say. But I still had to tell them where I was going at all times so that killed any spontaneity I might have had. But that doesn't mean I didn't have any fun. I sunbathed at Waikiki, shopped all the typical Hawaiian stores: HIC, Crazy Shirt, and the omnipresent ABC Store being some examples, took a few tours, and other tourist-like things. One thing that stuck as odd while walking around on the island was that it didn't get cold when it rained. It was like a warm rain- it would be 80 or something but the rain would still come down because it was so humid. I personally liked it when it rained. it was refreshing and it got rid of all that nasty humidity. I'd rather be wet than sticky.

On an additional note, the band also toured Hawaii my senior year, so I got to go twice! Cool, no? The second time was much better than the first because this time only my mom came, and she's cool (and she manages the money in the household). I did a lot more things on the second trip than the first. A notable one was to meet a girl named Patricia at one of the high schools we were visiting. Unfortunately, a long-distance relationship didn't work for us for reasons that will remain between me and her but the story of how we met is amusing.

The band was visiting a high school called Mililani to play a joint concert in the evening. However, our visit was an all day thing. We were to be "assigned" a Mililani student who would show us around the campus, and take us to their classes. So basically I would be following him/her around for the entire day until classes ended and the band dinner started. So I was assigned this girl named Kena. She was really a character, had a sense of humor similar to mine, I think, or at least she could make it seem that way, and boy was she vocal! But she was fun to be around so I would rather have her than some other silent person who said, "Hi, this is our high school, my name is X, nice to meet you, follow me." That would be way boring. So anyway, I went to all her classes, broke for lunch (again which was our band mingling with their band), go to some classes, met some of her friends and finally got some dinner. More mingling.

The concert finally began a bit after dinner. After all the playing was said and done, our band gave out gifts to the other students and their director, and their band did the same to us. Their gift to us was a traditional lei. They were to give it to the band member of their choosing, usually the one that they had shown around all day. Kena starts walking toward me with two leis in her hand. Upon inquiring as to why I was getting two, she said that one was from her friend Patricia because, "She thought I was cute." After my ego came down from the ceiling, I began to pack my instrument, during which another lei was dumped on me from some other girl.

After my tuba was safely back on the bus, I was informed that there was a little after-concert dessert party. After playing for a few hours, any liquid sounded good right then. And there were cookies and stuff too. I sat down with a few of my friends and dragged Kena and her friends over for a meet-and-greet. This is when I finally met Patricia face to face. She waved shyly- sitting two chairs clockwise from me on our circular table. I guess her friends knew she was shy so they (I don't whether or not it was consciously done) started speaking for her. I finally said to her, "Cut the middleman, I'm right here, you can talk to me." Which embarrased her a bit, but also got her to talk. We hit it off really well. After an exchange of info and snap of a picture, our bus started to leave. I said my goodbyes to everyone I met and left. I still talk to her and write to this day. I have even seen her in person again while she was at LAX on a stopover to London (with her school's band).

Ok, vacation's over, back to the Rose Parade.

On the bus to the parade all I could think about was that number. 6.2 miles. I tried to sleep, but the traditional tuba breakfast of donuts and soda didn't allow it. I should have been tired; the band had to be ready to get on the buses by three am. At least I got to see the sunrise. I made my usual checklist before I left the bus. Pants, check. Ruffled dickie, check. Jacket, check. Parade hat, check. Parade shoes, check. Mouthpiece and bits, check. I got off the bus to get my sousaphone and set it up. Since this was a major parade, and our school had a lack of tubas, or at least a lack of decent tubas, we had borrowed some from various schools in the area. I was very careful as I lifted the lid to see my distorted reflection in the flawless golden bell. Making sure not to let it touch the asphalt, I slid the two pieces of the sousaphone together. They went together easily, not like ours which I had to jiggle around for awhile before they align correctly. I admired it for awhile then, with the grace that only comes with practice, swiftly lifted it over my head with my right hand and softly brought it down onto my left shoulder with my other hand. I stopped by a band parent to get a feathered plume for my parade hat and citation cords for my jacket. I then joined the six other tubas for a quick warm-up. In our circle formation, we looked like a large halo, with the sun reflecting off of our instruments. The low sound from the tuba matched its beauty.

