the vending room.: From Austin to NYC (via Nashville)

I bought my Volkswagen Passat for the adventure. That's just what it became.

Six and a half months ago, I purchased a 2005 Passat Diesel from a man in Tuscaloosa, AL after leaving my job at Sewell Cadillac in Dallas and deciding to move to Austin. Working at Sewell, I had to hand in the keys to my Cadillac and jump on a plane to Birmingham to pick up the Passat. My friend Alex went with me, and after picking up the car at the airport, we drove it directly to Memphis, TN to spend an exciting New Years Eve on Beale Street. New Year's Day I drove it back to Dallas, packed up the remainder of my belongings, and headed to Austin to start a new chapter.

Come July, after getting settled in to Austin a bit, I settled on the fact that it was time for the Passat and I to part ways. It just didn't make sense for me to continue to try and fit its cost into my newly adapted lifestyle, so just the way I bought it, I posted back up on eBay for sale. Within two weeks, I had over 10 people contact me about the car. It was a wonderful car. The most interested party was a man named Ernie who lives in Franklin Lakes, NJ. That's about 1,800 miles away from Austin. I agreed to a sale price and told him I would get it to him. Within two days, I had my roommate Paul and our friend Lorne on board for a cross-country road trip to deliver the car to Ernie's doorstep. Two days before we left, on the 4th of July, our friend John got on board too. The plan was a two day drive to Jersey with a stopover in Nashville for an Independence Day celebration. Two days in NYC, and then on a plane home. It was flawless.

We left out of Austin at 5 am

on our Nation's Birthday and made it through to Nashville by 7 pm. I had my first experience with White Castle, and now I see why they made a movie about stoners wanting to eat there. That must be the only way the food could possibly be enjoyable. It made me take my time in the lavatory as well, and when I finally emerged, the rest of the group got the entirety of the restaurant to give me a rousing round of applause. I graciously bowed and we headed to the waterfront of the Cumberland River to watch the single most massive fireworks display I have ever seen.

Then up the street to an old traditional Nashville honky-tonk called Robert's, across the back alley from the old Grand Ole' Opry.

A local publisher regaled us with a story about how Willie Nelson and Hank Williams Jr. used to walk across the alley through the back door of the bar and get hammered before playing at the Opry.

Whether it was totally true or not, it made a great story for the night. We then headed to the one and only Justin Tam's house, friend and musical colleague of Paul Banks, where I got three solid hours of sleep on a solid wood floor. It wasn't exactly the 4 Seasons, and I would say it did the trick, but it didn't. I slept in the car most of the next day while Lorne drove.

We would have all been fearing for our lives as he drove 80 mph with, sometimes, one hand on the wheel while tackling a number of superfluous tasks such as creating On-the-Go playlists on the iPod, looking up Points of Interest on the TomTom, talking on the phone, and being generally distracted by beams of light, all in the midst of a heavy fog on the northern Tennessee mountain highway.

Luckily we and the car all survived to get to New Jersey that night around 11 pm. Ernie was the coolest guy imaginable -- a native New Yorker moved to the suburbs to raise his family.

After we arrived at his house, he drove us to the train station in Ramsey so we could catch the midnight run down to Hoboken and subsequently the PATH into New York City.

My first impression of New York was walking up out of the Union Square station onto 14th street. It was wonderful, and for a first experience, awe-inspiring.

We quickly met up with friends on First Ave and headed back to Brooklyn. We sat on our friend Brian's apartment rooftop, drinking Brooklyn Lager and catching up until 5 am.

The rest of the weekend did not disappoint either, as we played frisbee in Central Park,

saw John Lennon's Memorial, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and took in the whole city, ate at an Asian Fusion in DUMBO, stood on the pier of the East River at sunset, hung out in Greenwich Village, danced with a belly dancer, got into the Blender Theater at Grammercy on Park Avenue with our friend Gabe and listened to music on the concert sound system until 4 am, took a taxi through Manhattan with the cabbies driving like mad, ate at a Cuban dive off Broadway, saw the Salvador Dali showcase at the MoMA, hung out in Times Sqaure, saw part of an old film showing at Bryant Park, and ate at an authentic Italian restaurant and hung with the hipsters in West Brooklyn all before I jumped on the train out to JFK airport at 1 am, Tuesday morning.

I landed and was to work by 11 am on Tuesday, with an epic road trip including major American landmarks and great friends over our Independence Day weekend behind me -- back in the city I love.