The trip began smoothly enough, albeit at 5:00 in the morning. When you tell Mike you want an early flight, I promise you will get an early flight!

Landing at JFK around noon, we hired a cab to take us to Bensonhurst, to Tom’s house–the friend we were staying with. The cab driver claimed not to know how to get to the address. This was the second cab I’ve ever taken in NYC and the other time the exact same thing happened. Seems to me you would know your way around if you were being paid to drive people to and fro. Sometimes optimism and logic get the better of me.

Mike got frustrated and finally had the cabbie let us off near Coney Island. That led to the taking of a wrong train and a delay in getting to Tom’s, but eventually we made it there–tired, hungry, cranky. I was more cranky when I found out that Mike’s description of Tom’s house (“just a couple of blocks from the train”) was actually about eight blocks from the train. Eight blocks is far enough, but when you’ve been up a long time with no food, it seems more like 20.

Anywho…we got our stuff dropped off and found food and felt better. Tom had suggested Lenny’s, which is right next to the 20th Ave. train station and was featured in a scene from Saturday Night Fever, but I was not in the mood for pizza so we went to an Asian restaurant across the street. Ah! We felt so much better after eating! In a much better frame of mind, we headed over to Rapid Realty.