We got the word from the director that we were next to step off. The nervousness faded away as I concentrated on the drum major's whistles and listened to the beat of the snare that was keeping tempo. All I could hear was cheering when we stepped out onto Colorado Boulevard. The five drum majors had to blow extra hard so our 220 member strong band and fifty member pageantry unit could hear the "tweoooeet, tweet, tweet, tweet." As soon we heard those four distinct tweets, the same ones that we heard so many times in pre season, we lifted our left feet and began the 6.2 mile trek. The Stars and Stripes by John Phillip Sousa soon filled the air as Bob Eubank and Stephanie Edwards announced the arrival of the "Schurr High School Mighty Spartan Marching Band!"

Everything didn't turn up roses (excuse the pun) though, as I soon learned about the other members of the parade. All other parades I had been in before were strictly for competition; only bands marched. The Rose Parade was an all-around parade; it had dancers, floats, bands, and horses. Everything was fine up until the horses. I used to like horses before I marched this parade. But in the TV area, I spotted a "road apple" left for me by one of my equestrian friends directly in my path. Unfortunately, I was in one of the forward ranks, the twelfth. I felt sorry for the person in the front rank, who got the full brunt of it. By the time it got to me, it had been tread down some, but not enough to keep me from feeling a squishy contact between my foot and the ground instead of a nice clean one. Also, in the middle of the parade, a float broke down so we had to stand in place and play for twenty minutes. I thought it would be a welcome rest, but looking back I would have rather kept moving because it was so hard to start up again after stopping. My lips were dying. We must have played that march twenty or thirty times. My friends weren't faring so well either. Some people had to drop out due to exhaustion or dehydration. I think the street temperature was eighty degrees. I noticed that the person marching in front of me didn't tie his shoe tight enough and the shoe was rubbing away his heel and making a blood blister. Thank goodness that formation did not have to be so tight out of the TV area. The band parent would walk in between the ranks and columns and give the players water squeezes or ice cubes. You could turn your head every now and then to look at the people cheering and take in the atmosphere. Even though I was engulfed in it, I focused so hard on keeping step and playing the music that I never really saw what was around me, just heard it. Loose formation was also convenient for dodging those dreaded road apples. I let out a huge sigh when I saw a little girl on the side of the street holding up a sign saying "1 mile to go!"

I thought I would never get to see the end of that parade. The band let out a collective moan as our drum majors finally dismissed us from the street to put our instruments away and change out of our sweat-soaked uniforms. My shoulder thanked me as I lifted my sousaphone off and put it back into the case. The section leaders all slapped me on the back, congratulating me on a hard-earned forty bucks. Contemplating how I would spend my newly gained riches, thinking about watching myself on replays that my mom taped, and chugging some Gatorade, I leaned back in my seat and got some well-deserved sleep.

They say that you get a big envelope when you are accepted at a college. I had applied to four, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, and MIT. I was checking my mail very day around the months of March and April. I also had the weird feeling that a life-changing thing was going to happen on March 15. I told all my friends about it, and they gave me a lot of reasons why. The Schurr band was going on a tour to Hawaii during spring break, and March 15 was the last Friday before then; I was having a dinner with seven of my closest friends, the last one we would have before we all went away to college; there were a lot of assignments due that day; etc. Well, the day came around and nothing happened. It passed like any other day. I thought I was just being psycho. Then my acceptance letter came from MIT. It was a small envelope, so I feared the worst. Inside was a small letter that said, "I would like to invite you to join the class of 1999 at MIT," signed by the president of MIT. That and a decorative piece of paper saying the same thing that your parents could frame or something. That was all. The strangest thing of all was the postmark on the envelope It was dated March 15! Is that weird or what. I called up all my friends to tell them I got in and to tell them of my "para normal" experience.

The east coast is definitely different than the west. No more lying out in the sun or wearing shorts in December like back home in Southern CA. Nope, here the wind whips around, tearing through your clothes, the snow gets all in your face, and the clouds don't go away. Okay, the snow was fun for a while. I got to see my first snowfall here in Boston. But it is not always fluffy like in the movies. It gets grainy like salt and get all over the place and in your eyes and stuff. "Ick" could be a word to describe the feeling. When I came back for winter break, my family said I was pale from the lack of sun. I tried to sit outside as much as possible when I was at home.

