Met with Mel after trying to find the area in Manhattan that she was at. Took about 45 minutes between texting, calls and directions from the kind hearted people of Manhattan who felt sorry for this poor lost soul. Problem is that even the people who live in lower Manhattan have no clue where a place is. I didn't know there was a starbucks on every corner in lower Manhattan, but that only makes sense as I was to meet her there.

We finally met at the correct starbucks. I think it was only the 58th one I went to, so I guess I should feel lucky? We sat down in a small park and chatted for sometime as she was away in Thailand for about a month or so. And yes, we had coffee from starbucks. She looked really good and refreshed. After a while Pablo came down and met us for some more chatting and he looked refreshed also, got to love traveling. We decided to go eat some Chinese food, in China town of course, and made our way there.

On our way to eat, Mel stopped at every fruit stand in lower Manhattan, not because she wanted fruit, but because she needed many many bags for me and Pablo to carry-she got her wish too! We ate our food and talked about the trip and then decided to bring her fruit bags home. I have had a fractured ankle for about five weeks now and it is sore as can be, so walking some distance can be tricky. Well, between the walking and the damn fruit bags, my ankle was yelling at me. But like the gentlman I am, I told her nothing of my ankle. Of course when I started limping heavily, she found out, but by then, we had arrived to her place to get rid of the bags.

They walked, I limped, over to a spot that a few of the us TFers used to go to in the summertime and sit outside with Margarita's. A lot more conversation later, we decided to head home. Sounds like a simple enough time, right? Nope, not that lucky.

We made our way to the 49St station to catch the downtown train. After a while, we realized that there were no trians going our way. The token botth attendant told us that there had been a de-railment of the downtown "N" train at 57Th Street and there was no trains, we waited. After another 30 minutes or so, we were told that the "R" train would be running on the local track and we could take that. Yeah, there were "R" trains, but they were running on the express track because the "N" train was in the way of the local track.

We walked to 42Nd Street and took the #3 train, but the #3 train was now a #5 train? After we figured out that there was work being done on the tracks and they were re-routing trains, we took the #5 train to a location where I could continue on to Brooklyn and Mel and Pablo could walk home.

It only really took me an extra hour to hour and a half to get home, so it wasn't that bad. It was worth it to hang out with good friends.