Life here at MIT is pretty hectic. I usually get to sleep at around 2 a.m. or later each night. But I do find time to do fun stuff every now and then. I am in the Marching Band here at MIT, we usually just play at random sporting events (the ones that we feel like going to anyway). I am also in the Tech Inline Skate Club. I can't really skate backwards to well yet, but I am trying. During IAP, a interesting period in January where you can take any class you want, (like Chili Chemistry or How to Achieve World Peace Using Common Kitchen Utensils) I took Water Polo. My friend said I should go out for Varsity next year so I think I will do that too. I am not sure about what I am going to major in, but I think I am going to minor in Theatre and/or Acting. I like being dramatic, and a class I took my first term. Foundations of Theatre Practice, really got me interested again.

The second year will definitely be harder, seeing that I'm on grades and all, but I also seem more prepared for it. Maybe because I am lulled into a false sense of security by having done one year already. The first day of water polo practice showed me how out of shape I really am. Waking up at 6 in the morning every day from now on will not be fun. My summer in between this year and my freshman year was really interesting. I was glad that I was back home with my friends and all, but when it came time for me to come back east, I wasn't reluctant or sad or anything. The rest of my friends except for the one the was also coming back east were acting like it was the end of the world and they were going to hell. They really disliked school. My friend and I who were back east, however, were cool about it- even excited.

I decided to go course 6-2 (computer science and electrical engineering). Like that's any big surprise... the majority of this school majors in course 6. Oh well. I'll try not to be to big of a sheep. I'll also have to work harder, I have passed all of my classes, but only by the skin of my teeth.

Being on grades sucks. I actually have to work. Fortunately, I have one class with lots of freshmen. They don't care if they get a C. It just makes the curve that much better for us hard-working sophomores. Or as my friend put it, "makes the bell curve look like a pregnant lady that fell over." And it never lets up. This week, I have three problem sets, two tests and a four-hour lab. Add to that two hours of water polo practice and you will soon begin to see why everyone calls this place hell. At least one of my classes is enjoyable- Intro to Acting. I love that class. We get to do cool stuff like stage fighting (pretending to beat the crap out of your partner), monologues, and other non-math-science stuff. It is very relaxing.

The Thanksgiving weekend of my sophomore year was an interesting one. I was sitting in my room thinking, I did this whole mope around the dorm thing last Thanksgiving. Well, my girlfriend went to Cornell , which is in Ithaca, NY. Where's Ithaca, you ask? I was thinking the same thing. So I email her asking if it would be all right if I could stay at her place for the weekend. She said sure and I was on my way. This was so spur-of-the-moment it wasn't even funny. It was Wednesday evening, and the next bus to Ithaca left on Thanksgiving day at 8 AM. Packing was not a problem, although wasn't until I got there that I realized I forgot shampoo. But anyway.

I had never ridden a bus for any large amount of time before. The only time I rode a bus was to school on the RTD in LA (back when it was still called the RTD). I get into the station and go up to the Peter Pan counter to get a round-trip ticket to Ithaca. The salesperson handed me an envelope containing not one, but about 16 little tickets all strung together. Puzzled at first, I took a look at them. Collectively they said: Boston to Springfield, Springfield to Rochester, Rochester to Albany, Albany, to Utica, Utica to Syracuse, Syracuse to Ithaca, and then the same in reverse order. I guess it was a little bit much for me to hope that there was a bus straight to Ithaca, but it seemed that I had to go to everywhere else in-between to get there.

I was wondering why they said it would take 10 hours to get there.

So it begins- my incredible journey- at gate 21, South Station, Boston. The bus moved along smoother than I thought it would, although I couldn't get any sleep because 1) I am never able to get sleep in a moving vehicle unless I am totally prone and 2) they guy in front of me was crushing my legs because he was leaning too far back. At least I got a windows seat. Slowly the scenery around me changed from billowing smokestacks and towering buildings to snow-covered trees. Fortunately for me, there were a lot of people going to Albany so Peter Pan put out a second bus that was going to skip Springfield and Rochester. The 10 hours was looking shorter already. When I got to Albany, I discovered that the next bus heading for Ithaca was not due for another two hours. So much for a shortcut. I was pretty much starved to death; the last thing I ate before leaving was a slice of cold pizza left over from the night before. Thankfully, the station had a cafeteria so I wolfed down a cheeseburger and soda to tide myself over.

About a half-hour before the bus was supposed to come in, a line started forming so I walked over and stepped in. In front of me was a woman with four of five kids (they were running around so much it was hard to tell), only one of which was well-behaved. Behind me was a thin old woman with purple and green barrettes in her hair. At least I think they were barrettes. Anyway, there were several of them scattered randomly about her head. I know this because she was standing a bit too close to me, as if she thought someone might cut in front of her, and being about a foot and a half taller than her, all I saw was the top of her head. The station announcer came over the P.A. and said that there would again be two buses, but this time the "express" bus would be going to Buffalo, farther than I wanted to go. So now I'm stuck on the slow bus.

I could swear that the bus stopped in every village along the way from Albany to Syracuse. Why New York calls its towns villages I will never know. I was kind if eerie, though, how all the places we did stop in were so empty. No people on the street; no cars on the road. Nothing but the bus and the people in it. Even when we pulled into the stations, there were no people to greet those who got off. Even Syracuse, which I always took to be a slightly large city, was totally deserted.

Syracuse also happened to be the next place I had to change buses. This time I only had to wait little under an hour for the next bus. The station was very strange. It looked like it had just remodeled, but it had not yet refurbished. So everything was big, white, and empty- except for the bathrooms which were small, green, and disgusting. But when a man has to go, a man has to go. As I was walking out back into the waiting area, this janitor came out of nowhere and said, "Have a happy Thanksgiving," with all of the enthusiasm of someone on valium. He had his back turned toward me too. Stunned, it was all I could do to mumble, "Yea, you too," before making a hasty exit. What a weirdo.

The last leg of my trip was the shortest, but most enjoyable. I started talking to these two people sitting in the back of the bus. One guy was named Austin. He lived in Ithaca. I had seen him in the terminal asking for money. From my previous experiences with people that did that, I dismissed him as a panhandler, but it turned out that he was stranded in Syracuse and only needed a few bucks to have enough money for fare to get back home. He happened upon a good Samaritan that day and was on the bus ready to go home. The other was a girl whose name I forgot who, like mw, was visiting her friends at Cornell. She had this real nice lip ring that wrapped around the center of her lower lip and had this deep green marble-like stone seated on the front. She was a freshman biology major, but later told us she was planning to change to English.

I'm surprised that they were so easy to talk to. I was always used to dealing with people who tried to sell you pornographic key chains or calculated equations on a calculator they drew themselves or saluted every bus that went by us. We basically just talked about why each other was going to Ithaca, the moved on to more in-depth subjects such as exchanging jokes and criticizing burp techniques. We actually did get into a conversation about the insanity of Hitler, but we decided to let that topic go after a while.

Finally! The bus pulls into a pitch-black station at 5:45 PM. The station is closed for the holiday so we are all freezing or asses off. I would guess that it is 25° F.

Lip-ring girl and me asked Austin if he knew a cab company we could call and he told us to call 277-TAXI. I was the only one who had quarters so I picked up the phone and dialed. They told me it would be at least 45 minutes before a cab got there.

Damn! Both of us start cursing the weather. She is from Texas so she appreciates warm weather like I do. She lights up a cigarette to warm herself up, her cold hand almost dropping the lighter. I light up my imaginary cigarette and watch my breath condense.

After what seemed like a hell of a lot longer then an hour, our cab pulls up. It struck me funny that this cab didn't have a meter, but I guess that in small towns like these, cabs don't really go very far so they charge reasonable flat rates. From all the radio talk in the cab, it sounded like there were only two cabbies working, and all three were bored out of their mind so they were joking around. Excerpt from one cabby as overheard by me (said in a very monotonous manner), "The movies have let out, the people have left, I am alone." Lip-ring girl and I chuckled a bit.

The cabby dropped me off at low-rise #9, where my girlfriend lived. "That'll be four bucks." Sounded reasonable to me, especially since Boston cabs charge you $2 for the first quarter mile. I called her up from a phone in the laundry room of the dorm (which I shouldn't have been able to do but the door was broken and I just walked in) and she came down and showed me to her room. A mutual friends of ours, Perri, was also visiting so we talked a bit about how school was going and everything. He was leaving that night, Thanksgiving night, to head back to Boston, then to New York, and finally back to California. Well, we sent him off well with a big turkey day dinner of Kraft's Macaroni & Cheese. Hey, there were only three of us, nothing was open, and college kids don't usually keep turkeys lying around in fridge, even if it is Thanksgiving.

Lucy wasn't kidding when she told me earlier that there was nothing to do in Ithaca. She had to put in some hours at the Chemistry Lab so I wandered around for about four hours. I was kind if hungry so I stopped to eat at this place called the Greek House. It was already one o'clock, but I still ordered pancakes and sausage since this place served breakfast all day. No matter what time I get up, my first meal has to be breakfast. I also have to eat three times a day or I starve- even if I wake up at two in the afternoon. I took my time eating because I had nothing better to do. After I finished up, I walked around Collegetown (no joke, that's the name of the little city where I was. Original, huh?) and then back up to campus. There were some beautiful gorges but other than the sights, there wasn't much else of note. I ended up back in the dorm watching the Real World reunion. Puck is such an asshole.

It is finally time to leave and the cab showed up a little bit early so I gathered up my stuff and asked myself, "Did I forget anything?" but it didn't seem like I did so I walk outside, say goodbye to Lucy, throw my stuff in the cab and take off to the bus station.

I was sharing this cab as well, although it wasn't of my knowledge. There was someone in the area who was also going to the station so the dispatcher told the cabby to pick us both up. When I got to the station, I reached into my pocket for my ticket and discovered it wasn't there. Damn! After rummaging through all my pockets and bags, I called up Lucy and asked her if I left my ticket there. Sure enough it was there sitting next to a sandwich which I also told myself not to forget but did anyway. The cabby that dropped us off was still sitting there because the dispatcher told her to wait to see if any of the people getting off the bus needed cabs. So I flag her down and head back to low-rise #9. I struck up a conversation with the friendly cabby and she told me that I wasn't the first to forget his ticket. Anyway, she asked me all the usual stuff: what my major was, the classes I'm taking, and so on. I asked her about the meters (or lack thereof) for the cabs and she told me that everything was charged by what zones one travels in and out of. The dispatcher tell them the rate to charge. Because of my forgetfulness, I had to pay this three times instead of one. I got back to the low rise, ran up the stairs to get my ticket and sandwich, which, as the cabby quipped, "was much more important than the ticket." On the trip back to the station she asked me about how my what I was going to do with my degree. I started going on the possibilities of computer science and how it is not so saturated as, for example, law. That brought up a conversation about a sue-happy society, and of course the McDonald's coffee incident and how Arby's doesn't carry hot chocolate anymore as a result and what the world is coming to etc.

I wasn't late for the bus on account of my ticket-hunt. In fact, I even had time to eat my sandwich. Anyway, the bus for Syracuse came and off I was again. When I was in the bus station, I saw signs on the doors effectively saying, "Sunday, December 1st is our busiest travel day of the year. You might want to travel on the 30th or the 2nd." Well, I actually considered leaving a day early, but there was only one bus each day out of Ithaca headed towards Boston, which left at 11:40, and it was already four something by the time it was suggested to me so that settled that. I didn't want to miss a day of class so decided to try my luck on Sunday. The bad thing was that there were hordes of people. The good thing was that they put out extra buses, and most of them were those "express" buses. So I was able to travel from Ithaca to Syracuse to Albany to Boston, without making any stops in between. I had to transfer and everything, but the most time I had to wait was 20 minutes, if that. I put my bus boarding skills that I learned in school to good use (you know, push to the front to make sure you get on, but not so much as to get noticed) because although there were twice as many buses, there were twice as many people. All the buses I rode on were filled to capacity. Sometimes I was one of the last people let on. It was like social Darwinism at work. Board or be stranded. I probably would have shaved a couple of hours of the time it took to get here, but the traffic was terrible so the driver chose to take a less crowded but not so direct route. I was happy anyway because I still made it in an hour ahead of schedule. I never really knew how much I liked Boston until I spent a weekend in Ithaca, no offense to Ithaca of course. Give me urban metropolis any day over suburban wilderness. After I got into South Station, I walked to the T station, got myself a mocha frappe along the way, and rode back to MIT. I asked my friends about their vacation and they proceed to tell me about snowboarding or going on a road trip with their other friends, or the huge dinner they had. One of them asked me if anything interesting happened to me over the break. "Yea, I'm single again."